I’ve been debating between the bear and delhorme for hypertrophy, and when I crunched the numbers, the bear wins. Here’s my reasoning.
The bear that I’m talking about is done this way:
Bear is 2x/week. Preferably Mon/Thurs or Mon/Fri. You will want at least 2 Days full rest between sessions.
10-20 sets of 5 reps.
Start with 90% of your max DL. Here’s your first training session.
385 x 2 sets of 3 reps.
Then go 340 (80% 1RM)
Do sets of 5 reps resting no more than 1:30 between sets for as many sets as you can do. As soon as you cannot get 5 reps for that set, you are done for the day.
so if you end at 8 sets for the day. shoot for 10-12 the next session. You will want to ramp this up over the course of 2 weeks.
Rules:
1 Stay with the same weight until you can complete 20 sets of 5 reps with 340.
2 Then add 10lbs and start over.
3 The only other things that I would do during Bear are Military Press or Barbell Side Press and Pullups or Dips for no more than 5×5.
For both programs I’m just looking at the deadlift.
For the bear, with my 1RM of 325, 2 weekly sessions at 20 sets involves moving 53,755lbs for the week. Assuming 20 second sets and 90 second rest periods, total time per week is 77.7 minutes. Density, therefore, is an average of 692lbs per minute.
For Delhorme, with the same 1RM and 3 weekly sessions with 5 sets each session, I would be lifting 24,367lbs over 56.5 minutes (assuming 20 second sets, 40 second breaks to change weights, and 2:30 breaks between sets), averaging 431lbs per minute.
So not only does bear (as performed above) involve more total tonnage, it is more dense. Does anyone see any problems with my logic? I know this involves the maximum number of sets for both programs, and doesn’t take into account the ease of progression of the program from week to week, but I feel for the most part I am comparing apples to apples?
