Nice! 3 plates in the not too distant future
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Thanks, man! Honestly, looking at the plate setup today, I had the same thought.
Let’s just hope I hit the 3-plate squat first. 
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Once that 25 goes on there, it starts feeling real close. Just be like me and bench the same as you squat 
Seriously though on PR sets I push really hard on squats so I don’t have my bench too close to them lol
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I’m sure if he peaked he could get it but Sven will bench 315 for a crap load of reps like you do in the future lololololol
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7WP, TM Test - d7
Saturday - 05 March 2022
Workout: Easy conditioning, 0615-0715 (60 minutes)
25 1-pump burpees + 24-kg KB swings
Weighted vest walk - 30 kg - 35 minutes
25 1-pump burpees + 24-kg KB swings
Fasted. And done.
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Train for fat loss while you’re going for weight gain.
Another nugget of wisdom I just read from our very own @T3hPwnisher. Like so much else he says and does, this just makes sense.
And it’s just what I needed to hear: those body image spectres are creeping in—I’m a work-in-progress, folks—and I’ve already mentioned the bad nutrition this week, so part of me is questioning 6 weeks of BBB Beefcake…
(I hear “beefcake” and I can’t help but think of this guy—not quite the look I’m after, but it could be worse, I suppose…)
“Train for fat loss while you’re going for weight gain.” Hah! This… this is the answer—it’s so crazy, so backwards, it has to work.
So, while I’m not 100% sure how that’s going to impact how I move through the next 6 weeks, I’ve got about 24 hours to figure it out!
Thanks, Pwn.
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Hell yeah dude!
Dude: join my daily tabata madness, haha. I really think I am onto something
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That’s what all evil geniuses say.
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I am at least half of that!
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7WP, TM Test - summary
Lifts went well this week, hit some rep PRs, and got all of my daily burpees + swings and easy conditioning work done, but I let the food slip. Super glad I went ahead and cycled up: I managed the new TMs pretty well, and I should be able to hit the percentage work over the next two cycles without issue. (The top sets in the second 1s week will be tough, but even with the additional 5/10 lbs, those shouldn’t be any more than the TMs I hit this week.)
The mental break from two-a-days was helpful too, though I can tell you that’s part of why I slipped with the junk food: I didn’t have a second workout for which to stay sharp. Not gonna sweat that, but just stay on track and keep pushing forward.
So, BBB Beefcake begins today. I’m running it 3/5/1, I will hit the recommended assistance (and maybe more, eventually), and push my conditioning as hard as I can.
My goals for the week ahead are:
- Complete all 4 lifting workouts
- Complete 4 days of hard conditioning
- Complete 3 days of easy conditioning and direct calf work
- Do 52 chin-ups/pull-ups every day
- Do (at least one) tabata front squat workout every day
- Recalibrate my food intake
Easy conditioning will consist of 50 burpees + swings, and either 10 minutes on the bike followed by a (roughly) 1-mile weighted vest walk, or a weighted vest walk to and from the park with a run of 9+ laps around the track in between.
Hard conditioning will consist of pushing the sled or Farmer’s Walks, but I’m going to mix up how I do those—continuous, mixed with other moves, heavier/slower, lighter/faster, for minimum rounds, for maximum time, maybe even tabata-style work/rest periods. I’ll probably focus on the sled, but I still love me some Farmer’s Walks.
Daily chin-ups/pull-ups will continue, but I’m adding Pwn’s daily tabata front squats (probably with DBs, because I don’t have matching KBs). He says, “[They have] just been remarkable for my conditioning along with keeping on the lean side while I continue to mainline calories.” That’s exactly my goal these next six weeks, and this approach is working for him—so why not me, too?
Recalibrating food intake means paying more careful attention to just how much food I need to recover. Do I really need three cheeseburgers, or just two? Should the 3-lbs. turkey meatloaf stretch across three meals instead of two? Or maybe it’s the other way around: Do I need more food, more often? Bottom-line: If I need it, I’m gonna eat it. But I don’t want to eat it—healthy or otherwise—just because it’s there.
In the end, things won’t look a whole lot different from the previous BBB cycles. There’s no doubt I’ve been getting bigger and stronger with BBB, but I want to heed JW’s advice: To be lean, don’t get fat.
Finally, my TMs for this cycle are:
Press - 150 lbs
Squat - 305 lbs
Dead - 345 lbs
Bench - 270 lbs
Alright, this train is leaving the station… Let’s roll!
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BBB Beefcake - c10w1d1
Sunday - 06 March 2022
Workout: Easy conditioning + calves, 0545-0645 (60 minutes)
Seated CR - 240 - 20, 20, 20
1-pump burpees + 24-kg KB swings - 2x(25 + 25), 25-second rest between
Bike@120-140 bpm - 10 minutes
Weighted vest walk - 30 kg - 15 minutes
Fasted.
