I just tried Chad Waterbury’s workout on Total Body Training. I just want to make sure I am doing this right.
I did the following exercises 3 sets of 5 with 60 sec rest:
flat bench press
deadlifts
pulldowns
squats
military press
preacher curls
I ended with 3 sets of crunches.
I tried using heavy weight but plan to increase in certain areas since today was first day doing the routine. He suggests a 1.25-2.5% load increase each workout. That comes out to a few pounds increase each time. I will try that.
Good to see you’re trying the TBT. Here’s the danger with the program if you’re new to the exercises at the designated rep ranges:
Taking your first day as an example. Say you did 3x5@150lb on the flat bench. You have to try to find out asap whether you were 1 rep away from failure (as CW suggests), or that 150 is really your 8/9RM. If you use too light a weight it will defeat the purpose of doing the set of five reps. In summary, you want your weight increases to be a result of strength gain, not because you were originally working at a substandard level.
My other suggestion would be that if you can, do pullups instead of pulldowns. And personally, I wouldn’t bother with the crunches, but anyone who does crunches is impossible to convince otherwise. So go nuts.
hey, another newbie to TBT. I’ve finished up week 3 today, but couldn’t fully complete sets 2 and 3 for bench, an isolation exercise, and another exercise. With bench, for example, i could only do 11 and than had to rack it and wait 30 seconds before getting out the last 4. Should I stick to this same weight next friday or try to bump it up? I know we have to train through fatigue.
I had some trouble trying to push out 8 reps of same weight as workout 1 (at 5 reps) especially on 3rd set. I hope that makes sense. I will keep pushing.
I am pretty sure I chose 4 compound and 2 single joint exercises. I checked over Chad’s list again…but maybe I will switch to a tricep exercise like you suggested.
Wait, you used the same weight for 8 reps that you used for 5? Um, that is too much weight. You need to pick a weight that you can do for the prescribed number of reps yet approach failure on the last rep of the last set.
For different rep ranges, you will use different weights.
Dreads, same for you. I wouldn’t bump up the weight unless you can do the prescribed number of reps without pausing. Seems like you picked a weight a bit heavier than you should have.
[quote]justgreene wrote:
I did the following exercises 3 sets of 5 with 60 sec rest:
flat bench press
deadlifts
pulldowns
squats
military press
preacher curls
[/quote]
Just to follow up with the other posters, you don’t do the same weight for 8 reps (or 12 reps) that you do with 5. The only time the weight is similar is next week when you do sets of 5 again on day 1, that is when you slightly increase the weight.
And Chad suggests you do 4 compounds and 2 isolation, you did 5 compounds and 1 isolation. The only isolation you did was preacher curls. Also Chad suggests changing the exercise every workout, so your workout for day 2 which is 3 sets of 8 should include different exercises. He gives a sample specific routine in the replies to that article. In other words it goes like this
Week 1 Day 1, 2, and 3 - different workouts
Week 2 - same as week 1 but superset everything and double rest time
Week 3 Day 1, 2, and 3 - different workouts (different from each other and from week 1)
Week 4 - same as week 3 but superset everything and double rest time
Follow this for the 8 weeks, changing exercises each day and only repeating those exercises on the following week when you superset them.
After re-reading his workout plan and more of the posts, it seems I totally misunderstood the workout. Thanks guys for pointing that out. I guess this week, I will be starting over.
Dreads, same for you. I wouldn’t bump up the weight unless you can do the prescribed number of reps without pausing. Seems like you picked a weight a bit heavier than you should have.[/quote]
[quote]nptitim wrote:
Week 1 Day 1, 2, and 3 - different workouts
Week 2 - same as week 1 but superset everything and double rest time
Week 3 Day 1, 2, and 3 - different workouts (different from each other and from week 1)
Week 4 - same as week 3 but superset everything and double rest time
Follow this for the 8 weeks, changing exercises each day and only repeating those exercises on the following week when you superset them.
Hope that helps[/quote]
It isn’t double the rest time (unless I did it wrong) on the supersets. If you are using 60 s rest, you do the first exercise, rest a minute, do the second exercise and rest 1 minute before returning to the first exercise again. That doubles the rest automatically but you don’t switch to 2 minutes between sets of exercises.
[quote]Arioch wrote:
It isn’t double the rest time (unless I did it wrong) on the supersets. If you are using 60 s rest, you do the first exercise, rest a minute, do the second exercise and rest 1 minute before returning to the first exercise again. That doubles the rest automatically but you don’t switch to 2 minutes between sets of exercises.
Other than that, spot on with the definition.
[/quote]
There are different ways to do supersets but I am pretty sure Chad wanted you to do the traditional way which was do 1 set of an exercise, say bench press, and with Zero rest do the second exercise (say pull-ups), then rest twice as long. That is one set, repeat as necessary.
I got that because that is the general way you do supersets and they are obviously harder so you would need more rest if you are combining the exercises than doing them singly. He isn’t super clear but he does say this:
“Rest between sets for the same muscle group: 60-120 seconds, and 120-240 seconds (antagonist training)”
I plan to revamp my workout starting Monday since I was not doing it correctly. However, I am trying to also get rid of my bulging gut. I am trying to eat more cals to gain more mass and eat clean foods.
Should I do cardio to get rid of gut? If not, how will I lose the fat around my mid section? Any feedback is appreciated.
I think that would be a totally separate goal. You cant really expect to get big and eat a ton and lose body fat at the same time usually.
I feel into that pothole a few times throughout high school. Just build up your gut and everything else so it looks more defined sooner. It just comes down to whether you would rather be big now and cut, or feel that you’re real out of shape and cut the fat down now and pack on the mass later.
[quote]nptitim wrote:
There are different ways to do supersets but I am pretty sure Chad wanted you to do the traditional way which was do 1 set of an exercise, say bench press, and with Zero rest do the second exercise (say pull-ups), then rest twice as long. That is one set, repeat as necessary.
I got that because that is the general way you do supersets and they are obviously harder so you would need more rest if you are combining the exercises than doing them singly. He isn’t super clear but he does say this:
“Rest between sets for the same muscle group: 60-120 seconds, and 120-240 seconds (antagonist training)”
Hope that makes sense
[/quote]
This was on page 5 of the TBT discussion that followed CW’s article:
[quote]Chad Waterbury wrote:
big100,
Absolutely, there’s rest between antagonist exercises. The rest remains the same as the previous week except for the fact that you’ll perform alternating exercises. Therefore, the actual time between the same exercise doubles.[/quote]
You are right that most trainers think of supersets as one exercise followed immediately by another. CW doesn’t think that way. Most of his supersets consist of two antagonist exercises that are seperated by a short rest period.
If you managed to go through that workout without taking rest between antagonist pairings, great job! I sure couldn’t do it.
I just tried Chad Waterbury’s workout on Total Body Training. I just want to make sure I am doing this right.
I did the following exercises 3 sets of 5 with 60 sec rest:
flat bench press
deadlifts
pulldowns
squats
military press
preacher curls
I ended with 3 sets of crunches.
I tried using heavy weight but plan to increase in certain areas since today was first day doing the routine. He suggests a 1.25-2.5% load increase each workout. That comes out to a few pounds increase each time. I will try that.
I hope to see some great gains with this routine.
[/quote]
TBT is a great program, I’ve completed it twice. But be careful, it is easy to overtrain, and it sounds like you may be pushing it doing squats and dl’s on the same day. Good luck.