Alright, so this bulk is going to be a bit different; I suppose they all are in some ways, here are my goals/plans.
- Keep conditioning up. In previous bulks conditioning work was either eliminated completely, or cut back. Last year I did fairly frequent Sunday conditioning sessions, involving jumping and the like, but did no sprinting, that will change (see point #2). I'm also adding in rowing, I really enjoy those viking quests that I was doing pre-Halloween. I'm thinking twice per week, once on Sundays with other conditioning, and once on Tuesdays or Thursdays. I'm also thinking I may reintroduce complexes into my Sunday conditioning days. So I'd lead off with some jumping work, do a short complex, and then finish with some rowing. Quick and brutal conditioning workout.
- This year I will be sprinting straight through the winter. Harvard has an indoor track I may use if the outdoor one is covered in snow. I'd like to shave my 100m time to below 14 seconds. I'm at 14.43 after not really training it (was more of a 200m runner this spring/summer), so maybe even 13 flat if I really work at it.
- Higher volume. I like taking long breaks between my sets, and I still will between heavy compound movements, especially the ones I lead off with in the workout (deadlifts, squats, bench press). I'm going to start timing my time off between those sets, trying to limit it to two minutes between working sets. I'm thinking one to one and a half minutes between sets of other movements. This will let me work in more overall sets in the time I have, and more movements.
- I'm going to incorporate more DB work in, I've gotten away from it in recent years using it more as a changeup during a workout. I want to get back to using it more; I have in recent weeks with the split squats, but I want to end workouts with some db bench work, db rows, and db pressing as well. They're great for hammering out imbalances, etc. and I shouldn't have gotten away from them for so long. Even a couple sets at the end of a workout should do me good.
- More work below 90% of my maxes. I realized after hurting my piriformis/back deadlifting that for pretty much one straight year I was pulling at 95% of my max pretty much every week. My work from here on out, whether bulking or cutting is going to be more 'wave like'. So a couple weeks around 70%, at higher reps, a couple peaking at 80%, a week or so at 90% with reps obviously declining along the way, and then maybe a PR attempt after that. I do that with all my compound lifts, and while you can get away with it more on other lifts (the deadlift is so taxing on the CNS that what I was doing was physiological suicide), I'm not going to anymore. I'm not going to back off on my other lifts, I'm just going to tweak the work, so that I have more of a wave like pattern with them as well. This will let me incorporate bar speed work more into benching on days when I'm closer to the 70% mark, and really focus on banging out tons of reps on squatting as well.
- Nutrition wise I'm aiming for about 3800 calories per day, we'll see if I actually hit that consistently, it's going to incorporate a couple new foods. I'll post a screen shot of a plan in a day or two once I hash it out. This week I'm around 3200, just so I don't immediately vomit by going from 2500-3800 in a day.
- Usually when I bulk I up the fat/carbs/protein, this time I'm actually upper carbs & fat and lowering protein. I figure I don't need as much protein when I'm bulking because (in theory) my protein absorption is better on a bulk on account of the higher carbs / insulin spikes. That previous sentence may have been complete bro-science horse-shit, but I'll give it a shot. I'm not going super low or anything. Also this way when I switch back to cutting, I'll actually be ingesting more protein. Previously I was cutting all 3 macros when I cut. I'm thinking this way my body will hold on to gains even better since I'm upping my protein intake for the cut.
- Weight goal: 215. If all goes well, 220. Starting at 190.5
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