Added 10 lbs. on the calf raises today—burn, burn, burn. The idea with the easy conditioning here is to get the HR way up quickly with burpees + swings, keep it up (but not too high) for a bit with the bike, then bring it down slow and steady with the walk. Seems to have worked as planned.
I’m trying a new route with the walks this week. I was getting bored and times were getting long: I kept stretching it farther and farther. The new route is about half the distance—roughly one mile v. two—but still does the trick. Gonna stick with that for awhile to see how things go.
Also realizing I should superset the daily chins with the calf raises on these easy conditioning days: I rest about 60 seconds between calf raise sets, so I can knock out chin-ups/pull-ups between without stretching the morning workout too much longer than an hour. Similarly, I’ll be standing around between sets of chin-ups this afternoon because the tabata front squats don’t lend themselves to supersetting. Anyway, I’ll have to give that a shot on Wednesday.
Jump rope and daily work this afternoon.
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Ive essentially caught up on your log after a long time spent not reading anyone’s. TLDR: sveng kicks incredible amounts of ass. Daily.
The 225x21 squats, pressing 140x5, and theres probably better highlights i didn’t see… its all awesome. Tons of work too.
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Hell yeah!
I think the DBs will be totally adequate for what you’re going for. I made them work in a hotel setting a little while back. It really doesn’t take much weight to get the effect, and there are ways to play around to make it sucky. My default is I never set the bells down and just hold them the whole time, which is a little taxing on the grip and traps. I’ve also done variations where I hold it in the racked position the whole time. Brutal on the upper back.
Excited to see this unfold. You got this dude!
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Looks like you’ve got a solid plan established.
Question: I know you’ve run other BBB variations before, but have you run Beefcake before?
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First time with Beefcake.
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Groovy. My unsolicited advice as someone who’s run Beefcake (or just 5x10 FSL in general) a handful of times is that this
needs to stay at the forefront of your thinking. I understand and agree that you don’t want to start eating like an asshole, but if you’re gonna keep your conditioning and overall workload high, now’s not the time to get cute with nutrition.
5x10 FSL can start off feeling easy, but has a sneaky habit of demolishing you by the end of the cycle. Combatting that requires fuel, and lots of it.
We’ll be here to help calm you down if the food anxiety (am I overstepping by labelling it that?) kicks in, but in the mean time, you gotta eat.
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Thanks for this, @kdjohn. Key is this:
which is complicated by my history of this:
so I absolutely appreciate this:
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@jdm135 - Thanks for dropping in! It’s awesome to have you around. And nice work on that press challenge, BTW: 135 for triple digits sounds brutal!
@T3hPwnisher - Gonna start by trying to keep the DBs in my hand for the whole time, if I can hack it. Figure it’s a good way to challenge my grip a bit—better than doing that during my heavy deadlifts, haha.
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BBB Beefcake - c10w1d1
Sunday - 06 March 2022
Workout: Extra conditioning, 1225-1255 (30 minutes)
Jump rope tabata - 4x40/10
52 chin-ups/pull-ups (strict, various grips), E2MO2M
Rounds: 4; Time: 6:56
Jump rope tabata - 4x40/10
Tabata DB front squats - 2x25 lbs - 8x20/10
This was an action-packed 30 minutes. Got the chins in 4 rounds: 13/3, 10/3, 7+3/2, 7+3+1, for 52 total (13 of each grip; ‘/’ denotes a drop for grip change, ‘+’ denotes a drop because I’m weak). Worked for about 50-60 seconds in each round, rested for about 60-70 seconds. Thought about trying to get them all in within 3 rounds, and I might have been able to, but I didn’t want to over do it on first day back to daily reps after a week without them. Gives me something to work toward if I do this setup again. (Alternatively, I could do something like start a new round at the top of every 105 seconds then reduce that interval to 90 seconds and so on… Point is, there are endless ways to progress it.) That said, my observation about supersetting those with the calf work in the AM workout still holds.
Now, tabata front squats: Got 8s across with 25-lbs DBs in each hand, held them at my side during the off periods. That weight was the right choice: Start too light, progress slowly. I will only be able to progress in 5-lbs increments, which I hope to do each week, and this weight gives me some runway to improve.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a true tabata workout—even my jump rope “tabatas” are only tabata in spirit—so I’d forgotten just how much work you can do in 4 minutes. Even with only one workout under my belt, I can feel why these are effective: my chest was heaving, my delts, traps, and quads were on fire, and the sweat was pouring. I just might be finding excuses to take out the trash, too, haha!
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Don’t be afraid to play around with other progressions. For a while I only had the 45s so I did things like 9s across, 8s across holding in the racked position, max reps each round, etc. Dude I know did “rests” lockout out overhead. Lots of madness.
But true Tabata is right! It is brutal
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