The Montana Method, or That thing Hanley's doing with those people.

[AaronM]

I've got enough leftover birthday/Christmas money for 2 months of discounted couching. Guess you can sign me up so that we can try and get my issues sorted out. But I expect 50lb worth of prs for my $50.

[omaniphil]

I've got enough leftover birthday/Christmas money for 2 months of discounted couching. Guess you can sign me up so that we can try and get my issues sorted out. But I expect 50lb worth of prs for my $50.

I'm going to test on Thursday, and I fully expect to get 15-20lb PRs on each of my 3 lifts in just a month.

[OCG]

Yup. He sold me on the idea. Most variation prescription seems to be hand-waving or employment of Mike T's sport-specific experience. The latter is fine, but not satisfying to me. The former annoys me. Interleaving makes sense.

Depends what you mean by "variation" I guess, but longer term there are other benefits that can come into play not grinding on the same lifts and on your joints and tendons in the exact same way forever. Are we talking solely main lift variations like pauses and partials? Personally I like partials as overload work, I find it useful to be able to handle ~1RM loads for reps without a boatload of fatigue. Variations can also be useful for overall session fatuige and compliance. Doing something like close grip after benching allows you to bench for more volume without tiring the chest so much and keeps things more interesting than 10 straight sets of bench for an hour or more. It can also be a way to add more volume to a specific muscle or position of the movement. But I think honestly accessory lifts are probably better placed here.

But this is all same session variation and I suspect you're getting at variation over the week. I kind of agree, but I also see why it's there. It's a way to artificially limit the weight without having to be too particular. On the other hand I see your point, if say squatting three times a week is appropriate, for practice or volume or both, then it's easy enough to say "just use X% of Monday's squat bro".

IDK, this might be all shit you know but I'm just spitballing here. I don't think we should just throw out lift variation entirely there does seem to be something to it.

Yeah. Super interesting. I think the bench is a wonderful test for programming ideas. Honestly, the dead and squat sorta just respond if you throw stress at them. For reasons I don't understand, the presses are vastly more sensitive to programming.

Probably something to do with them being larger lifts, and percentage wise a smaller suboptimal gain is more likely to be noticed.

On a more general note, while strength gains seem good, I wonder how hypertrophy will come along. We'll see I guess.

Something that also occurs to me, possibly because I'm not familiar enough with his approach, isn't Sheiko's whole thing also lots of low rep sets with moderate (70-75%) intensity? I know there's a lot different here in terms of layout and other things, but perhaps you're just reinventing the wheel from a different angle? But then again, Sheiko never seemed to care about keeping velocity within a particular range or tailoring the program to that.

[Hanley]

I'm going to test on Thursday, and I fully expect to get 15-20lb PRs on each of my 3 lifts in just a month.

I think they're there. I think we should do a few 90%+ reps tomorrow, though.

try and get my issues sorted out.

I'm happy to take your money, but I think your issues are related to seriously compromised recovery. There's zero chance I (or the program) can fix that.

[Hanley]

isn't Sheiko's whole thing also lots of low rep sets with moderate (70-75%) intensity? I know there's a lot different here in terms of layout and other things, but perhaps you're just reinventing the wheel from a different angle? But then again, Sheiko never seemed to care about keeping velocity within a particular range or tailoring the program to that.

Not sure. Which of the 10,000 program variants are you referencing?

More seriously, yeah, I'm discovering this approach is neither radical or novel. Sheiko does it. Prelepin's table for weightlifters prescribes set and reps more or less exactly as I have, and a dude named Chad Waterbury wrote this about motor unit recruitment: https://www.t-nation.com/training/secre ... ecruitment. It jives almost perfectly with my observations and conjectures.

But I think this is great ^. I'd feel like a crackpot if I were doing something that no one had tested. Frankly, though, I haven't seen anything packaged quite like I'm doing it with my recruitment justification.

[mgil]

@Hanley isn’t the magic keeping inflammation out of the way so that power can be expressed more easily.

(Autocorrect has been weird lately.)

[Hanley]

@Hanley isn’t the magic keeping inflammation out of the way so that power can be expressed more easily?

Started with that. Yeah.

I noticed "Density Blocks" were getting me jacked and I had no nagging inflammation. I remember casually passing the idea of limited intraset fatigue onto you.

The whole thing started by bumble-fucking into a best practice for old/broken dudes.

But -- from a broad, physiologic perspective -- everything started to make sense.

[AaronM]

I'm going to test on Thursday, and I fully expect to get 15-20lb PRs on each of my 3 lifts in just a month.

I think they're there. I think we should do a few 90%+ reps tomorrow, though.

try and get my issues sorted out.

I'm happy to take your money, but I think your issues are related to seriously compromised recovery. There's zero chance I (or the program) can fix that.

Hmmm. Not sure what I can do about that in the immediate future...

