I’m most of the way through the BBB 3 month challenge. I modified it so that its 3 days a week on a 4 day rotation with no deloads. So week 1 I do OHP, DL and Bench, the week 2 would start with Squat and so on. And I’ve been putting the BBB sets with the same lift for the day. So I’m doing 5x10 bench after 5/3/1 bench etc. The only assistance I am doing is 50 ab wheels on lower body days and 50 chins on upper body days. I feel like I’ve made some huge gains on this in strength and in work capacity. Anyone else try anything similar?
By similar do you mean training 3 days a week? If so yes, I have been training 3 days a week for a while and love it. I am not doing BBB 3 month challenge, I am currently doing the BBB 13 week challenge from Beyond. I am getting good gains with this approach. I would not reccomend never deloading, but with 3 days a week I do deload less frequently.
I dont think gaining strength is a “feel” ; you either do or you dont. What exactly did you gain? Overall I dont like what your doing, no deloads sounds like a beginner idea to me and I wouldnt be surprised if thats the case. Even with a 3 day split you should still deload every 6 weeks. If its working for you then have at er, but I dont think youll see any advanced lifter not having some form of deload in there. Id be interested to know what your maxes are
By not deloading I mean just not during this 3 month challenge not actually never. I’m not asking for advice because I know its working for me. Just asking if anyone else has done anything similar and how it worked for them.
[quote]TimCline wrote:
By not deloading I mean just not during this 3 month challenge not actually never. I’m not asking for advice because I know its working for me. Just asking if anyone else has done anything similar and how it worked for them.[/quote]
No I get that, I just dont see it as a good thing. But again just an opinion, if its working for you then keep going, rape it until you’re seeing no gains. Ive done something similar i.e no deloads for long periods. Didnt work out well, thats where my comment is coming from. If you ask if people have done anything similar and how it worked then you are asking for advise or opinions. My opinion you need a deload more frequently then 4 times a year or once every 3 months. If you are a beginner then you maybe every 3 months is alright. Again dont take it personally just my opinion
Well what’s your thoughts on doing BBB sets for the same lift on whatever given day. Like doing 5/3/1 squat then doing BBB sets of squat instead of DLs. I like it because they way I figured it I’m actually deloading one lift per week this way. Since I have 4 lifts but only lift 3 days a week.
[quote]TimCline wrote:
Well what’s your thoughts on doing BBB sets for the same lift on whatever given day. Like doing 5/3/1 squat then doing BBB sets of squat instead of DLs. I like it because they way I figured it I’m actually deloading one lift per week this way. Since I have 4 lifts but only lift 3 days a week.[/quote]
Have you read the book?
I have. This is just my thoughts. It is a guide to base things upon and is probably the best system out here but it is not the fucking bible. I don’t follow it word for word.
[quote]TimCline wrote:
Well what’s your thoughts on doing BBB sets for the same lift on whatever given day. Like doing 5/3/1 squat then doing BBB sets of squat instead of DLs. I like it because they way I figured it I’m actually deloading one lift per week this way. Since I have 4 lifts but only lift 3 days a week.[/quote]
I think thats perfectly acceptable, and in fact boring but big as written in the book had the lift on the same day and if I remember correctly had you going for rep PRs(or at least not sure if it touched on that). So perfectly fine to do that. It was the program as written on T-Nation that had the lift on a separate day, but in all reality its the same total volume in the run of a week and not a deal breaker either way, simply different. Your logic makes sense from the point of your getting a full week break from working the same movement pattern, but at the end of the day the military press day will effect the bench day and vice versa in terms of total volume. Again I would recomend still deloading every 6th week even if doing it over the course of 3 weeks, thats just based of personal experience of skipping deloads because I felt great the last week, then feeling so run down a week or two later. Like Jim says, you want to deload so that you dont NEED a deload. All the best
[quote]TimCline wrote:
I have. This is just my thoughts. It is a guide to base things upon and is probably the best system out here but it is not the fucking bible. I don’t follow it word for word.[/quote]
I would follow specific programs word for word for at least a cycle through before making adjustments but thats personal. If you have done so then you’re golden. If you cant because you can only workout the 3 days instead of 4 I would still recomend the deload worked in there in some way. The deloads are in the program for a reason just like the BBB sets are. Jims tried this stuff out so we dont have to
I have tried several other programs as written (The Cube, Westside) and I have tried several of Jims templates as written. I have been training in some for 6 years this is just what I have come to prefer. Just curious what other’s thoughts were.
[quote]TimCline wrote:
I have. This is just my thoughts. It is a guide to base things upon and is probably the best system out here but it is not the fucking bible. I don’t follow it word for word.[/quote]
I wouldn’t recommend anyone follow The Bible word for word. Try reading Leviticus. Or a lot of stuff in the Old Testament for that matter.
[quote]TimCline wrote:
I have. This is just my thoughts. It is a guide to base things upon and is probably the best system out here but it is not the fucking bible. I don’t follow it word for word.[/quote]
If you’ve read the book then you know that all you’ve done is modify BBB back to its original version.
That’s how the original program (BBB) was written. If you want to do it, I would run it for 6 week cycle and see how you like it.
There seems to be a theme going on here. Anyone want to guess what it is?
