After doing Occam’s protocol during the summer, for about 6 weeks, I want to start reviewing how it has gone, and start thinking about what protocol I want to follow now when I’m back home and getting back into routines.
Let’s evaluate Occam’s protocol so far.
Pros:
- Strong strength gains on certain exercises. Especially the overhead press. I went from 20kg x 10 to 40kg x 7 during the summer (about 6 weeks).
- I’ve made progress even though resting days between workouts were sometimes as much as 3 additional from the original plan.
Cons:
- Too few workout sessions. I’ve been missing the gym and the positive impact working out has on my mood.
- Too few exercises. I get bored easily with just these four exercises.
- The diet takes a lot of effort to follow. Eating 2.5g of protein per kg of body weight requires extra effort from my side and the question is if it is worth it. Supplements on top of that are even more difficult. To be fair I did this during the vacation period, which made it hard to follow because I was traveling a lot.
I will probably run this experiment until I hit a wall with it. That is until I don’t see any further gains. It will be interesting to see how good strength gains I will be able to get with this. When that is done, I’ll either switch the program entirely or tweak it slightly.
One tweak I have in mind is adding more exercises. Doing just two per workout feels very limited and frankly quite boring. For example I want to add in the leg press. As mentioned in previous posts, doing the squat to failure is quite difficult to do while keeping good form. I also believe that having a bigger variation of exercises will build better strength.
An example of a new program could be; workout A; incline bench press, squat, lat pulldown, leg extension, bicep curls. And workout B; yates row, overhead press, leg press, lying leg curl, calf raises, barbell lying tricep extension.
I think this would be more fun because it involves practice with more exercises. I think a key component to workout is to make sure that it is fun. If you feel like making a change, go for it. The workout is for you, and it should be fun and/or rewarding.
I’m already planning the next workout regime as you can see. Will update in more detail how it goes. The objective of sharing this here is to share knowledge and anecdotes from my experience and experiments. I want to find the workout that works for me and that yields good results. I’m already enjoying working out, but experimenting and adding some variation, and then theorizing about it, is an extra spice to it.
What are your ambitions this fall?
Leave a Reply