No disrespect to Kevin (founder of TheFitcast), but his podcast that had a section dedicated to discussing the ‘300’ workout was more on the fad. It’s gone already. A major part of that section was his sponsor, a fat loss guru who is getting irritating already. He did it, horribly in time I will add.
There are amateur meat heads that are cranking ‘300’ in 11-15 minutes. Some people focus too much on what one person was reported on finishing the darn thing. 18 minutes?! Engrish isn’t that horrible, but that was one individual’s PR. hahaha The world of the couch made it look like this was some kind of baseline for everyone to beat or reach.
BUT this is an example of the misunderstanding and popular media’s jockriding of this one single workout. Then again, what businessman in their right mind is gonna tell potential customers to go to someone else’s business and search all the way to September 18, 2005 for ALMOST every workout cast and crew went through as well as earlier versions of the ‘300’ workout (which fall under the general category of “Grinders”).
When reading about GymJones WODs called “circuits” they look similar to CF stuff. Whatever. But it’s about the research and the hard work that not many people will think of doing ocne faced with it. Never mind being capable of doing it just yet.
The best example of scaled down workouts, due to conditioning and ability, would have to be “The Captain” aka Vincent. As he adpated better, his training ramped up. He goes from pear shaped to much better. We do not have to go far to understand how this happens…
Let’s turn to the articles and Author Lockerooms to understand, once again, muscle building and the processes taken. This is what I’ve learned so far:
A workout will not just do it.
Eating certain foods, in certain amounts, will not just do it.
Understanding the relationship between energy used in different modalities and intensities, nutrition, and supplementation seems to do most of it.
The original post asked if this would help with mass goals. I interpreted this as “Can I get bigger?” No, not really. Not as it is written, meaning straight through with no stopping. Break it down to resemble something like you’d find here and add a lil more weight then maybe it will…with nutritional support and proper post-exercise rest. These are things that can be learned from the articles and lockeroom readings here at T-Nation.
Let’s also add that much like the Velocity Diet, if you sub something or change a lil detail, then it’s not the ‘300’ workout. Perhaps inspired, but not the same. For example, using DBs instead of KBs. Using lat pulldowns instead of pullups. Doing curls, etc. Get the picture?
I like the recent Blood Article Series with Chad Waterbury. This is talking about complexes and hybrids he may have his athletes doing. Do those instead. At least the maker of that stuff is here to openly answer your qestions about his writings (this is in comparison to the stance of Twight n Co, to which they do not answer questions other than that was in the interviews and 2 articles).
I just feel people have a lot to lose if they trust in one thing without looking at the whole picture. Downside to this whole thing, 8 to 10 weeks of this ‘300’ stuff and then what? Repeat? Yeah, right. Stuck in Tae Bo all over again.