Completed workout 12 last night. With an empty gym I was able to complete in under 30 minutes. My heart rate was 125-130 on average with it getting up to 155 during the stimulate squats.
Dr. Darden is this the metobolic effect you have spoken about? I was spent afterward, arms shaking as I drank my Surge, and a great bicep pump that lasted all night.
Another added benefit is my flexibility has improved in my squating. Going deeper and holding the stretch position has become much easier.
Tim, Dr. D - looking for some advice. I have to prepare for the Army Combat Fitness Test, a 100 mile bike race, and a couple of 10k’s my wife tricked me into, all in the next two months. I love this style of training, want to continue, but need to start some serious endurance/body hardening work. Should I modify and keep a couple full-body, modified Surge Challenge workouts in my programming the next two months? Or pause and resume when I can focus on hypertrophy again?
My review of the Surge Challenge thru the first 2 phases:
-Sold on Surge Workout Fuel. Will not train without it going forward.
-Chest is my lagging body part, and this is the best my pecs have ever looked. Biceps and forearms also blew up, too. Found a new vein on my right bicep.
-Training every other day is really, really hard for me. I like to train every day, ideally twice daily. But, I now see the benefits of recovery in a hypertrophy phase. Learning occurred.
-Body comp: gained a pound, lost about an inch on my waist. So, even eating about 500 kcal above maintenance, lost a bit of body fat. Based on pre-food poisoning measurements, for the record.
-A surprising development for me: this challenge forced me into the “community” of T Nation, and I am so happy I took the plunge. Tons of support, no ass-hat bullshit I see in other places on the inter web. Just dudes who like to train. Very cool experience. I’m a long time customer and lurker, been around since the Muscle Media 2000 days, I check the website every day. Great to meet and interact with y’all.
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And we’re happy to have you!
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Heck yeah! Welcome and thanks for hanging out with us.
Tim or Dr Darden,
Any suggestions for someone who is trying to tighten up their stomach? I’m very self conscious about my stomach because I’ve always been skinny my whole life. I weighed 95 pounds at about 16 years of age. I feel that I need to eat a ton in order to gain some muscle but I don’t want my stomach getting any bigger. My day job is largely behind a desk so I’m not very active during the day. Any thoughts?
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There’s certainly better or worse ways to go about either objective, but the bottom line is you’ll have to pick one for a time
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It’s so hard to pick!
Often, doing hard things is how we transform and become impressive.
Once you make this hard decision, the REAL hard work begins
Measurements after workout 12. added 1 inch to arms 1 inch to chest waist stayed the same, lost 1 inch on thighs and gained 3 lbs body weight. Feeling great. Thanks again for letting me be a part of this challange. I love the community and input from everyone. I think this is the longest I have stuck to a program and I am feeling the results.
I would agree. And I like the idea of leaning out and then adding the muscle instead of bulking up and dropping fat. But I wonder about doing the surge challenge workouts in a deficit.
I hear you, but I think you have to reframe it a little.
I used to tell younger LTs (old man story!): “indecision is deciding not to act, and that’s the only wrong choice.”
So I’d opine that you are choosing, but what you’re choosing is to not have success at building muscle nor getting lean. When you look at it that way, picking either and going after it is far preferable to the middle ground of nothing
Thank you for that. Makes perfect sense. I’ll do some more thinking tonight and come up with a plan moving forward and stick to it.
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My fraternity leadership used the related “The best choice you can make is the right one, the second best choice is the wrong one and the worst you can do is nothing”.
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I love that
I’ve wrapped up the Surge Challenge, here is my review: (I’m nitpicky, don’t view any criticisms as a negative - rather critiques. I just want to be thorough in my review.)
To expand on this… I think the Surge Challenge would work great for people who need to get into the gym more often, or for people who need to expand their spectrum of training (always a good thing). It most certainly was an interesting experience, and I felt good after my training sessions - which was a nice change from feeling completely broken off after training (my usual). The pumps were good, I enjoyed the shoulder and triceps pumps because they still felt pumped when I was done.
The Bar Hang in the shoulders block feels misplaced to me and I substituted it for a “Clean Hold” (clean the bar up to shoulder-height and hold it for 40s); this felt better IMO and still worked the shoulders in a stretched position.
The Lats block didn’t really work for me as written, so I had to add some stuff to it (a common occurrence, my lats are uncooperative albeit wide and chunky).
I struggle to do high reps for anything in Biceps, where the concentric motion gets significantly weaker - yet I’m able to continue with long eccentrics after. This made the biceps block difficult for me… I wanted to do more weight but couldn’t increase due to inability to lift it (lol). This is just a “me” problem though.
I did notice in re-programming this challenge for @Shaina_Madel (wife) that the leg and thigh blocks really neglects the hamstrings. For me, I was happy about this because I strongly dislike training hammies - but this is an imbalance in the training… not a problem for short-term use, but would certainly need to be rectified if used in the long-run.
My biggest complaint about the program is simply that it is very difficult to execute in a commercial gym. Actually rather time-consuming to execute at a home gym too (and I’m pretty well equipped there), but this is from set-up time. I did not finish a single training session in under 45 minutes, but I was at least able to complete the training blocks (mostly) as prescribed.
All in all, I’d give this challenge am 8/10 and I’d give Surge a 9/10.
Now that I am done with the Surge Challenge, I will be moving on to a bastardized 5/3/1 and DoggCrapp training hybrid under the following plan:
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This is true of lots of programs, though. Many of CT’s programs require securing a DL platform, bench press, and spaces to do loaded carries. 6 weeks to Superhero a great program, but very tricky to pull off in a commercial gym.
I found that it took a bit of time to get the hang of pulling off in my home gym, but now it’s no more of a problem than any other workout. I do agree that it takes about 45 minutes to do, but that’s fine with me. At first I thought the workouts wouldn’t be challenging enough, but that’s certainly proved to be wrong. It’s just a different type of hard: doing the stimulate phases with slow eccentrics is freaking tough, but in a different way than doing the boring but big component of a 531 program.
That’s fair. I’d rate Surge pretty high, as it’s the first workout formula I’ve ever really liked and I do think it’s highly effective. For the workouts, I would have initially given it even lower than an 8, but now I’m seeing the results and wrapped my mind around the approach. It actually blends well with Crossfit on the non-lifting days, much more so than high rep barbell-based programs.
I’m committing to completing Phase 4, then I’ll take a short deload and reassess if I will continue to Phases 5 and 6 or move onto something different (such as a 531 or TB program).
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These are all fair points. I could see myself getting bigger if continuing with Surge Challenge, but I don’t know if i would see much regarding strength gains (I’m aware this is not the goal of the program). I could definitely see it pairing well with crossfit; I’m glad you have the experience to comment =)
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Really?
What specifically would you change to make it a 10?
I may re-evaluate this rating over time, but i simply haven’t seen a huge difference specifically due to Surge. It’s only been a month or so, and it absolutely helps with training recovery and stamina, I can’t say I see a huge difference in anything else. Details say it’s a staple for body composition training, but a month isn’t really enough time to see large changes in body composition (considering my diet has been okay at best for the last month).
Frankly, I’d need more time taking it to give more specific feedback… i can’t speak to the results of it, but it can say i enjoy training with it for sure. Like enough to buy it when I run out (that’s saying something).
I should also say that my training consistency has been supbar the last month, which furthers my claims for needing more time.
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If it costs $5 ! Jk… Im loving it. Well worth the $. Maybe another flavor or 2 ?
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