[anelson]

I'm going to test on Thursday, and I fully expect to get 15-20lb PRs on each of my 3 lifts in just a month.

I think they're there. I think we should do a few 90%+ reps tomorrow, though.

try and get my issues sorted out.

I'm happy to take your money, but I think your issues are related to seriously compromised recovery. There's zero chance I (or the program) can fix that.

Hmmm. Not sure what I can do about that in the immediate future...

Sell a kid to the circus? That what I tell mine, anyway...

[Hanley]

Hmmm. Not sure what I can do about that in the immediate future...

With recovery as variable as yours, I actually think you'd be best served with RPE-based training. I'm guessing your bench e1rm was down 10% in 48 hours. That's cray cray.

Now I could be seeing residual fatigue from the "Power Day" bench single, but that would mean that there's almost literally no useful stress from which you can recover in 48 hours on bench.

Your situation is...perplexing.

[AaronM]

Hmmm. Not sure what I can do about that in the immediate future...

With recovery as variable as yours, I actually think you'd be best served with RPE-based training. I'm guessing your bench e1rm was down 10% in 48 hours. That's cray cray.

Now I could be seeing residual fatigue from the "Power Day" bench single, but that would mean that there's almost literally no useful stress from which you can recover in 48 hours on bench.

Your situation is...perplexing.

Yet, after I missed 217.5 I was able to hit 197.5 for 6 sets of 2 at rpe6 with only 2 min rest. That puts my e1rm at 235

[Hanley]

Yet, after I missed 217.5 I was able to hit 197.5 for 6 sets of 2 at rpe6 with only 2 min rest. That puts my e1rm at 235

I have -- literally -- never seen anything like this ^ (outside of joint injury).

[AaronM]

Yet, after I missed 217.5 I was able to hit 197.5 for 6 sets of 2 at rpe6 with only 2 min rest. That puts my e1rm at 235

I have -- literally -- never seen anything like this ^ (outside of joint injury).

If recovery was the root issue, you'd think I would've needed longer rest periods between sets, and that 197.5x2 would've been grindy, given that I failed 217.5. Yet, my RPE's were going down as I did more sets.

[JonA]

Yet, after I missed 217.5 I was able to hit 197.5 for 6 sets of 2 at rpe6 with only 2 min rest. That puts my e1rm at 235

How did you warm up to 217.5? Or did you let the bar path get away from you?

[AaronM]

Yet, after I missed 217.5 I was able to hit 197.5 for 6 sets of 2 at rpe6 with only 2 min rest. That puts my e1rm at 235

How did you warm up to 217.5? Or did you let the bar path get away from you?

135x5
165x2
185x1
205x1@rpe8?
217.5xFAIL

Didn't take a video, so maybe the bar path was somewhat off. But I just did 2 singles at 220 48 hours ago, so it shouldn't have been an issue.

[chrisd]

I could maybe go for the discounted version. I worked out my old rate of progress against my gym fees. Progress cost me a penny a gram.

[Les]

Yet, after I missed 217.5 I was able to hit 197.5 for 6 sets of 2 at rpe6 with only 2 min rest. That puts my e1rm at 235

How did you warm up to 217.5? Or did you let the bar path get away from you?

I have this issue with press over any other lift. My e1RM is higher than my actual press since I don't practice with heavy weights enough I think. My bar path probably gets shitty .

[AaronM]

@Hanley , failing high intensity singles aside, was there anything over the last 3 weeks that would make you think my recovery sucks? I wonder, maybe my technique just isn't good enough for pushing 1 rep maxes. Maybe sticking with PRs in the 3-5 rep range would be good for a while?

[Hanley]

@Hanley , failing high intensity singles aside, was there anything over the last 3 weeks that would make you think my recovery sucks? I wonder, maybe my technique just isn't good enough for pushing 1 rep maxes.

Nope, just the oddresponse to heavy loads. Fatigue can be really weird. I feel like we're simply seeing fatigue. I'd give more weight to the idea of flawed technique (or apprehension from old injury), but you have the same sorta response on all the lifts.

I like the idea keeping tests around 85% until you get a sweet, sweet Darth-Apnea Mask to wear at night.

[AaronM]

@Hanley , failing high intensity singles aside, was there anything over the last 3 weeks that would make you think my recovery sucks? I wonder, maybe my technique just isn't good enough for pushing 1 rep maxes.

Nope, just the oddresponse to heavy loads. Fatigue can be really weird. I feel like we're simply seeing fatigue. I'd give more weight to the idea of flawed technique (or apprehension from old injury), but you have the same sorta response on all the lifts.

I like the idea keeping tests around 85% until you get a sweet, sweet Darth-Apnea Mask to wear at night.

Well, maybe I can progress for a while just doing 85% AMRAP for S/B/D on test week? I'll try to get my insurance situation sorted out next week.