BBB Beefcake Week 4
Warm-up
Mobility Complex
Activation
Full cleans to 60kg
A. Squat
5@85, 97, 110
5 circuits of
B1. Squat 10@85
B2. Ring Dips/chins 10 each
Time: 19:10
Running this program during the winter is somewhat ill-advised I feel (respiratory stress). Probably wouldn’t be as bad if I did B1 first and then B2 but it’s fun putting that work in. I don’t feel as if I’m missing out on conditioning anymore, as I get that during the workout.
BBB Beefcake Week 4
Warm-up
Mobility Complex
Activation
Push press, ramp to a single on 60+ something.
A. Press
5@32.5, 37.5, 42.5
5 laps of
B1. Press (10 reps)
B2. Split Squat (front-rack) 5 reps @62
B3: Pendlay Rows @ 52
B4. Ab-wheel (kneeling)
Time: 28:05
Starting to regret not deloading before starting this program. Worn.
Will be joining a boulder competition Friday, which is ordinarily bench day.
I think I’ll simply move it to Saturday, and remove the unilateral leg-work that day as I’m squatting Sunday. Between that, and combining the two-sessions I’d rather train three days in a row rather than do Squat+Bench followed by Press the following day.
BBB Beefcake Week 4
Warm-up
Mobility Complex
Activation
Snatch to 50kg
A. Deadlift
5@94, 108, 122
5 circuits of
B1. Dips (10 reps)
B2. Deadlift (10 reps at 94)
B3. (Band) Face-pulls (20 reps)
Time: 15:28
The thing I don’t like about following a program is days like this. I’m absolutely, positively, at the edge of a full-blown cold. If I go in and keep the same pace as I normally do on squat day and superset it with chins and dips it’s very likely that I’ll be homeridden for a few days.
The completionist in me just wants to keep with the schedule, and not make any amendments on the day. It’s the same thing that makes me loathe achievements and percent-completed/discovered of video games.
I’m thinking about maybe doing,
A. Squat (5s progression)
B. Squat (5x10 FSL, maybe even skip the timer and just get it done)
C. chins/dips
But I think volume might be my enemy today. It’d probably be best to do two-three waves of 6/4/2 on squats and go home.
But it just feels, to borrow someone else’s words, that I’m undoing Jim’s sorcery.
Was it these kinds of things that didn’t mesh well for you with 5/3/1 @T3hPwnisher or some other quality?
I try to remind myself
A program is not a list of chores you must do; it’s a plan to elicit a physiological response to stimulate an adaptation. If the body had enough it had enough… it is really hard to undertrain
Just the sub-max programming in general. Jim is big on training enough to create a response and not beating the hell out of the athletes. Training is meant to improve you: not beat you down. He’s 100% correct and I absolutely can’t stand it. I definitely go with Jon Andersen’s approach that, to get results, you have to put the body through such absolute hell that it’s ONLY choice is to get bigger and stronger to adapt.
However, I find the way Jim structures training to make such absolute and total sense that, even absent the specific percentages he prescribes, you can get a lot out of 5/3/1.
Ah, yes. I feel that in a big way. Out of every three week cycle, the first two I’m very prone to adding stimulus to feel sufficiently beat up even though I try to remind myself to trust the process and knowing that those lighter weeks feed the others.
I was very quick to start considering ramping down during the 5x10 sets and definitely would have if it weren’t for your “don’t fuck it up” comment with regards to running Beefcake/BtM/DW
Bouldering competition. Did not win, and there was no ranking beyond that. Had a blast though. And, a friend of mine, who has a solid two decades of life on every other competitor won. Was nice to see him smile.
BBB Beefcake Week 4
Bench
5@52, 60, 67
5 laps of
B1. Bench 10@52
B2. Pendlay Row 10@55
B3. Ab-wheel Roll-out (kneeling) 10 reps
No unilateral work this time because I had squats the next day.
Since my breath was laboured from doing… anything at all I just focused on low reps and strength. Really took my time between sets here.
A1. Squat
5@75
3@105
3@115
3@125
3@132
1@136,
1@140, filmed this, unhappy with the depth
A2. Weighted Chin-up
3@20
3@30
3@25
3@20
3@20
3@20
4@20
6@20
B. Squat
3@120
3@100
3@80
3@60
really focused on hitting depth for these and did them as fast as I could strip the weight off the bar.
It felt so good to have the autonomy to dictate the contents of the session myself.
I don’t know when the last time was that I finished a program. Athlete Lean, Athlete Strong maybe? Or, Thib’s boot-camp was more recent than that. Either way, it is rare that I see a program through.