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
That’s how the original program (BBB) was written. If you want to do it, I would run it for 6 week cycle and see how you like it.
There seems to be a theme going on here. Anyone want to guess what it is? [/quote]
Can we make a sticky that answers all “what about this template” questions that simply reads “try it for a 6 week block”?
[quote]JMac31 wrote:
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
That’s how the original program (BBB) was written. If you want to do it, I would run it for 6 week cycle and see how you like it.
There seems to be a theme going on here. Anyone want to guess what it is? [/quote]
Can we make a sticky that answers all “what about this template” questions that simply reads “try it for a 6 week block”?[/quote]
I understand the questions but that is why I tried to simplfy things in the Beyond book with 6 week blocks. So that the lifter can experiment with small adjustments while maintaining principles. It makes sense to me but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. Which is certainly a good possibility.
[quote]TimCline wrote:
I’m most of the way through the BBB 3 month challenge. I modified it so that its 3 days a week on a 4 day rotation with no deloads. So week 1 I do OHP, DL and Bench, the week 2 would start with Squat and so on. And I’ve been putting the BBB sets with the same lift for the day. So I’m doing 5x10 bench after 5/3/1 bench etc. The only assistance I am doing is 50 ab wheels on lower body days and 50 chins on upper body days. I feel like I’ve made some huge gains on this in strength and in work capacity. Anyone else try anything similar?[/quote]
I did something similar a few months ago, in that I ran the same 13-week BBB challenge, though I used a 4-day split. I felt great, so I decided not to deload (as you suggested/did) and pushed straight from the 5x10 block to the 5x5 block…Only to pull my groin and lower back in the same week. Fortunately, these pulls were minor and I was back at full weights within a few weeks, but I felt like a major idiot for pushing when I shouldn’t have.
I’ll say that if you have made great progress in the past with no deloads on 5/3/1, then go for it…But if you haven’t done this before, or if you’re uncertain, then I’d join the others on this thread and urge caution when deciding to skip the deload, because you can set yourself back quite a bit by not giving your body occasional breaks.
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
[quote]JMac31 wrote:
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
That’s how the original program (BBB) was written. If you want to do it, I would run it for 6 week cycle and see how you like it.
There seems to be a theme going on here. Anyone want to guess what it is? [/quote]
Can we make a sticky that answers all “what about this template” questions that simply reads “try it for a 6 week block”?[/quote]
I understand the questions but that is why I tried to simplfy things in the Beyond book with 6 week blocks. So that the lifter can experiment with small adjustments while maintaining principles. It makes sense to me but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. Which is certainly a good possibility. [/quote]
I don’t know what you having going on these days, but if you are looking for a topic for your next T-Nation article the 6 week training block might be a good one. Judging by a lot of the questions here I think many would benefit from such an article. Not only does the 6 week block (or 8 week block if you train 3 days a week) let you try things and evaluate with committing long term, it also keeps things fresh. I used to switch my assistance every cycle. This works too, but I don’t think you get the most out of it. I have made more progress sticking with an assistance template for 2 cycles before switching things up. But don’t sweat the small stuff, that was the biggest thing I got up of 1st Ed. just make sure you are progress on the main lifts and good things will happen.
[quote]JMac31 wrote:
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
[quote]JMac31 wrote:
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
That’s how the original program (BBB) was written. If you want to do it, I would run it for 6 week cycle and see how you like it.
There seems to be a theme going on here. Anyone want to guess what it is? [/quote]
Can we make a sticky that answers all “what about this template” questions that simply reads “try it for a 6 week block”?[/quote]
I understand the questions but that is why I tried to simplfy things in the Beyond book with 6 week blocks. So that the lifter can experiment with small adjustments while maintaining principles. It makes sense to me but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. Which is certainly a good possibility. [/quote]
I don’t know what you having going on these days, but if you are looking for a topic for your next T-Nation article the 6 week training block might be a good one. Judging by a lot of the questions here I think many would benefit from such an article. Not only does the 6 week block (or 8 week block if you train 3 days a week) let you try things and evaluate with committing long term, it also keeps things fresh. I used to switch my assistance every cycle. This works too, but I don’t think you get the most out of it. I have made more progress sticking with an assistance template for 2 cycles before switching things up. But don’t sweat the small stuff, that was the biggest thing I got up of 1st Ed. just make sure you are progress on the main lifts and good things will happen.
[/quote]
I agree. I mean saying “do a 6 week block and see how it feels” is pretty much as direct and simple as you can get. However, maybe some discussion about it would be helpful. Maybe something like describing how to determine whether your 6 week block was a success or something like that. I personally have a little trouble understanding the 6 week block thing because it seems a bit short to me. I feel like I usually need maybe 3 months to decide if something is working well or not.
That being said. I really like the 6 week blocks (even though I just started doing 5/3/1) because it gives me a time frame to plan. For instance, I am doing a block of BBB now. After I finish next week I plan on going into a strength block with jokers and FLS for the next 6 weeks. Then back to BBB etc. With the 6 week blocks I can periodize more strength with more hypertrophy.Of course, it is all an experiment since I am just starting out with the 5/3/1…
That’s what the Beyond book is about. 6 week blocks. An article rarely helps since very few people read articles.