Today starts my second go-round with the Renaissance Periodization Male Physique Templates. This time I’m trying them with a slight modification.

Jared Feather, one of RP’s coaches, has made some suggestions on an alternative way of running the templates, and I’m giving that a shot. So this first mesocycle will be “tab 1” of the templates with slightly greater intensities and a slightly lower rep range (aiming for 6-10 reps). For me personally, I decided when selecting exercises to pick exercises that are barbell and more oriented towards “heavier lifting” (if you will). For the next mesocycle I’ll run tab 1 again, hitting 8-12 rep range, and will select exercises that start to mix in dumbbell work.

Today went pretty good! I of course knew what to generally expect — a lot of disappointment. 😉 Mostly because this is the first week so it’s lighter intensities, only 2-3 sets, and I have to stop 3/fail. So it’s just not a ton of work, but it’s all good towards setting the stage for what’s to come.

I am happy with my weight estimations. That was the toughest part, because the template spreadsheet is oriented towards what it’s expecting, which isn’t quite Jared’s modifications — so I had to do a bunch of refinements and re-refinements. But I am happy with where things landed. A couple things were under, like close-grips, but I’m going to leave them alone because I expect as intensities increase, more sets, that there will be accumulated exhaustion and things should work out ok.

All in all, happy with the start.

RP Physique, Mesocycle 1.1

• Incline Medium Grip Bench Press
  • bar x 10
  • 95 x 10
  • 135 x 5
  • 175 x 10
  • 175 x 10
  • 175 x 8
• Dips
  • BW x 8
  • BW x 8
  • BW x 8
• Close-Grip Bench Press
  • 135 x 12
  • 135 x 12
• Barbell Bent Over Row
  • bar x 10
  • 95 x 10
  • 135 x 5
  • 165 x 10
  • 165 x 8
  • 165 x 8
• Narrow-Grip Pulldown
  • 125 x 12
  • 125 x 10
  • 125 x 9
• Upright Rows
  • bar x 10
  • 70 x 5
  • 95 x 10
  • 95 x 9
  • 95 x 8
• Reaching Sit-up
  • bw x 15
  • bw x 12