Switching up 5 day splits? HST style workout kind of

[FlawedGrunt]

Hey whats up fellas! So I recently got back to training after a long stint off and so far I have been dedicated like crazy for the last 4 weeks and I am hoping it will stay that way.

However for the first time in years I am back to a 5 days split and only working 1 body part a day. Which in the last few years I've mostly done full body part workouts or superset style workouts. I am loving being back to a 5 day split and my upper body seems to be blowing up. Now my short term goal is to workout consistently for 12 weeks and then my next longer goal is to be in pretty decent shape by May when I go on vacation. Anyways right now I am sticking mostly to bulking and not really paying attention to my scale... which was a hard thing for me to do at first but now I am embracing it. Some of the workouts I have been doing have been 1.5 hours or more and I am going to be tight on time again here soon and I am looking at how I should change up my routine.

Right now its almost all reps of 10 but Im doing 30+ sets per body group with 3 working sets, power partial reps, and then triple dropsets (counting those in as sets). I figured that as I got closer to being within about 3 months of my vacation that I would start changing the rep amounts to be closer to HST or something along those lines... but the last month may end up being full out cut depending on what changes I see in the mean time.

Anyways I ran across an old book of on the shelf "Game Over: The Final Showtime Cut Diet Youll Ever Need." Its a book put out by Scivation and a couple authors. (Here's the pdf version of it http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/docs/2007/gameover_vol2.pdf). Anyways I am not too interested in the diet part at this point because I have no intentions of low carbing it... but the workout does intrigue me... seems very HST like.

Let me know what you guys think of this workout and if it would be something I should consider.

I wont go through and list all the exercises but it goes in this manner:

Month 1: Conditioning
Month 2: Growth/Strength
Month 3: Strength/Growth
Month 4: Showtime

Weeks 1-4: Conditioning
Week 1: Weight and Rep Range for completion of 15 reps for 3-4 Sets
Week 2: Increase weight but drop reps to 12
Week 3: Increase weight and increase reps to 15
Week 4: Increase weight and drop reps back to 12

Weeks 5-8: Growth/Strength
Week 1: Weight and Rep Range for completion of 10 reps for 5 Sets
Week 2: Increase weight must get 8 reps
Week 3: Increase weight must get 6 reps
Week 4: Increase weight must get 8 reps for 6 Sets

Weeks 9-12: Strength/Growth
Week 1 and 2: Weight and Rep Range for completion of 4 reps on 5 sets
Week 3 and 4: Maintain weight but increase reps to 6 for 6 sets

Weeks 14-16: Showtime
Then the rep ranges get high as shxt as the last few weeks go on.

What do you guys think of a program like this? Or should I carry on with what I am doing until I want to start cutting... and then what kind of a routine would you suggest?


Thanks
Flawed

 

[ManBeast]

I read the plan as well (thanks for the link to the pdf), and it seems like a solid program, definitely aimed towards showtime prep though.

With that being said, I personally only like to change programs if:
1) I've hit a major plateau and have been on the program for at least a month
2) I'm bored as f*&% with the program I'm on
3) My goals have changed.

I'm a big fan of "If it ain't broke don't fix it" LoL so if your current program is working well, I'd defnitely save something like this for cutting (seeing as how its designed for pre-competition).

ManBeast

 

[FlawedGrunt]

Yeah Im thinking the same thing... especially after I went to the gym yesterday and crushed all of my bi and tri numbers from last week... I think I am going to have to take a couple days off soon though with going to failure on pretty much every exercise... but I agree I think I am gonna roll with this a bit longer until I get closer to my goal. Which I may not have too change to much because fasting seems to be leaning me up slowly but consistently

you decide what you are gonna do?

 

[ManBeast]

I'm gonna start with the v2.0 plan I put up on my thread, maybe switch it out to this if i plataeu hard (although i'm more tolerant of weights (lifted) plateaus when i'm cutting hard).

ManBeast