Since there's some interest in this, I'll go ahead and post my summary from when I ran another cycle a few weeks ago. Apologies if anything seems out of context; I gave it a proof read when I brought it over from Al's forum, but you know how that goes:
All wrapped up with 5 weeks of low-key hypertrophy work, and ready to go on vacation. I started out doing 8-12 sets of 5 with the 36, coupled with 4-6 sets of 10 with the 32. By the end, I was using the 36 for everything, doing 10-14 sets of 5, and only 2-4 sets of 10.
Looking back, the 5 weeks was broken into 3 sections:
Section 1: Week 1
Section 2: Weeks 2, 3, and half of week 4
Section 3: The rest of week 4, and week 5
During section 1, I bumped up 4 pounds, from 162 to 166. This was all “regain” weight, since I’ve been up to 166 before. It’s nice to know that it can come back so fast.
Section 2 was a bit of a bummer. Everything was the same as Section 1 with regard to training/recovery, but I didn't gain any weight. I still did a lot of work with the 36, though, and even transitioned away from using the 32 at all. I was eating fine, but it just came down to sleep deprivation, plain and simple. Towards the end of this time, I took a little half-week deload so I could come back hard for section 3.
Section 3 is when things picked up again. It began when my wife and kids took off for for vacation a week and a half ahead of me. I kept eating the same, kept training about the same (even dropped the 6x10’s from the format), and got aaaalllll the sleep I wanted. Glorious. And would you look at that? I went from 166 to 168 in a week and a half, which I’m pretty sure puts me at my heaviest yet (all you big boned fellas are laughing; jerks
). I’m gonna call it at this point, since it’s totally unrealistic to expect that I’ll be able to eat/sleep enough to support continued growth while on vacation with my family. I’ll be happy if I can just maintain. [Now back from vacation, and happy to report that maintenance was successful. I kept eating well, sleep was mediocre, and I did 3 A+A sessions/week with the 32. I would do about 20 repeats of 5, then 2 hard sets of 10-14. Just those 2 sets with the 32, after the 20x5 A+A work, seemed to be enough to keep it on.]
So what did I learn?
-If I want to regain old weight, I can be a little sloppy and just add some harder sets to my sessions. If I want to put on “new” weight, I need to make sure that I’m getting good sleep (in addition to plenty of food, obviously). No amount of food or training will compensate for sleep.
-The number of hard sets I need to push the need towards hypertrophy is not as many as I thought. Seriously, I think 2-4 good, hard sets is all it really takes, in the context of A+A training,
since you’re already doing a decent amount of volume with heavy/moderate weight.
-This just confirms that, if recovery and food intake are adequate, this is a decent way for me to add 1-3 pounds a week, with just a pretty small adjustment from typical A+A work. Your milage may vary.
I’m happy with how things turned out; 6 pounds in 5 weeks (really 2.5 weeks, with a 2.5 week dry spell in the middle). I’m a tiny bit salty about the fact that I could have broken 170 if I had been getting enough sleep the whole time, but such is life as a grown adult.
