BBB Set Percentages

In the books Jim say start around 50% for the BBB assistant sets and adjust from there. Has anyone experimented with the different percentages and found a percentage that seems to be the sweet spot for growth?

Right now I’m using between 55-60% for my BBB sets. Every now and then I’ll see how many reps I can get on the final set and if it’s more than 12 I’ll up the % slightly.

If you want to play around with the percentages I highly recommend checking out the Boring But Big 3 month challenge. You can find it here on T-Nation. You’ll get to do 50%, 60%, and 70%. Or in the Beyond book take a look at the BBB 6 week challenge.

For me 60% is the best option. Not too light, not too heavy.

After quite a bit of experimentation I find 50% for the lower body lifts and 60% for the upper body to be my sweet spot. Yes, I can do more, but for me the recovery/DOMS trade-off isn’t worth it. Because it’s volume work I focus far more on the movement, tempo and form than I do the weight.

I did 2 cycle 5/3/1 with the BBB at 50%
Now I’m doing the cycle 3 with BBB percentage at 60% and this morning I cannot finish my 5th set of Deadflit.
It’s really really hard, especially for the deadlift

I did opposite movement with the rule of 50 for 6 weeks.

I used about 55-65%. Sometimes I did fall little short (total 43 reps for ex.), but usually could hit all 50 reps (with squat and press I did this in every workout). DL was definitely the shittiest movement to do.

Nevertheless, it worked. I got new squat PR (did jokers for squat and DL at 6th week), and hit new rep PR’s in DL and Press. I also gained mass.