Maintenance routine help

[FuriousFist]

Somebody has pointed out that in the time it takes to "maintain" you could actually be making gains, even if they're slower, right?

I guess maintenance was the wrong word to use.

The goal is to not focus so much on slapping on more weight every session at the expense of technique, and to not be too fried from lifting for judo the next day.

Working grip will really carry over to judo or other grappling sports. And if use farmers walks over strict "grip" work like grippers or pinch grip or whatever, theres an excellent GPP carryover as well.

As far as grip goes, your hands and forearms are more or less designed for high frequency, you could grapple everyday and still train grip twice a day as long as you eased into it. You use them constantly, even sedentary people have great hand GPP.

I guess the ease into it is key. Right now, from deads and judo alone, I'm starting to get from time to time forearm and hand muscle spasms / pain that persists for many days, which sounds like that my grip is getting all that it can handle for now. That's basically why I don't think farmers walks etc. are right for me now.

Ive found my core gets taxed effectively enough stabilizing everything for squats, dl's and the like, but whatever floats your boat.

I was thinking ab work more for explosive movements when doing groundwork than for stabilizing. I'm thinking, for example, that doing ab wheel stuff has a direct carryover to the folding / hip movement involved in shrimping backwards.

Thanks for the help so far everyone!

 

[FuriousFist]

Youre Squatting 245lbs at 164lbs for 5 sets of 5. Thats 1.5x your bodyweight which is where StrongLifts says to stop and move onto another routine. I can imagine those squat sessions are very taxing so Id probably look into another routine now that your squat has gotten to that level. Or if you like the high volume, maybe alternate between a high volume heavy day and a high rep endurance day or a speed/technique day to give yourself abit more time to recover.

Oh. I wasn't aware of the 1.5x thing.

Is the last bit what people mean when they talk about ME, DE, etc?

 

[graedy]

For some reason Baby Phenom's one sentence replies always crack me up.
I imagine him sitting there like a chipmunk on speed "Question - answer, Question - answer..."
He always states his opinion or gives his answer but never anything more than that.

Back on topic: AS Carnal already pointed out: Maintenace is a watse of time most of the time. MAybe the solution is as easy as mixing up your program a bit and reducing the weekly weightjumps to 2.5lbs instead of 5 lbs.

 

[takeahnase]

For some reason Baby Phenom's one sentence replies always crack me up.
I imagine him sitting there like a chipmunk on speed "Question - answer, Question - answer..."
He always states his opinion or gives his answer but never anything more than that.

I think BabyPhenom is a Bot. All he ever posts is "EDT", "GVT" or his patented 2 day split

 

[FuriousFist]

Week 1
Thu PM: 5x5 OHS, bench, and BOR
Sat PM: 5x5 squats and OHP, 3x max reps chins/pull ups

Week 2
Thu PM: 5x5 clean, bench, and BOR
Sat PM: 3x5 singles (???) DL, 5x5 OHP, 3x max reps chins/pullups

BOR, OHS and cleans are new lifts for me, so Thu is effectively a light, technical day for now and will be for the next couple of months. Added OHS and cleans because they seem like fun lifts to work on after messing around with them on and off for the past couple of months.

Not sure how many sets / reps for deadlifts to do, though, since previously I was squatting 5x5 and deadlifting 5x1 on the same day. Does 3 sets of five singles sound reasonable?

 

[vince89]

Yes, ME stands for Maximum Effort which means go as heavy as you can. DE is Dynamic Effort where the focus is on speed/explosiveness and RE is Repeated Effort which is high rep work for size and endurance.

 

[FuriousFist]

That's what I do, and it seems ok for recup time. Squatting two times a week seems to be very taxing.

Also, have you tried stronglifts.com second routine? Mehdi advises to replace one squat session by a front squat session every week, for this very reason. Maybe you should give it a try...

Haven't tried his second routine, but he seems to have replaced it with an advanced 5x5 which breaks the routine down into four weeks of volume, two of deload, and four of intensity. Not sure if it's any better for me than the beginner version given the overall weekly volume of squatting and deadlifting is still super high.

Good job on your first post, by the way