DEEP WATER ADVANCED PROGRAM REVIEW

I have completed the Deep Water Advanced program, in doing so finishing 18 weeks of the most hellacious training I’ve ever engaged in.  I got bigger, stronger, and experienced a lot of growth physically and psychologically.  In this program, I made some significant deviations, but I feel the intent was still met and the goals were realized.

THE PROGRAM

Alternative title

Once again, this comes out of the Deep Water book, which you can get for free of Jon Andersen’s Instagram account or for $10 off Amazon, so I’m not going to write up the whole thing here.  For a summary though, it’s still 4 days a week of lifting and 1 day of active recovery.  The training is not quite as predictable as the previous two programs though.  You typically will have 2 Deep Water days and 2 non-Deep Water Days.  The latter have you work up to a topset of 10 in 5 sets on a variety of movements (press, cleans, rows, etc) or have the same bench press workout that were in the first two workouts, along with some assistance work.  The former have you work up to a topset of 5 within 5 sets, then take that weight and multiply it by .65 and do as many reps as possible with that amount.  You then rest 5-8 minutes and do it again with a weight that is half the amount of your topset of 5.  This is done with a wide variety of movements, to include squats, deadlifts, push press, clean and press (clean each rep from the floor), cleans, front squat press, etc.  Some Deep Water days have additional assistance work, some don’t.

This program is really just less predictable than the previous 2, so it’s a bit hard to sum up what a week will look like.  Usually a week will start with a Deep Water workout, but after that it’s something of a wildcard.  You go a bit longer between bench workouts as a result, and you find yourself doing a LOT of cleans, so hopefully you kept practicing hard during the beginner/intermediate program.

For those AMRAP sets, you NEED to dig deep if you want to get the most out of them.  The first 2 weeks of the program sorta work like a break-in, similar to the other 2 programs, but after that you need to make sure you’re leaving it all in the gym.  Without doing that, you’re not going to get much from the program.

NUTRITION

That's about right

No changes here as far as foods good; primarily meat and veggies.  However, I found the volume to be a little less on this program, so not as much need for huge portions.

DEVIATIONS AND X-FACTORS

...christ I'm a nerd

Unlike the previous 2 programs, I ended up having some more extension deviations here, and I feel they are worth detailing for the sake of full disclosure.

-I ran this program “inverted” as it were.  Basically, my final lower body workout for Deep Water Intermediate was a deadlift workout, so I wanted to squat the following week.  However, Deep Water Advanced started with deadlifts, so I went to week 2 and started there to get in the squat workout.  That meant that, after finishing week 2, I ran week 1.  After week 1, I then ran week 4, so that I’d do another squat workout, then did week 3, then week 6, and finished with week 5.  Ultimately, I don’t think this impacted the results much, as I got the whole workout done in the time slotted, but just something to note.

-I screwed up the assistance work on a few workouts.  Just minor things.  Skipped box jumps one day, made them up on another, etc.  This wasn’t’ because I felt it was the better way to do it, it was just blatant non-compliance due to not looking up the program before I trained.  Thought I had the right idea, turned out I didn’t.

-Somewhere along the line, I did a deadlift workout that I didn’t need to do.  I honestly don’t know how I worked it into the program, but I ended up setting a solid program PR on it, so it was a win.

-Biggest complete deviation came in the final 2 weeks of the program.  One of the Deep Water days required full cleans.  I simply don’t have that skillset, and unlike power cleans, which I had been building up to through the beginner and intermediate program, there was no break-in here.  I weighed my options and decided log cleans would fit closest to the requirements here.  It was still a floor to chest exercise that requires me to hold the implement in a squatting position.  Not quite right, but close enough.  Another Deep Water workout required thrusters (or front squat press, as it was called in the program) and, again, just not a skillset I have.  I opted to make these into log viper presses for a similar argument.  Final Deep Water workout required clean and push press, each rep from the floor.  I originally wanted to make this an axle continental and press, since I’m better at that than cleaning, but I think the decision to do the log vipers was a poor strategy, because my forearms were fried and I seemed to just have zero explosiveness for the workout.  I pretty much had nothing left, and walked away from that workout disappointed.

-Most significant factor was nutrition, and this was due to illness.  I came down with a bad stomach bug right around the second week of the program.  Vomited 8 times in the span of 4 hours and lost about 5lbs in a day.  The second order effect though was that my appetite was shot for about 2 weeks after that.  I force fed as much as I could in that time, but I was struggling to get in the amount of food needed.  Pair that with the fact that volume is significantly scaled down on this program compared to beginner and intermediate, and the catalyst for big food intake simply wasn’t there.  It ended up meaning that I would eventually regain the lost weight, but not much else on the program.

