I’ve recently upped to 4 a weeks, and am absolutely sure I’ll have to miss a large amount of them.
I really don’t feel like a few submaximal pull ups impacts my press noticeably, though.
Not yet they don’t, but they will if you do AMRAP and things start getting heavier. Just saying you might want to have a Plan B once you start getting closer to your limits.
Or hey, superset them with squats. That makes more sense in my head.
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It can easily be cut for the main work if needed, won’t have much effect.
I feel the missing variable in the discussion here is that Brian’s programming (and much of my approach as well) is not about performing your best in training: it’s about training to perform your best.
I absolutely give up pounds in the weightroom with the way I train. I approach my mainsets under-recovered, having performed significant work leading up to it, usually with too short of rest times. For a 3 year stretch, I compounded this by training first thing in the morning off inadequate food and sleep until the Mrs said she had just about enough of that, haha.
And then I’d do a week of lighter training while eating and resting well, go to a competition and set a giant PR.
Creating fatigue in training and performing under that fatigue will still get you stronger. I don’t know if it’s going to be 100% the same as if you were to dedicate your training to maximizing performance of the lift IN training, but if nothing else it’s a very viable way to go about it in my experience. And the further along I get, the more I like it, because I’m beating up my connective tissue way less by making light weight feel heavy.
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Exactly. Training yourself to be able to perform while in a disadvantageous position is absolutely valuable. As a strongman especially. There are various ways of how to accomplish that in training.
The problem I see with Brian’s approach is that it is setup pretty agressively from what I’ve seen. Most people have no place embedding their main lifts into giant sets. They aren’t strong enough and often times not technically advanced enough to benefit and at the same time keeping the injury risk low.
Assistance? Sure.
The main point I wanted to get across is that I think Brian’s approach is a great one, however the group of individuals I would advice such an approach to is rather small.
Nothing I said had anything to do with steroids btw. Brian said that he isn’t on anything (and that was before this was a business for him). His word is enough for me to end that discussion.
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This is the reason I’ve stopped giant setting my main lower body lifts. My bracing suffers when I do things before hand, and that doesn’t seem smart at this point in my training life.
For upper body lifts though, where I’m too weak for technique to really be an issue, I absolutely see the value.
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For an older lifter this may actually be an advantage. Losing form should lead to you lowering your TM hence getting the same training effect from a lighter weight and lowering your chance of Injury.
Cheap shot dude, cheap shot.
I understand your point, however for me what happens is that I never learn to brace properly because I never have to. I spent all of January and most of February doing high rep squats and I definitely got stronger. I doubt my 1RM went up much though, because I never lifted over 100kg tops. Looking back even further, I doubt I’d lifted much over 100kg for the entire ADD challenge either so that’s nearly a year since I’ve lifted squatted heavy. I need to learn how to do that. How to get used to the pressure, the stars in my eyes, etc.
Mate it just makes you in the same mature club as me.
Do we get t-shirts?
Yes but they a brown with stripes and a collar😂
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I have done 3 complete weeks of Dark Horse so I’m now an expert on this subject matter!
Ok more seriously - I think your point is very valid it isn’t suitable for everyone’s goals, but that is going to be down the individual.
In terms of conditioning, you might come into one of his programs not able to do it, but push with every session and you’ll improve and maybe it will take a good few months but you’ll get there, and if your getting stronger physically (and definitely mentally) then you’re effectively killing two birds with one stone.
I know I’m definitely not making 90-120 secs rest every set yet but I’ll get there.
I don’t think I’d recommend this to a small number of people I think I’d recommend it to a lot of people, but with some strong caveats. Yes form breakdown is an important one!
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Week three was when I got hurt trying the program, haha. But that wasn’t entirely the programs fault obviously and has nothing to do with my opinion on it .
You are making a valid point and I agree on the mental benefit BUT a lot of people will make less progress on their main lifts than they’d otherwise do (that’s obviously a discussion and not a universal truth! I am fine if we disagree here) and if you do this with subpar conditioning in the first place, the risk of injury is higher than it would otherwise be. Loss of bracing due to being out of breath would be an immediate threat for example. Also less focus on technique due to fatigue. There is a reason for all those crossfit injury memes. And in crossfit you usually do next to no max effort stuff as far as I know.
I guess I should add that when I mean small group of people, I am talking about competitors of fitting athletic activities, first responders of any kind, military personal etc. For those people - definite value!
Compare that to the huge amount of people who are excluded here - all of the general gym population I see on a daily basis to start with and you’ll see where I come from. I will also repeat that I see programs like Darkhorse being too often advised on this very forum. But that’s just my personal opinion.
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Been a lot of posts. What have we decided upon?
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I forget, what were we talking about?
Ur program.
Pretty much what I said above, to be honest.
Press Day one: 531 Boring but Strong (dagill version) with a small giant set assistance
Deadlift day: Kroc Deadlift program with giant set assistance and some sort of finisher
Press day 2: Kroc Bench program plus a butt load of pressing at different angles
Squat day: alternating between clusters and straight sets with a big giant set for assistance.
There are more details to it, but that’s the broad brush strokes overview.
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If I can offer just one thought, it’d be that what one considers their training weight should be in relation to what else they’re doing. What I mean is, if someone spends years doing powerlifting works and has some decent numbers and suddenly changes their training style the percentages shouldn’t be based off of what they do with minutes of rest normally when now they are doing something different.
This is why I prefer rep targets over percentages.
If I give myself a super set or whatever, I have a pretty tight rep range where I want to land.
Example: let’s say I’m super setting the press and a barbell row. 5 sets of 6-8 reps.
With main lifts I prefer to not go to failure as much, and I make up for that with additional failure points in machines and isolation work (I get less injured this way).
Thus, I’ll let my weights be guided by what I can actually do rather than a theoretical calculation. I’ll calculate to get a crude estimate, and I’ll start a program with a “Week 0” where I’m trying to get dialed in.
And then, in your case where you mention bracing. Well, if I were that strong where that’s a risk factor I’d lower the weights as conditioning improves. Eventually, the theoretical numbers will match reality. Might lose a bit of strength as one isn’t hitting the same intensity.
Or make the reps harder, taking weight off the bar, but still beating the shit out of the muscle (if appropriate). For instance, my lower back was fucky yesterday so I instead did five second descents during the eccentric and my quads were beat to shit without putting me out of commission for weeks from fucking up my back.
Those statements are correct but the program in discussion explicitly states that some of the work is done as max effort in lower rep ranges. Percentages are then taken from those maxes, so performance on the day is factored in.
I can get fucked with 85% of my “real” 1 RM just fine if I can’t brace properly.
Picking variations thst don’t allow for huge weights in the first place is key to improve on and survive the program imo.
Your approach sounds like a sensible one but my point of critique was the exact program/ approach and that I only find it useful for a quite select group of people.
I also feel like I’ve said enough on the topic. It was never my intention to start a discussion in which I would end up as the “anti Darkhorse guy”. I think I made my point clear enough that I in fact like the program, I just have some points of critique to it and to who might use it. 
It’s clear that you hate Brian and everything he stands for!
I’m still only part way through so I’ll reserve judgement until the end of the program, I’m definitely liking it so far though.
If I end up a conditioned strongman beast I’ll recommend it for every human on the planet, if I get injured I shall join you in your anti Brian crusade!
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