[quote]DH wrote:
You guys notice how similar the base concepts are on BBB to Waterburys stuff? It gets compared to DC often [/quote] Some earlier incarnation(s) of DC (which, I think, Dante used for himself as well as the greatest recovery freaks under his wing) used higher frequency than the current 2-way (and other variants). I think a cycle was 8 days instead of 14 or something like that. So everything was hit 3 times in 8 days, but with rest-pause etc that just isn’t an option for most, and neither does it help with progress as much. Not really used anymore. BBB (at least the actual training phases) are pretty much carbon copies of Phil Hernon’s training from his competition days (no surprise there lol)[quote], but it more resembles Chads HFT. He wanted people to work up to doing the whole body 3x per week over 6 workouts. His method is to train 2x on MWF.
BBBs first ramp gets the same thing done over 6 days. He advocates rep range bouncing from about 18rm to 5rm. Very close to BBB. Cut back on volume and frequency after 3-4 weeks. Just as BBB.
Ultimately he pushed to go to 8-10 workouts per week for training. And BBB’s ramp 2 and 3 advocate nearly daily training for 3 weeks straight.
Both advocated fast reps speed with CONTROL[/quote] Well, I don’t think that’s such an uncommon thing. Most bodybuilders worth their salt are explosive or at least very fast on the positive and control the negative (though it’s usually still fairly fast). Same for powerlifters etc… Sure, Poliquin and co (who are not big names or pioneers in bodybuilding no matter what people here want to believe) play around with the most intricate tempo recommendations… But watch 98 percent of big bodybuilders and powerlifters train, and you’ll see none of that crap… Just explosive/fast positives and fairly fast negatives [quote]. Finally, Chad has mentioned that sheer volume “through frequency” trumps all other variables for hypertrophy.[/quote] That’s one where I really don’t agree, I think progression trumps everything else, as long as you don’t just train with low reps all the time. But frequency can aid progression to a good degree… Then again, there are methods that allow for similar progression with less frequency (DC rest-pause + exercise rotation… 2 work sets at different rep ranges… That one’s actually still a bit of a mystery to me: My Back Squat, sumo pull etc all exploded on DC despite only hitting them every 2 weeks etc… But sure enough I’ve had many periods where I could just add 10-20 lbs to my 4-8 repper AND my widowmaker every time I trained… Totally crazy and no chemical aid either… )
I’m not much of a fan of going all-out volume + extreme loads (10x3, 20x1, whatever) + frequency.
I know few (if any?) who managed to stay injury-free on that combination, most get injured a lot and end up with joint and tendon trouble…
Mind you, it’s not the results of such routines that I doubt. I’m just not very partial to this “maximize everything” kind of mentality… I’ve seen what less extreme approaches can do for a trainee without the added dangers.
The body can adapt to a lot (most of it can, anyway) and you can sure handle a huge amount of work… But do you need it?
My dad has worked with and treated a ton of eastern block and former eastern-Germany’s Olympic weightlifters… They’re not doing very well, joint and tendon-wise.
So imitating their training too closely seems foolish to me… Their coaches didn’t give a fuck whether those guys could still stand up straight at age 40… They just wanted to get them strong fast and win medals for the limited time that their careers lasted and that was it. (so maybe I’m biased here again)
(no offense meant in any way here, of course, just discussing things…)
And to the newer lifters reading this, I still think that BBB is a great program… And way better for bodybuilding and beginner training than Chad’s stuff. I just think that once you’ve gotten to a good level, you might really want to consider less extreme approaches when it comes to frequency and such.
