Stronger

So I have been doing my strength training 5-3-1 programme for about 3 months now and this week I will be finishing my third cycle of the programme. To that end I will be testing next week to see what my new 1RM is for Deadlift, Squat, Bench and Press. I really think that I have made some good progress and hope to smash my old personal bests in all of the lifts.

Stay Strong

Ben

5-3-1

This week I have started a classic 5-3-1 strength programme that I am going to follow for a few months to get my strength up in all of the key lifts: Deadlift, Squat, Military Press and Bench.

If all goes to plan I will reach my 200kg deadlift goal by September, and I will be pretty pleased with myself too! The programme is taken from the T-Nation website, and is super simple to use and follow, just a little maths to work out your weights.

Yesterday I tested my 1RM for the press and came up with a disappointing 62.5kg, which is hardly surprising as I don't often do it!

Today I started in vain with a deadlift workout that went like this:

Warm up

5 x 105kg

5 x 120kg

Rep out at 138kg - I managed 9.

Supporting exercises were 100 metres of walking lunges and 5 sets of hanging leg raises.

Short and Sweet. It feels like I should be doing more, but I am going to trust the programme and moderate my work to get maximum results.

Stay Strong

Ben

Strength Programme Needed

For a while I have been making some good strength gains in the gym , particularly focussing on deadlift, which I really enjoy. I seem to have hit a plateau at 180kg, and really want to pull up a 200kg lift some time this summer so I am going to write myself a strength programme incorporating deadlift, rack pull, and front squat so I can start to make some progress again. I will post it on here maybe with some pics when I get started.

Stay Strong

Ben

My First Go At EDT

Escalating Density Training is a training system designed to make maximum gains in muscular strength and endurance, whilst burning fat and all in minimal time. It was developed by Charles Staley, a renowned strength coach who was fed up with the normal sets and reps approach to weight training and wanted to get the maximum amount of hard work into a session. Sounds too good to be true, so I did some research and tried it out for the first time today.

In more conventional hypertrophy training approaches you would try and fatigue the muscle or muscle group over a number of sets, training to failure and typically doing 3 sets of 8-12 reps. With EDT the idea is to "manage" muscle fatigue by using the same weight that you may otherwise use and doing sets of only 5 reps. The real difference is that your workout is divided into a number of zones, each comprising opposing exercises for instance a bench press and bent over row. A zone is usually 15 minutes and within that time you carry out as many sets of 5 reps of each exercise as possible and record that number. 5 reps bench followed by 5 reps rows non-stop for 15 minutes!!! Then rest for about 5 minutes and complete your second zone or two opposing exercises. Over a series of workouts you record your results and once you have improved your score by 20% you increase the weight.

This evening I used an adapted approach using hardly any kit in my front room:
1st Zone
10 Press Ups (hands in low position as if doing planche press up)
5 Pull Ups (mostly overhand grip but some sets underhand as could not do any more!)
2nd Zone
5 Sumo Squats with Kettlebell
5 Pull Overs with Resistance Bands

My results:
I managed 22 sets of zone 1 and 23 sets of zone 2.
It felt good and I got a full sweat on and a really intense pump too.
Next time I will need to adjust the exercises a bit as the squats were too easy and I lost intensity on zone 2.

I will modify the workout and let you know how I get on. Have you ever done EDT? If so let me know how you train and why!

Stay strong

Ben