Back East we just had our first snow. Do you know what that means? It's time to grow! If I'm going to be covered up by layers of clothes and coats, I might as well pack a some solid muscle on.
If you follow my log, you know I am just not a big fan of your "typical" hypertrophy training. Hypertrophy by the way is just a fancy term for building muscle. I think we meatheads like using it because it's one of the few multi syllabic words we can both spell and say. Anyway, we all know I like taking shirtless selfies now that I'm no longer the rubenesque guy from the before pic, but I'm not a big fan of pump and pose lifting. I'm more of a meat and potatoes guy. I like the big three of squatting, deadlifting, and benching.
Luckily Jim Wenlder has a prescription for such a problem. No, it's not the 5/3/1 Bodybuilding routine that's out there. I tried that, and it wasn't for me. I'm more interested in his Boring But Big Three Month Challenge. There's hardly any fluff at all with this program and I can't wait to get started.
For the Three Month Challenge you perform the squat, bench, deadlift, and overhead press for the 5/3/1 reps. The difference is, you don't take the usual AMRAP (as many reps as possible) finishing set. You stick to the prescribed reps. This will leave you fresher for the volume that is to follow.
With the traditional 5/3/1 there's an option for some additional volume with FSL (First Set Last) sets. That's where after your heavy set, you drop back down to your first working set for 3 sets of 5 reps. With the Three Month Challenge, after the your heavy set, you will do 5 sets of 10 reps for additional volume. Here's where the challenge comes in. The first month you use 50% of your training max for the 5 sets of 10. The second month it's 60%, and the third is 70%.
Although the challenge sets are at a lighter percentage than the traditional fsl sets, the volume is increasing substantially from 15 total reps to 50. The other thing is, sets of 10 theoretically will take at least twice as long to complete. This is important because time under tension is a critical component in building muscle, you know, hypertrophy.
In the article Jim wrote, he was adamant that very little assistance as far as other exercises be done with this program. He outlined what was to be done and left no room for substitutions. For the bench and overhead press days he specifies 5 sets of 10 back work. One day is pullups and the other is dumbbell rows. They can be supersetted with the main lift if you'd like. Other than that he says you can do 3 sets of 10 curls, pushdowns, and a rear delt exercise, but that's it.
I know I said I'd never do pullups again, but I want to give them one more shot. I actually really miss pullups. Fortunately, my back is feeling well and I think my body is ready for them. I just need to go slowly. Looking back, I think the biggest problem I had with pullups was the overuse. I was doing 50 a day. Now, I'll just be doing 50 once a week. I figure I'll start off slowly with low reps and build my way back up. We'll see.
For the squat and deadlift days, he outlined 5 sets of 10 for abs only. The theory is, with all that volume, you don't need anything additional to hit your legs or low back. Jim had ab wheel rollouts and hanging leg raises as the ab exercises of choice. I'm going to substitute ghr situps for the hanging leg raises, just because I feel I get more benefit from them.
Being so demanding with training volume, conditioning is to be kept to a minimum. I'm going with the recommended walking 2 miles 4 days a week. This can be done with or without a weight vest. The vest will be a game time decision for me depending on how I feel that day.
This is definitely a program that I have wanted to do for a while. However, I know it's a program that can't be done on a hypocaloric diet. Considering I have been dieting for the last eight years, I wasn't able to try it. Now that I am in a comfortable place with my bodyfat, I am not afraid to bring my calories up so I can meet the challenge.
The cool thing is, I have fresh maxes on all my lifts to work from. Plus I just had my bodyfat checked. I was 11% at 218. I will run my maxes and have my bodyfat checked again after I complete the 12 week program. I'm really curious to see what the results will be. I'll definitely report back before that on how things are going, so stay tuned.
Here's my program:
OHP Day (Viking Press)
-OHP 5/3/1 Prescribed reps
-OHP 5x10 (month 1-50%, month 2-60%, month 3-70%)
-Pullups 5x10? (I'll be starting off slowly with these)
-Curls 3x10
-Pushdowns 3x10
-Rear delt flyes 3x10
Deadlift Day (Hex bar)
-DL 5/3/1 Prescribed reps
-DL 5x10 (month 1-50%, month 2-60%, month 3-70%)
-GHR situps 5x10
Bench Day
-Bench 5/3/1 Prescribed reps
-Bench 5x10 (month 1-50%, month 2-60%, month 3-70%)
-Dumbbell rows 5x10
-Curls 3x10
-Pushdowns 3x10
-Rear delt flyes 3x10
Squat Day (Yoke bar to a box)
-DL 5/3/1 Prescribed reps
-DL 5x10 (month 1-50%, month 2-60%, month 3-70%)
-Ab wheel rollouts 5x10
Conditioning
2 mile walk 4x a week with or without a weight vest
*IMPORTANT NOTE-The percentages are based off of training maxes, not true maxes. That is a big difference. If you don't understand what 5/3/1 training maxes are, you need to get Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 book. Also, upon reading this over I noticed I forgot to mention, I am making a rather large deviation from how Jim wrote the program. Jim had it where you'd swap out the upper body and lower body exercises for the 5x10 work. In other words, after the main 5/3/1 work on OHP, you do the 5x10 on bench. You'd deadlift, then squat, bench then ohp, and squat, then deadlift. I'll take all the crap anyone is willing to dish out on this, but I have zero interest in doing one exercise and then having to load up a different bar on a different apparatus, and then have to warm up for that exercise. So I'm sticking with the same exercise for the day. Deal with it.
I do believe Jim currently recommends doing BBB the way you have programmed. So you're cooking with gas, as always. Big fan of the blog!
-Neil
I was wondering if you will raise your training max every month like regular 5-3-1 ie. 5lbs. upper body, 10lbs. lower body. Or will you keep your max constant through the entire three months? Thanks