I have been doing two a days for the past two weeks and really enjoy it. However, I really want to go back to B4B since I had some great progress, my strength shot up fast.
Would it be OK to do B4B in the morning and a different isolation group in the afternoon? Or maybe picking a weakness for a few weeks and hammer it?
If you do two a days, yes it’s the best way to do it. But while I like the occasional two a days, very few people can and should do it as a system for more than 3 weeks.
Given your recent views on strength/hypertrophy CT would you modify the B4B protocol?
Rep ranges? Exercise #'s/circuit?
I seem to recall despite the great description about the program, you mentioned it should only be used for a very short period of time and honestly maximized neither strength nor physique.
So I kind of put it on my backburner, despite really enjoying this style of training as well.
Can it be used long term? Modification for health (not killing joints with singles), frequency & size/physique gains? Thank you
I have no “recent views”. When you read in articles are just parts of the tools I use. With clients I still use most of the strategies in my tool bag like layers, complexes, high frequency and even volume. It depends on the person, it’s neurological profile, it’s hormonal profile. Don’t pigeon-hole me please.
It does give great results. But you can’t do it for long because it is basically an all-out (or close to it) effort, done for the whole body, every day. So a very high impact on the nervous system.
It is not optimal for physique development in that it neglects some muscle groups. And while if is great to build overall strength the reason why it’s not optimal for strength performance is that it neglects fixing weak points because you only have big compound lifts.
It’s a good all-around strength & size builder and it will also get you some resistance. But it is not “the best” at any of those things.
As is, it cannot be done more than 3-5 weeks. Someone with a small structure, 3 weeks.
How can it be modified so that it can be done for longer?
Alternate hard days and submax days. For example Days 1, 3 & 5 are close to your RM on the sets, Days 2 & 4 (or 2, 4 & 6) are more conservative, leaving 2 reps in the tan on each set, put more emphasis on technique on those days.
If your goal is strength substitute the biceps curl with an exercise to fix a problem in one of the main lifts. “Correct” a different main lift every workout. That “corrective” exercise would still be part of the circuit but done for straight sets of 6-8 reps.
If your goal is size you could use the same strategy as above but for a lagging muscle group.
Gotcha thank you. And who could ever pideon hole the master…he might be experimenting with resistance bands for maximum gains next
The 3 week thing is right for me (I definitely burnt out on B4B before, quite quickly) but I want to have some consistency, longer term.
The difference between B4B (short term) and your recent strength skill setup (which is long term) really seems to be the intensity & freq of main exercises.
Is there a happy marriage where you can do something like 6/5/4/3/2, or 8/6/4/2 (lower intensity, more size gains) for b4b and have A/B setup.
Strength skill you’re doing up to 24 reps per compound movenet, alternated every other day (3 lifts per day).
By that logic you should be able to do b4b, alternating 4-5 compound exercises per day? Higher rep range/slightly lower load, focus on epxlosiveness = more hypertrophy, less intensity/joint/cns wear tear & also alternating different set of compound circuits each day less chance of overwork neurally (and more fun too)
*Another example the indigo strength programs which reported wide gains from folks. The HFSW (strength portion) was awfully close to the b4b (5 reps), and that was done 4-5 (even 6 times i think some options) a week.
And those were structured to be like 12 weeks programs…