FT Questions....

[Foodpumps]

Thanks for the input and ideas Scott! I have that stubborn old school mindset of "you have to do free weights for loading for chest and shoulders no matter what" so I have been reluctant to dump them. I'm going to try the change with putting the ISO movement first and see if it helps, and if not, be much more reactive this time to dropping those exercises and swapping in something else.

Those are all great tactics, IMO. Knowing your training history, I'm totally cool with you mixing up Tiers as the above to see what works best for you personally. It would be silly for me to try to dictate that you not deviate when you're not making gains when following the program as set out in it original format.

A few general thoughts:

The Loading set exercises are to be rotated through until one plateaus, after which you'd drop them. If, for instance re-ordering ISO versus Compound exercises still doesn't restart progression, then it could be time to pick a new exercise to put in the Loading set rotation.

Loading sets exercises are to be your own personal "go to" exercise for training heavy and putting on size. It may just be that for chest, for instance, that using a very non-traditional "compound" exercise may be what works best for you (is your "go to" exercise). This might mean using DB's to to a press-fly (press up, fly down) or even doing a cable press of some sort.

Strength gains in different exercises simply may not follow the same relative course. Stan Efferding, for instance - one of the strongest guys to power lift - really didn't increase his Deadlift much at all during the course of his lifting career (or at least he said in an interview in the past year or so).

-S