Well, no matter how sound you think your plan is you better be ready to change it when the sign on the wall says it isn't working as well as you had planned.

Though I feel the last 11 weeks has gone quite well, a few things started to stand out last week that I needed to take a closer look at.  Upon reviewing all of my information over the last 11 weeks, it became clear that as much as I have progressed, I am not recovering as well as I should be - at least for the last 5 or 6 weeks, anyway.

I have been using this schedule for the past 11 weeks:

Mondays

chest/back/rear delts

Tuesdays

legs

Thursdays

chest/back/abs

Fridays

side delts/arms

This is a pretty frequent training protocol for me because the turn around between chest and back is relatively small especially when you consider that my volume is roughly 12-14 working sets of chest and 14 - 17 working sets of back.   

Before I started this official off season 11 weeks ago my recovery ability was substantially lower as my test levels were pretty low but I was still holding quite a bit of strength, despite the low levels.  I was recovering quite well and last week noticed that my top strength increases aren't a lot more than I was doing 11 weeks ago.  Yes, I am up in strength but it isn't anything of what I feel it should be and for at least the last 5 or so weeks of this phase, I have even slightly regressed in strength.   Now, workouts are great and workouts are intense and I feel I am much bigger than I was 11 weeks ago.  However, it is clear to me that I need to go back to the schedule below that doesn't repeat the chest/back workout twice in one week.  

Mondays

chest/back/rear delts

Wednesdays

legs and abs

Fridays

side delts/arms

In hindsight, I wonder how things would have progressed over the last 5 or 6 weeks had I made this change sooner.  As we all know, hindsight is 20/20 so I am still happy that I figured this out now vs. even later down the road, possibly weeks later.

I assumed my recovery would be better as I started this off season phase 11 weeks ago but that just isn't the case so I anticipate solid progress after this change simply because I was progressing so well on it with the low test levels that I cannot imagine not having great results again, now.  My food intake (calories) went up considerably coming into this off season phase and sleep has been great.  My stress levels aren't terribly low but they aren't any higher than they were when I was progressing well on the 3-day protocol, too. The bottom line is that sometimes increased calories, good sleep and no change in stress levels still won't provide the progress you need or want.  In this case, it is simply a time issue - I am not recovering between my Monday and Thursday sessions and instead of cutting volume I would much prefer to cut the frequency of the sessions because this proved to work very well before.

My diet will remain the same and I am sitting at about 237-238 right now.  I would like to see that 240 mark get broken without an increase in calories by the end of this month or possibly middle of July.  Though I am not "Skip" lean right now, I want my gains to remain as clean and lean as possible so that body fat doesn't increase.   Keep in mind that as you add muscle without adding body fat, body fat PERCENTAGE comes down.  Right now, in the middle of my off season, I am good with this approach.