Member-only story
Closing out my year of powerbuilding with a return to (a variation of) the most popular review I’ve written: Boring But Big: Jim Wendler’s Boring But Big: Beefcake Training. (To see the rest of my year of powerbuilding, check out: Coolcicada’s PPL, P.H.A.T. and P.H.U.L.)
Some people may not be keen on calling BBB a powerbuilding program since it lacks isolation exercises and therefore isn’t typical in the body building department. But, BBB does what virtually every other powerbuilding program does: combines some high intensity, low rep work with low intensity, high volume work for a best of both worlds type programming. It’s just all that low intensity work is also barbell work.
Unlike every other powerbuilding program I’ve run this year, Beefcake training does allow for some calculated one rep max testing. So, let’s compare where I am with my 1RMs before this year of powerbuilding and after:
Overhead Press (OHP): 170 lbs → 175 lbs
Back Squat: 430 lbs → 435 lbs
Bench: 275 lbs → 285 lbs
Deadlift: 465 lbs → 445 lbs
Bodyweight: 189 lbs → 199 lbs
Body fat: 16.1% → 20.2%
I expected slow progress here, as I spent a year backing off on building up my 1RMs to do more…
