Hey man, thanks for taking the time to read my post and dissect it.
It's not bad really as far as I can tell. Your shoulders are the only thing you're missing really.
I'd swap the upright row for (relatively high volume, like 8-10 reps at 75%) OHP or a combo of (very high volume) lat raises and bent-over rear delt flyes or facepulls. You're really hitting your front delts well with incline bench. Unless your front delts are really lagging, I'd be thinking about how to develop the rest of the shoulder complex better.
I was under the impression that Upright rows was a side delt movement. From that perspective, this program seemed a little more balanced. Also, I'd done facepulls this month (jan 2023) and was somewhat concerned about overuse issues hence me (somewhat reluctantly) NOT doing them this round (will look into rear delt flies anyway). Actually one of the key motives for using incline bench was the fact that my upper chest seems to be lagging and I wanted to hammer that (I have a history of either going pure vertical or pure horizontal with my presses).
Are you doing weighted pullups? Considering dips at all?
I believe I had mentioned an intention to do pullups or lat pulldowns (and by this I mean weighted as is possible). I'd done mainly lat pulldowns this month, for feb if I do them I'm gonna use a different grip/handle. The other thing I wanna do is use a more vertical stance, since apparently my stance was too leaned backward to carry over properly to real pullups (especially weighted) Since gravity prevents you from leaning back so far as opposed to spinal erectors in a lat pulldown (i mean you can probably achieve some with a bent back and putting your shins behind you but not to the same extent as a lat pulldown))
And as for dips, I've tried them before, and will probably look into them for the next months variation
You could throw in weighted glutes/ham raises on a GHD bench as accessories/extra volume for your glutes and hams, really blast em,
I tried Nordic curls (which seem to be the same thing) a while back and they just felt like pure autism. Maybe it's just because it was a new movement, maybe it's because I'm too used to training them in a stretch position (RDLs, GoodMornings, regular deadlifts etc) but I should look into that.
What's your volume and weight on calf raises, btw?
Standing I do them 1 leg at a time with a 20kg dumbbell, 20 or so reps. Any fewer reps feels autistic.
or just add in cable pullthroughs, which are one of the funniest movements in the gym as far as I'm concerned, but nothing else will blast your ass as well.
Overlooked, will consider. Come to think of it Ive been sleeping on my glutes for too long (PL: I am not a female fitness influencer)
If your goal is to isolate your quads, why not leg extensions? You can keep up the isolation work with them and do some really high volume, punishing work with them. One tip I heard was to do the first 75% of the set with a 1 sec (or so) pause at the top of the concentric, and then carry through with momentum for the rest of the set on these isolation/machine exercises.
Monke brain likes squats lol, but it's worth looking into i suppose
For your hamstring curls, what's your volume on those? I do them prone, but for the first part of the set I prop myself up on my elbows instead of laying on the bench, then go fully prone once I'm at exhaustion, usually at about 15 reps. How do they feel? I wasn't enjoying them as much treating them like a compound movement with about 5-8 reps at high weight, but when I switched to a high rep low weight and doing the not-fully-prone/prone split inside the set, I found I was REALLY exhausting my hammies and getting that feeling I wanted.
I actually tried the same thing as you, low reps but going heavy; and hated it too. Nowadays my sets are closer to 20-30. My gym doesnt have a prone ham curl machine, only seated. I feel like i could "bro-engineer" something with cables or do what (I believe) Eugene Teo recommended, which is to lean back while doing seated ham curls, which i did try once, but it felt autistic (refer to earlier comment on stretch position)
What are your goals for your program in particular? Strength? Hypertrophy? Specific body parts?
Strength. Just trying to put up bigger numbers in my squat, bench, deadlift and weighted pullup, thus the fact that my major compounds all have some carryover to them.
Why split squats? I'm not a programming expert or anything, but this does seem to target some areas specifically.
Split squats because this month I did barbell back squats (some days low bar, some days high bar), and I decided to rotate variations monthly to try keep things interesting and prevent overuse issues (am I being overly paranoid about this? then again westside seems to recommend switching every
week).
The other thing I feel is that squats + deadlifts in the same day is pretty murderous on the lower back, and the way I see it Bulgarian squats (or any split squat variation, or lunges) are probably less taxing on the back than barbell front/barbell back/zercher squats because the amount of weight needed to challenge the leg (and hence load on the back) is gonna be less since the back leg basically doesnt move much weight.
Once again, thanks for your post.
