Thanks Sid, two great summaries and they largely jibe with my experience, which is always nice. I've been having a protein bar before st workouts, but maybe I'll go back to protein shakes with creatine and BCAA added too. The main conclusion of that first article was that the window for avoiding a catabolic state is much larger than some broscience indications on the meathead sites, which often put it at 30 minutes post-workout.
Yesterday, new deadlift PR: 345! I warmed up to single at 315, and it felt heavy. Normally, this means I don't go any further. But for some reason I just felt like I could do a little more. So I added two 10s and two 5s. The bar came up slowly, but I have the confidence now that I'm not going to hurt myself so I allowed myself to strain a bit and pulled the damn thing up, still with pretty good form. Then I took off 10 pounds for a single at 335, 20 pounds more for a single at 315, then four reps at 275. On the last rep I felt just a hint of a niggle in my left MCL, so I called it a day. I had intended to do two more back-off sets of 4-5 reps.
Then I tried alternating agonist-antagonist muscles for the first time. First pullups with wide grip alternating with seated barbell overhead presses, then pullups with neutral grip alternating with seated dumbbell overhead presses (which are also neutral grip in initial position). It was kind of a hassle taking the barbell off the rack and moving the bench out of the way for each pullup set, but overall, it did speed things up, as I rested less between sets. Today I'm super sore all over. I think this is a good protocol.
So the latest tweak to my routine is to have each workout begin with
1] "Lifts"
This includes deadlifts, squats, all their assistance exercises like good mornings and hip thrusts, plus power cleans, high pulls, and hex bar jumps.
Then I move to the second phase of the workout and do
2] Upper Body Pushes, alternating with
3] Upper Body Pulls
Here's an article explaining the logic (besides the convenience of speeding up workouts) involved in alternating agonist and antagonist muscles:
http://www.flexonline.com/training/news/opposites-attack
This article also provides a schematic of all the agonist-antagonist pairings, which helped me tweak the routine a little more, resulting in this (prioritized exercises once again in boldface):
In the first two st workouts, the agonist-antagonist pairings are pretty exact, but in the third workout, the interpretation of what constitutes an opposite exercise gets a little loose, so that I can fit in all the exercises I've decided work for me. Over the last several months, exercise selection hasn't changed too much, just order and combination. I moved the CAMP 1 and CAMP 2 workouts to the bottom of the page to make things clearer, but ideally, they're done in between the ST workouts, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, respectively.
I can either do every week like this, or alternate it with my penultimate scheme, in which the lifts remain the same but the pushes and pulls are done in separate workouts.
In any case, I can hardly wait for Wednesday's workout. Should be fun alternating rows with bench presses, and dips with Russian Twists!
Sid, let us know how it goes with the weighted vest. I've done a lot of walking carrying stuff, starting with a trumpet in fourth grade going to school, graduating to a french horn and double bass, then moving on to a backpack, and now the occasional groceries and kids.