Intensive Cruise

[nordan]

Hi Scott / anyone who kindly wants to input

Just finished my second blast and inevitably had a much much better experience on a whole, and in terms of muscle gain. After my first cruise, I experienced the rebounding effect which was great.. this was done by dropping to turbo tier 1 & splitting 4 sessions over the course of the 2 week cruise with approx 3 days rest in between each session.

Now obviously I want to do the same (rebound) so have tailored the cruise as above.

I beat all lifts in the first two sessions however last night I couldn't lift for my life.. I felt sluggish, my warm up & my initial MR on the hack squat felt super heavy, I couldn't maintain the 10 second rest times, I was all over the place. The pump sets were okay, had no issue here but moving onto the Upper MR's.. again they felt tough, in some cases I moved the weight up (as I was due an increase) but failed to achieve the same reps (still failed in the last set though). Rest times were adhered too but overall I didn't feel ready to be back smashing it.

I have one session left in the cruise which is scheduled for tomorrow.. this is then followed by my final 4 days as rest / no training. I normally lose strength taking a solid week off so skeptical to do the same as the purpose of this is to
gain /maintain / rebound in strength.

What would your advise be based on how I felt in yesterdays session which is outlined above ?

Also I know this is a muscle gain program but could this program be done whilst undergoing a calorie deficit / cut ?

Many thanks.

[Scott Stevenson]

Nordan,

My thought here is that you probably were not auto regulating your choice of exercises for the MRs. (It sounds like you felt like you needed to do the hack squat MR for some reason.)

You may have also pushed to far before taking the IC (see below).

You might need to eating more, too - which I'm wondering about b/c of you question about using FT when in a deficit. (Yes, folks do that all the time, e.g., when dieting in for a show.)

In the future, you might switch to the Basic version instead of Turbo (still going down a Tier), but this would depend on how far you've pushed in the Blast.

There can be FUNCTIONAL Overreaching - you're teetering on a performance decrement, but can recovery with a taper / time off - which differs from NON-functional overreaching, which is not quite overtraining, so you can recover from it, but you don't get a performance rebound per se. You might have pushed yourself into non-functional OR which is complicated by not eating quite enough. (This could make sense given how your first two Blasts differed.)

-S

[nordan]

My thought here is that you probably were not auto regulating your choice of exercises for the MRs. (It sounds like you felt like you needed to do the hack squat MR for some reason.)

Reason for keeping the same MR's is so that I can monitor progressive overload a lot easier, by repeating lifts, JP's main focus for me was to achieve this each session so this is how I went about it, however I will this forthcoming blast alter them more often.

You may have also pushed to far before taking the IC (see below).

You might need to eating more, too - which I'm wondering about b/c of you question about using FT when in a deficit. (Yes, folks do that all the time, e.g., when dieting in for a show.)

Pretty sure I am not under eating, I am sitting around 4k + a day @170lb (pretty light I know) so this is not the case, the reason why I wondered about training in a deficit is because that phase for me will be approaching either this time round or after this forthcoming blast, so was inquiring as to whether it is feasible to do FT whilst in a deficit. If not then I will have to find an alternative program for that phase.

In the future, you might switch to the Basic version instead of Turbo (still going down a Tier), but this would depend on how far you've pushed in the Blast.

Based on this I will probably drop to a basic tier throughout my next IC, I was on basic tier 3 last blast and dropped to turbo tier 1 on the cruise, then moved up to turbo tier 2 this time round.

There can be FUNCTIONAL Overreaching - you're teetering on a performance decrement, but can recovery with a taper / time off - which differs from NON-functional overreaching, which is not quite overtraining, so you can recover from it, but you don't get a performance rebound per se. You might have pushed yourself into non-functional OR which is complicated by not eating quite enough. (This could make sense given how your first two Blasts differed.)

Are you implying that I may of lost out on the rebound strength and size gains ? What would be the best solution to end this intensive cruise judging from your conclusion ? and what can I do if at all to achieve that rebound effect?

The next blast I was kind of hoping to jump up to turbo tier 3 (I know it will be hard) but that way the additional volume will in turn automatically bring forth progressive overload which is ideally what I need, more strength & size.

Thanks.