RESULTS

Whereas Beginner and Intermediate were about setting up for some big PRs, this was the time to start realizing them.  I added 30lbs to my SSB squat 5rm in 5 weeks on the program.  I added 10lbs to my deadlift 5rm in 3 weeks.  My press 10rm went up 15lbs through the program, set under greater states of fatigue.  Axle Bench went from 3x7 at 291 to 2x10 and 1x7 at the same weight.  Power cleans increased as well.

Once again though, for the most part, the changes are far more mental than anything else.  Having the AMRAP backoff sets in the program really gave me an opportunity to dig deep, and I got to find out what I was made of.  The first 2 weeks, I was disappointed in the effort I produced, but by the end of the program, I knew I was leaving it all out there.  I had gashed my hand early in the Deep Water power clean workout, and ended up just putting some chalk in it to hit a 30 and 40 rep set.  I’d also lost my fear of heavy max work, and was able to just set up and execute.  I got to see the manifestation of improved willpower during that vomiting spell I had as well, as typically vomiting takes a LOT out of me, but this time I’d roll up to the toilet, puke, go chug a Gatorade to get back some fluids and get ready to do it all again in a half hour.  It sucked, I didn’t feel great, but I didn’t let it debilitate me.  In turn, I was able to be active and train the next day, a little weakened, but not significantly so.

As previously noted, that vomiting did not help with weight gain, and my bodyweight basically stayed the same for this program.  That I was able to regain the 5 lost pounds may mean that I’d have experienced some growth absent that illness.

CLOSING THOUGHTS AND MOVING FORWARD

-Understanding this from the framework of 5/3/1, the Beginner and Intermediate programs are leaders, and the Advanced program is an anchor.  When I first read the book, I thought it was “If you’re a beginner, you do the beginner program.  Intermediate does intermediate, etc.”  However, it’s more like “When you’re a beginner to the METHOD, you do beginner.  That preps you for the intermediate program for the method, and then you’re ready for the advanced.”  And it really IS a question about getting prepped for it.  I’ve been training for 19 years, but if I just jumped into the advanced program, I wouldn’t have gotten NEARLY as much out of it.  I’d not pushed as hard on the Deep Water sets, as I just wouldn’t have that all built into me.  After 12 weeks of absolutely killing myself, I knew how to unleash.

-The volume is lower on this program, which is obvious on looking at it, but in turn that’s going to mean less nutrition required and less weight gained.  Like an anchor program, you’re looking to express strength here, not build.  Always eat to support training.

-For my active recovery work, I ended up picking up the boxing gloves after about 7 years off and hitting the heavy bag.  I think this coincides with the fact that, after all this time on the program, it seemed like my hormones kicked into overdrive.  Libido was crazy, aggression was high, and I had the need to fight again.  That’s been welling up in me for a while, but I usually battle it back, thinking I’m done with combat sports.  I usually scoff at the whole “squats release hormones” stuff, but maybe there is some truth to it when you spend 18 weeks doing 100 reps of them.

-Moving forward from here is tough.  I’m getting corrective vision surgery at the end of the month, which I’ll treat as a 1 week deload after 18 weeks without one (which is another interesting point for the program, as I was very much accustomed to a deload every 6 weeks of training but never got run into the ground enough to need it).  After that, I’ll hear what the doc says about recovery, and I’ll look to see if a strongman competition is happening in April, and if it looks any good.  If so, I’ll train for that.  If not, I may just run this all over again depending on how much weight I lose with my time off.  There are changes I’ll make, now that I’ve run it in earnest.  I’ll swap out buffalo bar squats with SSB, and probably trade out deadlift bar deadlifts with an axle.  That will make the squats a little easier and the deadlifts a little harder, which will be a solid balance.  Thinking I’d eliminate the ab circuit and bring back the ab wheels, just because they take less time.  Might try to get in a little more running and boxing as well, as I keep seeing myself as getting to be a little bit better at those things.  I’ve contemplated also running 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake as a means of easing myself back into Deep Water, and I think that’d be a solid approach for anyone interested in the program.  ANOTHER option I have in mind is to buy the “Deep Water Badass” program and see what that is all about.  Ultimately, it’ll depend on a few variables outside of my control.

TRAINING VIDEOS

For those that are curious what these workouts were like, I wanted to upload some of the videos from the training cycle.

Axle push pressing: 5x251, 21x166, 22x126

SSB squats week 3: 5x425, 21x275, 24x215

Log cleans: 5x210, 20x135, 21x105

Deadlifts: 5x555, 24x360, 26x280

SSB Squats Week 5: 5x435, 20x285, 26x220

Log viper press: 5x205, 22x135, 30x105