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Barbell Pavel’s DeLorme Inspired Hypertrophy program

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jrudd009

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First time posting, but I had to share about this Pavel program I’m doing.

And not really looking for advice, but a little background…

I’m currently 45 and have been training with a barbell for 8 years. Started with CrossFit, but I realized early on that progressing is quite hard since the same lifts don’t get programmed frequently enough. So left CrossFit and did a normal 5x5 program. For the most part I stuck with lots of singles, doubles, and triples. I love Steve Justa’s singles programs.

But it has worn me down so I’ve been making the move more into Hypertrophy. But all the Push/Pull/Lower splits or body part splits are just annoying to me. I like more minimal and focused programs. Which is when I remembered this DeLorme Inspired Hypertrophy program from Pavel in Beyond Bodybuilding.

2 movements - bench press and deadlift with your 10rm, 75% of your 10rm, and 50% of your 10rm (this is the DeLorme part). DeLorme specifies 10 reps of 50%, 10 reps of 75%, and AMRAP of your 10rm. Pavel has you cut the reps to 5 and has you do the ALL of them over and over and over again. So you’ll do 5 reps of 50%, 5 reps of 75%, 5 reps of 10rm, rest 3 minutes, and do it all over again for as many times as you can.

It is way more volume than I’ve ever done.

I set my 10rm on bench press to 165 and made it through 8 complete rounds. Man…the fatigue sneaks up on you. At round 6, I’m thinking to myself if I make it to 10 rounds, I’m just stopping. I don’t have time to just keep going. Round 7 was a little struggle. But round 8 was a grind. And I didn’t finish round 9. Outright failure of my rep 3 of my 10rm set. Bar hit my chest and just stopped. Didn’t budge. Arms were jelly when I got off the bench. Loved it.

I set my 10rm on dead lift to be 315. That was a HUGE mistake. I’m so used to doing singles and doubles, that 3 sets of 5 over and over and over again were smoking my lungs. I only got through 4 rounds before calling it. I’ll adjust that weight down to 265 next time through.

But if you‘re looking for a minimalist, short (6 weeks) high volume program, maybe give this one a go. I’m having fun with it just one week in.
 
While the plan sounds interesting, I am NOT interested in changing weights 24 times in a practice for each movement...that's almost more work than the lifts themselves. In one of the recent newsletters, they sent a download about "Interrupted Sets" that has you use a 8-10 rm max weight, do sets of 5 with 30 second breaks between sets until technical failure just sounds like a much more reasonable and easy to implement plan as it can be tacked on to just about anything.
 
In one of the recent newsletters, they sent a download about "Interrupted Sets" that has you use a 8-10 rm max weight, do sets of 5 with 30 second breaks between sets until technical failure just sounds like a much more reasonable and easy to implement plan as it can be tacked on to just about anything.

That sounds a great deal like Cluster Sets combined with DeLorme. In my own use, I prefer to just do a double on the middle set with a 4-5 rep max for 2-3 reps. Switch to a slightly lighter load for the final set.

One can also do DeLorme inspired work by ramping up the RPE from 5 to 7 to 10 on the last set. DeLorme himself noted that a 10rep count was simply a widely tolerated value and one could just as easily use fewer reps per as long as the last set was max effort. Using sandbag I've been known to do clusters as low as 2 reps.
 
Weren't you supposed to increase the weights if you can do more than five series on a heavy day?
Yes. 5 to bench and 10 to deadlift. It wasnt clear if that applied to the light and medium day that follow or the next week. Not ire if in the long run it matters.
 
I am NOT interested in changing weights 24 times in a practice for each movement...that's almost more work than the lifts themselves.
haha! Yeah. You change plates a lot. luckily I’ve got enough plates that it isn’t a terrible waste of time. And on the deadlifts, I liked the few seconds to catch my breath.
 
Week 2 in the bag.

Benchpress was 170 for the week.
Deadlift was 265 for the week.

