Lol,
Thank you for the very thorough and thoughtful responses - I really appreciate them. I'll respond to your answers with some follow up questions:
The point of an HST cycle is that the loads are incremented throughout to constantly keep the response to mechanical strain ahead of RBE. If you decide to do eccentrics for the final 2 week mesocycle (often referred to as post-5s) then you will need to increase the loads above your 5RM loads. A good place to start the post 5s would be to try using loads around your 3RM.
If before this first HST routine I only established my 15, 10, and 5 rep maxes, should I try to guesstimate my 3RM (maybe adding 5-20 pounds to a given exercise depending on the muscle involved, previous challenge, etc.)?
Do be careful with eccentrics. It is very easy to get over confident and load the bar with more weight than is required to create a novel stimulus. If you can't maintain good form you are much more likely to injure yourself which really does defeat the purpose of the final two weeks of the cycle.
To be honest, I have little to no experience with eccentrics, and based on your (quite likely sage) advice, I'm considering backing off and instead for the fourth mesocycle / post 5s sticking with 5 reps but with increased max weights. Along those lines, because eccentrics sound like a good way to keep my muscles challenged, do you know of any places/sites where I can learn about eccentric form / correct methodology? If there are other threads on HST that I should read about, my apologies for not having seen them yet, and would be glad to check them out.
My advice would be to try eccentrics for dips and chins as these are very easy to set up; see how you get on with them first. Other exercises usually require at least one extra pair of helping hands. Assisted negatives are an option for some exercises (where you use two limbs to raise a load and then lower with one).
At the moment, this is what my "set list" looks like:
Squat - BarBell(1x)
Deadlift - BB (2x)
Incline Benchpress - BB (2x)
Decline Benchpress - BB (1x)
Chin Pulldown Wide - Cable (2x)
Horizontal Row Narrow - C (2x)
Lat (Side) Raise - C (1x)
Lat Raise - DumbBell (1x)
Front Raise - DB (2x)
Shoulder Press - DB (2x)
Rear Delt - Machine (2x)
Bicep Curl - DB (2x)
Lying Tricep Extension - DB (2x)
Calf Raise - M (2x)
Leg Extension - M (2x)
Abs - M (2x)
My set list is fairly vanilla, as I wanted to ease into HST in order to avoid injury. I've added in some shoulder sets as it is the muscle group for which I have the most difficulty achieving noticeable gains in terms of both size and strength. I dropped dips from the introductory workout as they tend to place a lot of strain on my shoulders/rotator cuffs and my sternum - are there good alternatives to dips that you like and are a bit easier on those areas? I'll do some research on assisted negatives to learn more about what you mentioned.
You could also continue to use your 5RM loads for the final two weeks but switch to triples to help control fatigue accumulation. Instead of 3 sets of 5 reps you could try 5 sets of 3 reps. If you feel able to increment the loads again for the final week without compromising form then all well and good.
Triples - are they called that because of the 5/3 3/5 switch? Or is it merely based upon the reversal of set and rep counts? As I'm not doing three sets of any given exercise, I'm curious as to how you would modify those sets/reps.
After you complete your heavy sets across, don't forget to lower the load and perform a high-rep set (~15 reps) for each of your exercises to add in some metabolic work which will help maintain muscle glycogen and keep you feeling fuller.
High rep sets - should these be done after all mesocycle weeks? They're already being done de facto during the first mesocycle, but should they also be included during the second mesocycle (10 reps for me this time)?
Thats all I have for now. Thanks again for your time.
