It's best to think of the fatigue interms of the fatigue "effects" of the different kinds of work. That is, how fast the fatigue comes, the relative level of it, and how long it lasts.
You're thinking of volume in terms of muscle soreness instead of these fatigue effects. You don't even really need to separate out CNS versus metabolic fatigue.
Now with the workout you are doing I know we've said certain things are "like" the texas method but that only has to do with specific details. There is actually nothing in your program that borrows from that kind of setup.
Remember that volume is relative and load is relative. So for instance, your first two workouts are not just maximal strength like the Friday of Texas. Instead they TEND toward being on the heavier side of things and have some maximal strenght followed by assistance work that tends more toward the "work" side of things, but is lower volume than the workout later in the week.
If your were to look at these workouts in terms of just "CNS" fatigue and muscle soreness it wouldn't make any sense. You are getting mixed fatigue AND fitness responses from those workouts but overall the fatigue should not be as long lasting as the later workouts. The first lower workout should be especially low volume so as to not intefere too much with the maximal strength work that comes at the beginning of the first upper workout. Then once that is pulled off there can be more volume coming after.
So what we are doing is "playing" with the fatigue effects in order to get the best numbers from maximal stenght work but ALSO we are hoping to get some more longlasting fitness effects then we would from doing ONLY maximal strength work on those days. It is a mixed bag and is not just a one or the other type of thing.
Remember what I wrote in the TM thread about Friday's workouts and the fitness gained from them. This is something very important that most people just don't seem to get. So let me put it another way. Only a beginnner gains very meaningful fitness from one set. It changes a lot when you become more advanced. You need to have a certain amount of "work" in order to gain more permanent "fitness" (and when I say fitness I mean stength, dammit, since that is the type of fitness we are going for. There is no such thing as "overall fitness" only relative degress of different kinds of fitness). This is why I find it so funny that people make such a big deal out of the whole 1RM and 5RM being so "important". Funny how nobody cared about that doing Madcow's and they certainly don't worry about it while "loading" on the "DFT".
Keeping all that in mind the program you wrote COULD work but basically you have the same relative volume and intensity distributed thoughout the week. There doesn't seem to be any manipulation as far as fatigue is concerned. I.E. you could expect much the same response from all the workouts. It would be quite manageable but the question is whether there is enough to drive progress.
Most of what I said before was fairly specific to the upper/lower. To apply that theory to a fullbody you’d really need fewer exercises and much more literal uses of it.
Since it is simple to do so I’ll relate it to TM. So TM’s setup deals with fatigue in a different way and there is a very sharp delineation between maximal work and maximal strength. I don’t need to rehash the theory behind the the setup but the DRAWBACK of it is that you can’t ever guarantee that fatigue and recovery will intermesh perfectly allowing you consistent PR’s on Friday no matter what you do. Friday advances could be gained from Monday if fatigue has dissipated and enough fitness is gained but assuming that it will is one of the limitations. Friday could just as well be interfered with. Again most people should gain well by just advancing on Monday and not regressing on Friday.
But we talk about things in terms of a week. Well your body doesn’t know weeks. It only knows stimulus and response. Fitness and fatigue. So what if you looked at your body’s responses literally and applied them to something simple like TM?
You could put maximal strength on Monday. Hit your PR’s then. You would be at your freshest fatigue wise and at your utmost ability to achieve them. Any fitness response would be relatively speedy and fatigue would disapate quickly.
So one day off you shoud be ready to hit the volume. You’d do your TM 5x5 type workout then on Wednesay. Except it wouldn’t be a literal 5x5 I just mean it would be the most metabolically draining of the three workouts. You’d have a lot more exercises. So you’d hit deads at low volume. Then you would hit some kind of squats or squat assister at higher volume but relatively low….then same thing with bench and/or pressing work. Back work. Whatever. This would be a big day with a high relative volume in other words.
Then a day off and an “offload” with added assistance. You wouldn’t need as aggressive an offload since you would then have two days off before you go for PR’s again. The pr’s would be mixed and switched around.
So that would be an intensity – volume – recovery approach that corresponded more closely to fatigue responses. The reason this works is because the fitness gained from Wednesdays workout and assisted by Friday’s workout (so Friday would actually help not just provide active recovery) would be long lasting enough to be displayed on Monday but at the same time there would be very little chance of Monday’s PR being interfered with like they are on Friday of the TM.
The ‘volume’ of course would be entirely relative to your goals. There would be no need of doing, for instance 5x5 sets if less would facilitate your goals. Also I would use the same flexible progression that I use for my upper/lowers so that more volume can be introduced if and when it is needed and in a steady and systematic way. But the big problem is that to cram in the ways I like to train would make for two very big days. It would never actually work.
The reason I do upper/lowers is not because I like training 4 days a week or whatever. It is because I need to break all that volume up so as not to overwhelm myself. All this is nothing more than a theoretical exercise, like yours, designed to lead straight back to the fact that fullbodies are best left simple and the more complex training works much better with the split.
If you took out the standpoint of variety, though, my way of maximal strength, maximal work, and then a recovery/assistance day would probably work quite well. If I ever get back to that kind of thing, I’ll play with something and try it out. The thing that TM and the other 5x5’s don’t take into account is the difference between the fitness effects. You can look at it like Monday causes a PR on Friday and it makes a lot of sense. BUT you can also look at it as being fresh on Monday facilitates the PR’s which was setup anyway by Wednesday’s and to some extent Friday’s work since that fitness gained from those days is much more long lasting. You just have to realize that the body doesn’t care about a “week” it only knows to respond to the stimulus it receives.
But let’s not take theory too far. Most of what I do comes from experiencing different things. I take theory and add it to experience, not the other way around. The best way of knowing if your setup would work is for you to do it and learn from it. It would be much harder than you think though from what I can tell.
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