On the heavy day, I hit 9 full series of bench and 6 full series of dead lift. I was surprised at the 9 full series on the bench. I was expecting less volume than week 1 not more. Of course, my next heavy day I'll have to meet or exceed :)

Dead lift went much better this week by dropping 50 pounds. Plus I used all my barbells to set up the dead lift as a ladder (I've kept all my plates even when I upgrade. cheap iron -> good iron -> calibrated -> bumpers for a foray into weightlifting). This cut down on the worst part of the program - loading the dead lift bar.

As with week 1, I'm still liking the program. Right now, I don't plan on doing it again. But I have come to really enjoy volume vs. intensity. So once this 6 weeks is done, I'm going to keep with volume heavy programs for a bit (but maybe not quite this much volume). Maybe 5/3/1's Boring But Strong template (10 sets of 5 supplemental with first set's weight).
 
Week 3 started. Normally I’d write at the end of the week, but the only interesting day is the heavy day IMO.

Benchpress is 175#
Deadlift is 275#

I moved my heavy day to Sunday because the spousal unit doesn’t like the 2+ hour sessions on Monday evenings. Basically my last 2 mondays were work, 2+ hours in the garage, dinner, and bed. So moved to Sunday so I could start at around 2PM and have the evening free.

Benchpress - I really thought 175 would put me back into the 6 maybe 7 complete series range. I got 11. I didn’t go for 12 because the last rep was very similar to a me grinding out a 1rm attempt. If I were to run this again, I’d take the time to figure out a real 10rm vs. the guess that I made. 11. Damn.

I know I’m not a special snowflake, but I always lose fat off my torso last. Legs will lean up, arms, and face. But my torso usually hangs on to the fat (I’m sure there is an evolutionary reason - keep the organs warm), but I’m starting to see some of it slowly go away. And it’s noticeable when I flex my pec and triceps. So the volume is doing something (This week will have me doing 165 reps of 90#, 110 reps of 135#, and 55 reps of 175# - I round up the 50% and 75% weight).

Deadlift - I picked a much better 10rm for deadlift. Only got 6 full series again. Not noticing any changes in my legs. I’m not losing any size or definition. So that’s good. This was the second time running it as a ladder. Since it was nice and sunny on Sunday, I setup on my driveway. Got some interesting looks from my neighbors.

Onwards!
 
I set my 10rm on bench press to 165 and made it through 8 complete rounds. Man…the fatigue sneaks up on you. At round 6, I’m thinking to myself if I make it to 10 rounds, I’m just stopping. I don’t have time to just keep going. Round 7 was a little struggle. But round 8 was a grind. And I didn’t finish round 9. Outright failure of my rep 3 of my 10rm set. Bar hit my chest and just stopped. Didn’t budge. Arms were jelly when I got off the bench. Loved it.

Sounds a lot like German Volume Training to me.
 
This reminds me of the Bear protocol from power to the people, with lots of back off sets. If you ever get sick of changing the weight plates, check out the bear, because all the back off sets are with the same weight.
 
Sounds a lot like German Volume Training to me.
Did DeLorme use GVT as his base? Maybe? Or did GVT used DeLorme? I dunno. Everybody builds on everybody at some point.
This reminds me of the Bear protocol from power to the people, with lots of back off sets. If you ever get sick of changing the weight plates, check out the bear, because all the back off sets are with the same weight.
I’m familiar with Bear. It was actually between Bear and this one. Flipped a coin - this one won. I’ll run Bear at some point. Maybe next winter.
 
Did DeLorme use GVT as his base? Maybe? Or did GVT used DeLorme? I dunno. Everybody builds on everybody at some point.

DeLorme created the base. Before him there was no recognized training method of “progressive resistance” “sets” or “reps”, even though elements of these must have been employed in some informal manner. He is the Buddha of scientific resistance training, the earth-shaking wheel turner that all others have spawned from.

Important to note DeLorme ultimately shifted to less and less volume from his earliest recommendations to something like 20 odd sets for a total session. He also didn’t stand firm at 10reps per, that was more his upper limit and seemed to be universally well-tolerated.

I highly recommend you continue this under the "member logs” sub-heading, you’ll be able to post more detail and get more feedback than in the general forum since it is generally discouraged to go into too much detail with any of Pavel’s commercial programs here.
 
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