The boot-camp switched up the training every three weeks, with modifications every single week. AL/AS also had weekly mods. But I remember that even during the boot-camp I “raged against” it internally after a while and I think my adherence to the program then was a consequence of me paying money for it.
Sorely miss being able to train with my friends too, just because what I do and what they are doing does not mesh. Have also been feeling increasingly frustrated with the rigidity of my schedule. In much the same way as I’ve been feeling a lot better after being more lax with my diet (not tracking, just making sure I eat plenty and being satisfied with seeing the scale exhibiting my desired trend-line — that’s “up” by the way) I think I’ll take some time and do the same thing with training.
Keep training the same lifts hard, trying to progress, changing things up slightly when I feel the psychological need or when I stall and just let principles guide me rather than a specific program. Think I’ll run 2 days on, 1 off, 1 one, 1 off, repeat to make for a more chaotic structure and hopefully feel that I can live a richer life as a consequence. Try to make training fit around life rather than fitting life around training.
So, I’ll sketch up some sessions and then slot them in when feasible. I.e., let’s say I’m climbing tomorrow (I am), and I did legs the previous day (which I did) then doing a lot of back work today is dumb so I’ll have a session more tailored towards upper-body pressing work for a day such as this.
Ah man, that takes me back. I miss the days of not winning bouldering competitions.
On this topic, I can’t recommend highly enough the benefits of having “essential” and “nice” work in programs. That way on shit days, you can scale back appropriately. If you’re like me, you’ll probably find that as soon as you get in your main work, it becomes very easy to make a call on whether to do more or not. I think Wendler would consider this part of knowing the trap doors in your program.
If you’re looking for an alternative though, Krocs deadlift program has served me well and I know @johnimperial is running the bench program which looks pretty similar. That’s a pretty simple weekly progression which you can plug assistance into as you see fit.
I’m actually running the kroc program for both deadlift and bench. So far so good. I just do what I feel like doing after the main lifts.
I’m doing the same, just about to start the bench program tomorrow. I kinda wanted to do the squat one as well, but it looked much more intense and I’m not really up for an intense squat program at this point.
LOL I would skip squat for a year if I did MMS too
That was kind of my thoughts too. So I decided to use some Dave Tate programming. He’s famous for sensible, reasonable training, right?
PR territory? Another big plate is always a great milestone.
If depth had been good, I would’ve called it a PR. I don’t think I’ve squatted a heavier weight.
I appreciate that, I’m just going to do my own thing though. As said, I’ve decided to try 2-on-1-off-1-on-1-off. That makes the weeks differ slightly. I inject 1 rest day per week, and 1-2 climbing days (most weeks fit 2). And then I work backwards from there, as I don’t want to put pulling work near the climbing sessions. It’s like laying a puzzle of constraints.
Constraint 1: 2-on-1-off-1-on-1-off (2:1:1:1)
Contraint 2: 1 rest day per week
Constraint 3: No pulling before climbing
Constraint 4: Try and plan sessions so they complement one another
Constraint 5: Squat twice weekly
Constraint 6: Try to deadlifts 1 time per week (2:1:1:1 loops every six weeks, 1 week misses out on deads)
And with that out comes the need for a few different sessions,
So I’m trying to design sessions for each by re-using exercises that I need while trying to slot in my rehab work too. I just make up some core templates for the various lifts and tweak as my plan hits the reality of the gym I’m in. With squatting twice weekly I intend to vary high-bar and low-bar as I believe it is a lift that carries forward other lifts.
Pulling really needs to be reduced with climbing I’ve found. On Nutty’s program and a few others I ran my back just stagnated completely. It did so again on BBB Beefcake. With what I was doing prior it wasn’t stalled. Seems easy to do “too much” back work, especially vertical pulling, with climbing as a side activity.
I have to admit, I love the approach of a modular training program because i like ordered things. At least on paper.
Devils advocate though: I see a fair bit of redundancy and unnecessary complication there. For example, I don’t personally understand what legs means as distinct from squat/squat assistance or deadlift/deadlift assistance.
I think my brain just melted reading that.
That’s more or less what it means. Squat trained as a movement and then quads/hams as hypertrophy assistance.
The dangers of working with systems is I can systemasize shit even when it’s chaotic. I see structure and patterns in everything. Tendrils shoot out of my brain traversing down every conditional path afforded by any system. Kinda ironic that the idea was that the influx of some chaotisism will afford me some relaxation but my brain kinda just started slotting things in and comparing pros/cons and consequences of all the different realities that I could be exposed to.
Occupational hazard?
