Barbell Club – March 2019
March is the second month of the first 5-month cycle of 2019.
March Overview
March continues with general prep but switches to a lower body focus. Days 1 and 3 will hit your legs hard with day 2 focussing on upper body to give time to recover. Since February focussed on chest and back with only a small amount of shoulders, session 2 will reverse this focus for March with a shoulder burner.
The accessory exercises are once again the priority this month. For this reason only 3 sets have been prescribed for the A exercises. It is more important to complete all the prescribed sets of the Bs and Cs. If you are fast enough in your warm up and set up to be able to complete 4 sets of the As then do feel free to do so. For those who spend time chatting you will need to stick to just 3.
Abs have been added to day 4. You do not need to do all of day 4’s programme if you do not have time in your week. Just pick the parts that are absent from your other classes to fill in the gap.
A Reminder of the 5-month Overview
To prepare for the demand of GVT the preparatory months have been programmed like this:
February – general prep, a mix but predominantly upper body, focus on accessory exercises
March – general prep, a mix but predominantly lower body, focus on accessory exercises
April – building volume with Gironda’s 8×8, upper and lower mix, focus on the main lifts, short rest, light-medium load
May – GVT 10×10, focus on a single main lift per session, longer rest, heavier load
June – 5×5 with chains or bands, focus on speed – this is not a maximal 5 rep load
(To avoid overload, you will not be completing 10×10 for every main lift in May. This will be split between May and June).
March Programme
The full training programme (sheets 1 and 2), warm ups (sheet 3), 5-month overview (sheet 4), and sessions days (sheet 5) can be downloaded here. Everyone should read this.
Barbell Club Programme – March 2019
For those people who like to record weights in an excel spreadsheet rather than a paper notebook, you can download a summarised document here. This does not contain the full programme detail but does provide a succinct electronic mechanism for keeping a log.
Barbell Club 2019 – Personal Weights Log
Good luck. Enjoy. And do come and see me if you have any questions x
Jenna
For a reminder of the context of the 5-month cycle you can read the February blog post here: