If you’ve been following our T/NT routine, I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve been on this routine a bit longer than the others. While this is true, you’ve probably also realized that we have been making some changes all along so that we could avoid any plateaus’or monotony. At this point in a routine, we’d normally switch to a completely different routine, but we’ve had such good results’with no plateau in sight’that we’ve decided to stick to it for one more training cycle before our next routine.
You’ve read before that we usually suggest that you change your routine ever every six to eight weeks. While this is still a very valid guideline, the low-volume of this type of routine can accommodate slight changes that can constitute enough of a variation to negate some of the usual cautions. This, of course, doesn’t mean that you should stay on this routine indefinitely. However, it does make it an easy routine to manipulate and stretch out of a longer period of time than those routines with less recovery time. Periodic changes like we’ve been making are necessary though and you should still ne on the lookout for signs of stagnation.
Although the changes we’ve made are somewhat minor, they were still necessary for us to continue with our current goals. The following is a brief outline of the changes, but for a full view of the new routine, take a look at the January 2001 issue of IRONMAN:
Calves. This one of the few body parts that’s just been in a holding pattern, rather than growing. Our solution has been to add a little more volume and higher reps. For this phase, we’re doing calves three days a week’each training day.
Chest. We’ve been experiencing some slight shoulder pains while using the Smith-machine for bench presses on the nontraumatic day. To remedy this, we switched to a dead-stop bench press with free weight.
Lats. On nontraumatic lat work we decided to drop one set of pulldowns and replace it with undergrip cable rows. This should give us a better contraction.
Quads. We dropped our non traumatic Smith-Machine squats to try out our new PowerTec leverage squat machine. It’s a nice variation from the Smith-Machine variety and it avoids some of the lower back tension.
Delts. Our second set of non traumatic cable laterals were dropped in favor of a set of one-arm dumbbell laterals. By keeping our torsos leaning forward we can get a good pump in our medial delts.
Abs. We’re only working abs once a week, so we really have to be sure to keep the stress high. In this phase of the routine we do pretty good overhaul. We now do one set of hanging kneeups, one set of incline kneeups and a superset with the Ab Bench and twisting crunches on a bench with our feet up on bar.
This is the new split, but check out IRONMAN’s January 2001 issue for the detailed version:
Monday: Quads, hamstrings, calves, chest, back, delts
Wednesday: Deadlifts, traps, calves, triceps, biceps, forearms, abs
Friday: Quads, hamstrings, calves, chest, back, delts
Below is a sample of our revised ab routine Again, remember that we’re only doing abs once a week so each set has to be full-out.
Abs (Wed)
Hanging kneeups 1 x 7-9
Incline kneeups 1 x 7-9
Aftershock superset:
Ab Bench Crunches 1 x 9-12
Flat-bench twisting Crunches 1 x 9-12
This will be the final phase of our T/NT program, so be sure you make these last few weeks count. Then be prepared for another shirt-busting mass routine
This special report was submitted by Jonathan Lawson
From the IRONMAN Training & Research Team
www.ironmanmagazine.com
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