At the risk of parading my ignorance here, the Bring the Pain series lays out various bodypart priortization scenarios involving upper body, lower body, & trunk. I know where the upper body & lower body workouts are, but where are the trunk workouts? Is King’s article “Thinking Man’s Guide to Ab Training” what I’m looking for? Thanks for your help.
I don’t think IK has posted them yet, I remember reading somewhere that he was considering doing a 12 week trunk program as well. How are you finding the last phase of 12weeks U.B. ?
Hyphnz, I regret that I’m not getting out of the last phase of “12 Weeks” what I hoped I would. Somehow, right before I started the 4th phase, I did something – I don’t know what or how – to my left rotator cuff. Lost 15 degrees of movement in every direction & about half the strength in my whole left arm. The range of motion came back pretty quick, but the strength is only now beginning to return; that meant 3 weeks of really reduced workouts, just when I was ready to go heavy. I took the problem to my doctor, who says the symptoms look less like rotator cuff trouble & more like nerve impingement or damage. He x-rayed my neck to discover some degeneration in the disks between the vertebrae in my lower neck, which may be the root of the troubles. I go for an electro-myelogram on Friday to see what kind of problem there is, & where. Still, left arm strength has returned enough for me to do what I set out to do in the 4th phase: benchpress my bodyweight, which I did this morning (kudos to me!). This represents a 40 lb increase in my wussie bench press using the “12 Weeks” program. Lord only knows what I could have accomplished if I hadn’t gotten injured.
BTW, thanks for taking an interest & for asking. The forum is always best when it's personal. I'm taking next week off & then it's on to "Bring the Pain."
That’s a damn good question. I was wondering the same thing. It seems like his 1st priority would be to finish the damn trunk section. He’s written other articles since the arm workout so I don’t know.
You can easily build your own workout using the thinking mans guide and any other t-mag ab article in the meantime, add them in as seperate shorter sessions or at the end of leg day…anyone know is IK is making a 3rd Gen of leg/arm workouts?
What a blow having the injury, but as you said you achieved the goal and yet it could have been a lot more, I thought you were busting a gut to do Meltdown? I have done 2 days (rest today) of it after stopping 1/2 way thru Limping/bring on pain U.B. to concentrate on some fat loss. You may consider doing something different as a break betweeen 12 weeks and bring on pain as I recall Chris S suggesting some different type of focus to get the best out of them, I certainly felt I wasn’t getting the same out of Pain series as 12 weeks and had gone straight thru, wish I had thrown something diff. in between.
Well, I see I have to come completely clean & not hide my shame. I did start the Meltdown, but the second week into it, I managed to twist my ankle, fall & fracture a bone in my right foot … jumping rope, of all things. Can’t use my feet at the moment, so no squats, no deadlifts, no calf work: no Meltdown. It didn’t keep me from the gym, though. I went right back in & did my upper body work & for lower body, substituted leg ext, leg curls & hyperextensions, anything I could do without directly involving my feet. It feels wussie, but what else can I do? If I behave myself, I should be healed up in a couple of more weeks & can ease back into things.
As for doing another routine between Limping & Bring the Pain, I’ve considered it. In fact, I’ve tried to do that the last 3-4 weeks anyway, between the IK upper body workouts, & in spite of my many infirmities. Part of what is pushing me to go into the Bring the Pain sooner rather than later is that I need to finish whatever bulking I’m going to do by the middle of March at the latest (being a Priest, I observe Great Lent “religiously,” & it starts in mid-March. I simply can’t eat enough during Lent to maintain a bulking program). What with winter & the holidays & the potential for flus ‘n’ such coming up, I figure I need to start Bring the Pain by mid-October to be sure I allow enough time to finish it by mid-March. Then I thought I would work for a couple of months on getting lean & address whatever imbalances I’ve managed to acquire, & be buffed by summer! Whatca think? Is it a plan?
Well, well, well, you thought you could keep schtum on the injuries eh? But you got caught out! You really are a cot case at the moment and doing the REAL limping series. March is 5 months away, and this talk of flus and colds, what happened to Matthew 8.17, … “he himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses” . Why don’t you do something like you are at the moment as the inbetween till you come right then mid -late November do B.O.T.P. upper and lower combined, both from week 1?
A “cot case”? Oy, now that hurts… Actually, I could put off the BOTP workouts for a while & run each phase for 3 weeks instead of 4, like I have it planned now. You really think it would be better?
Sorry, Hyphnz, I forgot to respond to your quotation of Scripture. Indeed, Christ took on our infirmities & bore our diseases, in this way demonstrating that He had, in fact, assumed our full humanity & shared fully in our condition. Mt 8.17 does not mean, however, that He has removed our infirmities or diseases from us, as simple experience shows. Hope that’s a fair exegesis.
I think that 3 week phases work well as can get used to prog, crank it up, then go to failure, 2 x phases then rest week. On the scripture I have got friends who have lived completely by faith for past 15 years and are big on NO medical intervention etc so it was a bit of a wind up. I know from personal experience that it doesn’t always work like that, read today, doing squatts went down too fast and strained back, to friends I would only have symptons of a sore back and need to have faith it is actually ok. Well they are very sore symptoms! I don’t have a history of back pain but really got sore doing hip dominant limping days esp phase 1, did you have similar experience?