This is a living document and I intend to flesh out the content for each section as I go.
I have no idea what I'm talking about and none of this is advice. This is just my experience.
I'll ramble on about my programming, nutrition, stats, mistakes, successes, and future plans over time.
Workout programs
History
This is a list of programs I've ran, from memory, in a rough order over the last 12+ years.
Some of the programs have been ran multiple times.
- Messing around without any guidance
- Stronglifts
- 5/3/1 BBB
- Smolov Bench
- Smolov for Squats
- Coan/Phillipi Deadlift
- Leangains Reverse Pyramid Training (RPT)
- Weeklifts
- More on this later. Spoilers -- it's essentially Leangains RPT progression on top of 5/3/1 structure.
- Update: post is now available - see the weeklifts program
- Sheiko original
- The old spreadsheets that someone on a forum translated from his Russian book.
- Sheiko App
- Intermediate and Advanced - High Load
- Reactive Training Systems (RTS) - Personalized programming
- Started in 2015 with them and ran for nearly 3 years doing the full-personalized programming.
- For the latter half, I was utilizing mostly 'emerging strategies'.
- RTS - Self guided
- After cutting ties with RTS, I continued to run RTS using the wealth of templates I had available, modifying them as I saw fit.
- Have continued to mainly train with this method until now (2022).
- Some short breaks were taken from RTS to dabble with some other programs over the last 7 years.
- Jacked and Tan 2.0
- Mythical Strength 26-week Hypertrophy program
- In late 2022 / early 2023, I ran Mythical strength hypertrophy. This is a series of 5/3/1 BBB, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith, Deepwater Beginner, and Deepwater Advanced
- I made it through. It was excrutiating. I ate to match, gained a ton of weight, and definitely put some muscle mass on. I was over 220 lbs near the end.
- My conditioning was probably the best it has ever been after this. I picked up a Rogue Air Bike, and used it regularly. I was doing short rests and burning through workouts.
- In the end, I felt I was weaker, but larger. I was missing the big lifts and heavy weights. I don't enjoy this style of workout at all, but I'm glad I did it.
- My main takeaways are that my work capacity was shit, I was taking too long of breaks, and I need to stop. I'll carry this forward into my new training
- Cutting and RTS
- For the last 6 months, I went through a slow cutting cycle to shred the weight off from Mythical Strength. I ran a low volume 'emerging strategies' RTS templates, keeping intensities high and was able to maintain or slightly improve strength throughout depending on the week.
- I finished it all off with RFL 2.0 for 2 weeks, this time in Cat 1, and ended up at 186lbs in August.
Future
Next, I'm working on another program, dubbed The Weekside Method, which is going to be more Cube/RTS/conjugate principles applied in what I hope to be a long term programming cycle.
My main priorities are:
- Getting my strength back - pushing my 1RMs past old PRs
- Mainting weight around or under 205lbs
- Dealing with fatigue - RTS's 4th day has been wrecking me, which I think is mostly due to deadlifting twice a week. I need to address this.
- Keep my work capacity up and keep my rest cycles short
- Target weaknesses. I'm at the point where I think the only way to get stronger is to attack my weaknesses - just pounding out the same lifts constantly isn't going to cut it anymore. Addressing weakpoints is huge weakpoint in itself for me which I have very little education on. I plan to really focus on this.
Nutrition
General
For the majority of the last 10 years, I've been following a leangains-esque protocol:
- 14-16 hour fasting window
- IIFYM approach with a heavy focus on whole foods
- 1g protein per lb
- Tracking macros and meals in MyFitnessPal
- Ran carb-cycling for the first few years, but don't bother these days
I've worked in some other nutrition programs while still following the above such as the Vertical Diet.
I've spent very little time eating at maintenance -- I'm usually doing a bulk or cut cycle.
Cutting
I'm impatient and tend to do drastic cuts for a short period of time.
For that reason, I tend to gravitate towards crash dieting such as "Rapid Fat Loss 2.0".
Lift history
Competitions
Date - Weight - Squat - Bench - Deadlift - Total
2014-02 - 81.7 - 205 - 155 - 215 - 575
2014-06 - 80.2 - 212.5 - 142.5 - 230 - 585
2014-11 - 83.0 - 215 - 160 - 240 - 615
2015-06 - 81.3 - 220 - 162.5 - 257.5 - 640
2015-10 - 93.0 - 220 - 175 - 275 - 670
2016-06 - 93.0 - 237.5 - 190 - 270 - 697.5
2016-08 - 93.0 - 240 - 190 - 280 - 710
2017-06 - 93.0 - 262.5 - 193 - 287.5 - 743
2018-02 - 91.3 - 257.5 - 197.5 - 295 - 750
2019-06 - 92.4 - 265 - 205 - 295 - 765
Personal Gym Records
Date - Weight - Squat - Bench - Deadlift - Total
2020-07 - 95 - 288 - 224 - 317 - 829
Unorganized thoughts and prompts for later
- Injuries, surgeries, and other speed bumps
- Sleep
- Supplements
- Home gym / equipment / DIY
- Try to track down better dates regarding timeline of programs
- Competition prep - Peaking / cutting
- Cheat days, low motivation days
- Vacations
- Stretching, warm-up, and rolling
- Tracking - tools