Workout Of The Week - James Copping

After being asked to write about the way I train I had a bit of a dilemma; do I write about the way I have been training the past few months while time restraints have meant I can only get 2 sessions in a week? No! That would be boring. SO do I write about what I’d done the 2 months previous to that, squatting to a max every day and putting myself through hell? No, because I did get gains, the effort put in was far too much, it was taking over my life!

I finally decided to write about the template I’ve been using for most of the last 8 or 9 years or so. Some things have changed slightly, depending on what I feel I need to work on but the basic template has stayed the same: 2 heavy days, and 2 speed days.

I split my workouts into upper (bench and assistance) and lower (squat and deadlift) days as so. The numbers of the days are arbitrary, I do them in the order below and have no set days of the week for them, its as and when I can. Sometimes it will be 3 sessions a week, sometimes 5.

Day 1- Heavy squat and deadlift.
I will always squat before deadlifting as deadlifting first would make the lower back weak for squats.
Day 2 - Heavy Bench press upper back and assistance
Heavy benching first so I am strongest for it then upper back and assistance after.
Day 3 - Speed squats and deadlifts
Day 4 – Speed bench press and assistance

Day 1 squats will generally consist of a lot of lighter warm-ups followed by 1-3 heavy sets of 1-5 reps, something along the lines of:
Bar (loads of reps to loosen up)
60 x5
100 x3
140 x2
160 x1

Followed by my work sets that can range anywhere from 190 for 5’s to 230 for singles, always aiming to progress every session.
Deadlifts will normally be done for speed, with a heavy workout every so often. 2 out of every 3 weeks I will do a speed double or triple (with about 200-230kg) and the heavy week will be anything from 250x5 to 290 for singles. I always warm up with singles

A deadlift workout might look like:

60
100
140
180
220 x3 (speed)

Or

60
100
140
180
220
240
260 x3 (heavy)

Heavy upper days will always start with a bench press movement of some sort. Sometimes bench rpess to chest, sometimes working to boards. I try to mix it up as much as possible and will work up to a heavy double or triple each session, followed by a couple of backoff sets for speed. Something like:

Bar loads
60 8
100 3
120 1
130 1
140 1
150 2(hard)
120 3x3 speed

The rest of the workout will be a heavy back lift, something like barbell rows for 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps aftr a couple of warm-ups.
The rest of that workout is normally some biceps/triceps/shoulders for 8-12 rep sets but I don’t worry too much about what I do each session as I’m not too worried about progression on accessory lifts. If it happens it happens, but my main aim is to increase my squat/bench/deadlift.

The third day is my lower body dynamic effort (DE) day. DE work involves moving a weight as fast as possible, as the faster you move a weight the more muscle fibres contract and the more maximum power output you can attain. I like doing around 8 doubles with 50-65% of my 1RM for speed work. My rule is, if the bar slows down, I am using too much weight! For dynamic squat/deadlift day I might do:

DE squat
Bar loads
60 5
100 3
120 1
140 1
150 8 doubles with 30sec rest

Then for deadlifts it will be all singles, something like

60
100
140
180
200 – 8 singles with 15sec rest

After the speed work I may do some 5-8 rep work with assistance exercised such as deficit deadlifts or box squats.

The last day is DE bench day, again, I will do 8 doubles for DE work using various band tensions to add progressive resistance. It may look like:

DE bench press
Barr loads
60 8
80 2
100 2
110 8 doubles with 30secs rest
I will then go on to higher rep upper body assistance lift, normally a few hard sets of 8-12 for lat pulldown, followed by grip work.

Discuss on the MP Forum.