I mentioned in a previous post that when coming back from vacation I was temporarily moving from my conjugate style of training into something completely different. This is not a permanent change and is only scheduled for 6 weeks. While it seems odd to do, I have my reasons and I’m going to walk you through what I’m doing and why.

What is the program:

In short its a home spun mash up of 2 programs that I’ve ran in the past with a ton of success: The Coan/Phillipi deadlift program and Smolov Jr.

Coan/Phillipi Overview found here

Smolov Jr. Overview found here

To do this I condensed Coan/Phillipi to 6 weeks and “slowed down” Smolov Jr. to match the pace. How is this done? In short, for one lower body and one upper body lift I’m running Coan/Phillip and for a second lower and upper body lift I’m running Smolov Jr. slowed down to 6 weeks.

The layout is:

Overhead Press and Deadlifts – Coan/Phillipi

Bench Press and Squats – Slowed Down Smolov.

So a sample lower body day may look like this, you’ll notice that the Smolov work is done in place of the accessories associated with Coan/Phillipi:

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Weight
Deadlift	1	2	415
Deadlift	8	3	360
Low Bar Squat	6	6	300

Why am I doing this?

I have a few reasons. First and foremost I’m a big believer in taking a few weeks to do something different after you’ve been running the same program for a duration. I’ve harped on this in the past, but change is good provided you’re consistent prior to making the change. In other words a few weeks of doing something different is fine, constantly program hopping isn’t.

Another reason is that while I love conjugate, sometimes I need to run a cycle that just concentrates on my main lifts. For those of you unfamiliar with conjugate, the rule of thumb in Westside Barbell’s version is 20% of the work should be main lifts, 80% assistance and accessory work.

The final reason is I went through a couple cycles of a Westside conjugate program in which I did very little free squatting and very little low bar squatting, so I wanted to spend a few weeks getting in some volume of this lift. The Smolov mash up very easily achieves this.

Am I running accessories or just what I listed?

Yes and no. The Smolov section of each day gets a “buddy” exercise to work my upper back. For bench press this is pull ups, for squats it is pull overs.

Also, on every lower body day, I’m working up to a light 2×5 on bench press just to move my body through the motions. On every upper body day I do the same for squat and bench press. On Sunday I will do all 3 lifts slightly heavier than the other days, think 45% of my max rather than 40%.

To supplement all of this I’m doing a couple runs of a loaded carry every day I train (would be 5 total per week). All of this work + the work accumulated through the volume of benching and squatting should be enough. If I feel something is lagging, I will add this in as needed.

I don’t count any warm up or prehab work as work in my programs, its more of a “have to do” item.

Where do I go from here?

Plan is to run the program, rest a week and then go right back into my typical conjugate program. I may use the ME days on week 1 to test the lifts I worked on, but I have 7ish weeks to make that decision. If I like the results from this, I may use something similar as my next changing program 6 months from now.