Your quantifiable results of an intermediate/advanced training program

As a noob to weight traing to enhance another sport like a MA or MMA (up until I started an MA, I lifted for personal enjoyment), I see lots of great advice in the S&C forum. Not really concerned with the introductory routines that are designed to increase strength fast for beginners (i.e. let's filter out noob gains).

Some folks have training logs, sure, but what I think would be good to know is, for a particular routine, state the
- name
- duration (i.e. number of consecutive months used)
- did you do assistance work, and if so, what's the average number of sets/reps per exercise (no need to know individual exercises)
- the gains made during that duration... such as mass increase, and the weight increase for BP/Squat/DL/MP

I think this can be a decent thread. If you don't, I am certain I will hear about it

-T

EDIT: introductory routines are OK to duscuss if you are not a beginner lifter. My initial intent was to focus on intermediate lifters and above.... mainly since we all know new lifters gain quicker than intermediates and advanced and that would skew the results.

EDIT#2:
Open to all lifters... sorry... better to have more, than less...

 

Ummm okay...?

 

I just added an "edit" to post #1. Hopefully that clears things up.

-T

 

Those introductory routines are the most vital part of An MMA participants repeteiou. There are a multitude of ways to set up an intermediates routine but I am not quite sure what yoy are wanting to know.

Now thats out of the way. A MMA guy is never going to advance much past the intermediate stage due to all of the stuff you have to include in your training. The need for advanced level programming for MMA or really most athletes may or may not be real. Intermediate programming is basically all that needed for an mma guy.

 

I guess what I am after it is, knowing that there are a bunch of standard routines both introductory advanced and intermediate, and folks here in the forum have used those, sometimes with modification and sometimes without, to mention the results that they achieved using those routines. If someone created their own routine that is not one of these well known ones, then we want to know about those too.

I guess I was interested in the real world results that people (fighter, non-fighter, hobbyist, etc) achieved. Hope that clarifies things.

-T

 

*repertoire

If I can recall correctly, I went from squatting 135 to 335ish 1RM, benching 95 to 245, and deadlifting 225 to 365 on a 5 x 5 program before I moved up to Madcow's 5 x 5. And I was training BJJ 4-5 days a week at the time. I was 18.

I can't remember which version of 5 x 5 program I was on as a beginner. It wasn't Starting Strength, Stronglift, or, god forbid, Ice Cream Fitness. I think it was Bill Starr's version.

 

Great post. Thanks.

-T

 

Oh, and I just want to clarify that I was 16 and a half when I first started lifting. So I guess it took me about a year and a half to get to those numbers.

 

I had been lifting off and on without much structure or heavy lower body work for about 6 years before I started my first real strength program.

I did Madcow 5x5 for about 6 months and went from 225x10 deadlift to a 405lb max, my squat went from about 225 to 350lb, and my bench went from 265 to 285lb. I think I was 22 years old and I gained about 5-10lb of BW (165 to 170-175). I did pull-ups, rows, front squats, power cleans, and SOHP as assistance.

I lifted on and off for the next 4 years, did a lot of conditioning, fought a few times, ran a few races. Stayed about 170lb, got the deadlift up to 455, everything else stayed pretty much the same.

Then I didn't lift or do much of anything besides sparring once a week with some ammy mma fighters who weren't very good for 3 years. Gained about 15lb up to 185lb, not good weight, probably lost a bunch of muscle too.

Started up again in earnest last April, I've pretty much been doing my own programming most of time (although I did run the candito intermediate program for 6 weeks and I also did a "russian squat program" set and rep scheme for my bench), gained over 20lbs and I'm leaner than I was at 185lb. I haven't been doing a lot of assistance, mostly just doing one or two lifts per session doing as much volume/intensity as I have energy for on the given day. My squat is up to 425lb, bench is up to 305lb, and my deadlift is up to 465lb.

 

I haven't got exact numbers for you but I've run two main intermediate templates. Which are 531 and various different Texas method style templates.
My numbers are currently 225kg squat, 160kg bench, 255kg deadlift and 107.5kg over head.

531 is decent, especially if lifting isn't your main sport. Very customisable. With plenty of time to add in other things, e.g conditioning or sport specific training. Negatives are IMO it's quite slow going and towards the end I started to burn myself out going for rep maxes( obviously that's my fault not the program)

I've run Texas method a number of times and have probably been running it in different ways for about a year. IMO it's a good intermediate program, especially for squat and bench. I guess a negative is it can be quite boring as it's just lots of S/B/D.

Although I think the choice of program comes along way behind consistency and just hard work.

 

Simple 5x5 took me to a 275 bench 405 deadlift and 365 squat

All that while prepping for a fight before I dislocated my thumb

 

Lol don't lie.

Your program is 1RM attempts every day.

 

I did a few runs through of Sheiko. Within about 3-4 months, squat went from 150-175, bench from 90-110, and deadlift from 200-215. I was also eating a shit load at the time, so I'd say most of my gains were from the fact I was getting bigger, which meant getting stronger came that much easier as well.

 

Texas method for squats. Was doing olympic lifting with it, so no deadlifts or bench

went from 315x1 to 365x1 and 330x5 (deeper as well) in about 3 months. No assistance whatsoever for squat. (Squat WAS the assistance exercise lol)

edit: This was while eating to stay at a weight class (170lbs) as well, so with a caloric surpluse i'm sure you'd blow past that.

 

Yup
Whenever I feel like it
Only do meets because it's a requirement to do 2 a year at the gym, I could give a shit about them
This is for fun and nothing else

 

I do 5/3/1, added 100lbs to my squat, 70lbs. to my bench and rehabilitated my deadlift to a match my lifetime high after not doing the lift for years. All in a few months time.

 

I was also able to total over 1000 at my first meet ever by just doing 5x5 (strong lifts), other than the 5 lifts in the plan I just did pullups and sprints during that time. Interestingly right after that I went on a big trekking trip and was absolutely ditching my partners, they just couldn't keep up with me and for the past ~5-6 months of been training like 5 hours a week while they had been doing much much more and training much more specifically.

 

It fit well with jiu jitsu and everything else I was doing. Don't like the time investment lifting is now but I'm not kickboxing any more so it still fits

 

Tactical Barbell Fighter template (2 x week)

Duration: Approaching a year and a half or two, give or take

Results: Bench 205 to 270, Squat 260 to 385, DL 270 to 395

Accessory Work: Pull-ups, kettlebell swings, Muay Thai

My priority is Muay Thai, with the secondary goal of doing a sustainable/beneficial S&C program on the side.

Started out using typical 5x5 linear periodization. It became too much in addition to 3-4 MT classes per week. Started stalling, and every session started to feel like I was working at my limit. Resets had no effect. Gaining a shitload of weight wasn't an option for me. Tried 5/3/1 (2 day) for a bit, but didn't respond to the low frequency, and didn't do too well on it. Switched over to TB, and the waved progression fits like a glove for my lifestyle.

* I did reach slightly higher 1rms a few months ago when I took a month off of Muay Thai and ran TB Operator template (3xweek) but also gained a lot of weight which wasn't sustainable for me when I started MT again. Lost a bit of strength when my weight dropped back down to normal.

 

I am using TB as well at the moment, also with Swings and Chin-Ups. How do you program the swings/chins?