I wrapped up 12 weeks of Maximorium today. I'd like to share my progress and my thoughts
PERFORMANCE
I chose to use 2x28kg for the DCL+P, which I had tested at 7 solid reps and a very shaky, unethical 8 reps. I had chose 32kg for the snatches, which was my 12RM. The bell ended up shredding both of my hands, no matter how I tweaked my form, and inevitably I dropped down to the 28kg. It is my own fault and no fault of the program.
I followed Geoff's instruction (pretty adamantly and comically directed instructed) and did the program as written and add nothing in. He also made a suggestion on weekly PREs however I found that his rep scheme pretty much took care of that. It never became about chasing numbers, but how quickly can I effectively recover from each set. The numbers increased on their own.
My results are as shown:
Week 1 | 230 | Week 7 | 344 |
Week 2 | 248 | Week 8 | 354 |
Week 3 | 278 | Week 9 | 366 |
Week 4 | 281 | Week 10 | 372 |
Week 5 | 296 | Week 11 | 384 |
Week 6 | 322 | Week 12 | TEST
DCP 2x28kg 10 reps |
More than pleased!
PHYSICAL CHANGES
At Week 1, I weight 202lbs at the end of October. Today, the scale read 209lbs. My diet generally consists of low carb, high protein/fats, and while nothing about that changed, the holidays (Thanksgiving through New Years) made sure I ate a lot more than the usual fist-sized portions. If you know my wife, my Christmas season is almost a full month long. Weight went up, however some of the pants that were deemed too small this fall are fitting perfectly. I still have my movie-theater sized back, and my arms, quads, and gluts are noticeably larger. Geoff will get before and after pics (sorry fellas).
OVERALL
This was a fantastic program. At first, I was skeptical about shoulder wear/tear going alternating days of Press and snatches. With auto-regulation, you control the volume and there is nothing about my body that feels worn down. The variety in the exercises and the changes in the rep schemes kept each day interesting.
Never did I think that would reach 10 reps on the test day and I was pleasantly surprised with how easy that was. This has been a dramatic change in my overall strength that I hadn't seen since ROP or Total Tension Complex. The only thing I would need to do differently is work on my form with the 32kg snatches.
Consider me a very happy test subject
@Geoff Neupert