Since moving from a four-day, two-upper, two-lower training split to three days a week of full body I have been tinkering a lot. The purpose of this was so I would not have to overlap a running day with a training day and still have Sunday for rest.
With running three days a week and training three days a week I have to pay close attention to recovery. I can get burnt out pretty quickly. Programming for this has been challenging.
The problem I run into most often seems to come from volume. I feel like the right thing to do is keep the weights lower to not beat myself up. With the lower weights, I end up doing a sh!t ton of sets and reps. Then when I don't feel worked I'll push the intensity on later sets. I think this is how I have been accumulating too much fatigue. Just too much wear and tear on my body.
This past week I hit the reset button. I'm pretty much doing four compound movements a session. I dialed the volume way back. After warm-up sets, I only did two work sets for each exercise. I kept the reps between 1 to 3 reps from failure.
With one week under my belt, I feel the right amount of worked. Ultimately I feel according to "Science" I should be getting four work sets in per exercise to get the right dose per muscle. Hell, maybe two sets are right for me. I guess time will tell.
In looking to increase sets I'd usually just jump to three sets across the board next week, but I have gotten a little smarter. I'll add a third set on day one and judge how I'll handle day two by feel.
This whole "feel" thing is new to me. I'm usually a slave to what I write. That has been a recipe for disaster. I know two things for sure: I know my body very well and I'm not looking to take the easy way out. If anything I always want to do more and that has increasingly become my downfall.
I know week to week it's a crazy ride with my training, but ever forward. One way or another I'm always training and that is a good thing.
