Training Twice a Week. Only.

Crazy. It’s a crazy idea.

I’ve heard it many times. Less is more. Quality over quantity. I believe in all those things. Except I have a hard time following through in the gym.

I’m trying. Right now. I’ve done 2 gym sessions in the last week. I am dying to do more. This is after going to the gym for 30 days in a row which resulted in doing 3305 pull-ups and a hundred or so more of push-ups and box jumps. 

Now I’m consciously trying to stop myself from going to the gym more than twice a week. It’s hard.

I long for squats and dead lifts almost as much as a good roll around in the bedroom. I’m not sure what that says about me. hmm…

Here’s the plan, it’s evolving as I go but the idea is to hit all the big moves twice a week and call it a day.

Start with a warm-up complex of:

• hang cleans
• front squat
• military press
• overhead squat
• bent over rows

I did 1 set of 8 reps each and it was killer last work out. I might bring it down to 5 reps instead. Increase sets/reps as it gets easier is my plan. It is just a warm up!

And then the main course:

• front squat (5x5)
• dead lift (5-3-2)
• bench press (5x5)
• pull-ups (as many as I want; at least 50 with as many sets as I need)

Go home.

This whole thing takes me about 40 minutes.

I stole this idea from Dan John. His plan is cleaner than mine. I feel obligated to do all the big moves if I’m only going to lift twice a week. His plan looks like this:

Day 1: front squat, bench press, extra upper body work

Day 2: dead lift, bench press, extra lower body work

Go home.

As usual, a 99% strict variant of the paleo diet underlies all this training. :) Variant being I eat cheese, tubers, drink wine and coffee—possibly other things that I can’t remember.