Date: 2nd July
Fourth proper week on the BBS Big 5:
| Week 5 | *Week 4* | Week 3 | Week 2 | Week 1 | ||||||
| Exercise | Lbs | TUL | Lbs | TUL | Lbs | TUL | Lbs | TUL | Lbs | TUL |
| Seated Row | 115 | 115 | 1:31 | 110 | 2:02 | 100 | 2:15 | 80 | 3:08 | |
| Chest Press | 90 | 90 | 1:39 | 100 | 1:11 | 100 | 1:17 | 90 | 1:28 | |
| Pulldown | 135 | 130 | 2:15 | 130 | 1:56 | 125 | 2:15 | 110 | 2:26 | |
| Overhead Press | 60 | 60 | 1:37 | 60 | 1:38 | 60 | 1:44 | 80, 70 | 0:35, 0:25 | |
| Leg Press | 260 | 260 | - | 250 | 3:02 | 230, 270 | 4.31 | 200 | 2:57 | |
TUL = Time Under Load
Post Workout Nutrition: this, 60 minutes later.
Total Time: 22 minutes (shorter than usual due to skipping legs).
This week I skipped legs, due to the upcoming mountain race I talked about in the sprinting post earlier in the week.
I am going to highlight improvements in time for a given weight in blue, worse times in red, and where the weight has changed, leave it black.
As you can see, I improved on pulldowns and very slightly got worse on shoulder press.
The good news is that all exercises are now more or less in the 90 - 120 second sweet spot and I am starting to get that 'feel' for exercises and the dynamics of the effort. I feel ready to make some progress.
As you can see, the only weight I plan to change for next week is an additional 5lbs onto pulldowns since I exceeded two minutes on that exercise.
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6 comments:
So do you think the plan is worth sticking to? I know 3 weeks is usually the "breaking point" with any kind of "diet"/exercise routine. I've been reading through the book myself and it seems to make sense, even if I don't understand a lot of the biology/chemistry they talk about.
Jedidja - give me another few weeks. I reckon the relative blueness / redness of the chart should give us an idea. Certainly from a time and health point of view I am liking it - it 'feels' like a step in the right direction because I always suspected I needed more rest than I was getting.
Glad things are going well for you with this program, M. Do you keep close track of the total time for the workout? I know that the book recommends keeping this down to maximize metabolic conditioning, and variation in this can certainly affect your TUL's.
-Bryce
Hi Bryce - I usually list the total time under 'Total Time' near where I say what I ate afterwards. I am definintely keen on getting the rest time down, and am just waiting for my training partner and me to get slick enough with the process so that we follow each other rather than wait for each other. I expect our TULs to suddenly drop at that point!
Hi - from a quick read of their site (and i confess that i have not read all of their articles so forgive me for any ignorance) BBS seems remarkably similar to Kieser Training - which is enormously popular across Europe and has a number of facilities in London. I suppose it depends what you are training for. If for pure health, then i've no doub that there are merits to this type of training. If however, you are training with aesthetics in mind and hypertrophy as a goal, i have no doubt that this method does not work. You may increase strength and bone denisty, but little else i fear.
As i said, i have not read or practiced BBS methods, but speaking from experience of Kieser Training only.
Interested to hear your views once you have had a look at the similarities yourself.
Rgds.
Anon - thanks for the info. I've a done a little bit of reading around this and it does sound as if there are a lot of similarities. I think the Kieser training has a wider list of exercises rather than the concept of a 'big 5'. I haven't been able to find out the exact recommendations for Kiesar training (in terms of sets, reps, speed etc) because of course they want people to come to their training sessions so that information is not on their website.
I am not convinced by your point about hypertrophy. I am sure there are many better ways to get bigger muscles, but I have always understood and read in various places that muscle size correlates, more or less, to strength. Sure, it's possible to get stronger without getting bigger, via various mechanisms and likewise to get bigger but not stronger. But once you have bottomed out on those mechanisms I think that rule does broadly apply.
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