Hello CT,
Can the motor skill acquisition sessions (from your Beast Building program) be enough on their own (3 sessions/week) ?
And/or using an A/B sessions (ABA BAB) still using this template and progressing every 2 sessions be a viable option ?
A whole-body approach is better,
The way strength-skill work is by allowing you to use a high frequency of practice of each lift (because it is easy to recover from). The more often you do it, the better it works.
By using an A-B-A approach each lift gets stimulated 1.5x per week (3 times every 2 weeks) which is not optimal for this type of stimulation
That having been said the type of strength-skill work used in a motor skill acquisition session (giant cluster) takes a fairly long time. So doing 3 or even 4 lifts per session might not be practical.
So what you can do is use the giant clusters for 2 lifts per session and a less time-consuming strength-skill method (e.g. 4-5 sets 3 reps with 80%) for the 2 other lifts.
Which could look like this:
Workout A
Squat and chin-ups as strength clusters
Deadlift and bench as 4-5 x 3 @ 80%
Workout B
Deadlift and bench as giant clusters
Squat and chin-ups as 4-5 x 3 @ 80%
Then you would use the A-B-A structure.
So again, youāll get stronger without gaining size.
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Thank you for this !
Even when neurological adaptation is āachievedā?
You know what, let me correct myself I apologize, I wrote that article like 15-20 years ago and didnāt take the time to read it back and remember the specifics. I will delete my original post if you donāt mind (to avoid creating confusion in people who might not read the whole thread).
It will lead to muscle growth. Because of the high number of reps using a load of 80%+ (when I made the āno muscle gain commentā I had traditional strength-skill work in mind.
When using 80-90% every rep is an āeffective repā for hypertrophy in that it recruits the fast-twitch fibers and has a slow enough movement speed (while still trying to accelerate) to put a high level of muscle tension on the fibers.
In a motor skill acquisition session you can easily do 20-30 repetitions with 80-85% and probably around 10 with 90%. So that gives you plenty of effective reps to stimulate growth, especially during the first two phases (80 and 85%).
So yeah, it could be used as a stand-alone. In fact, I wrote an e-book (no published yet) called the BOSS system which revolves about doing only sets of 1 reps to build size and strength, which is a similar concept.
But the comment about the frequency still stands.
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I look forward to the ebook! Your āI, BBā system several moons ago really opened my eyes to using frequency and lots of low-rep sets to drive up volume.