daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#221
Bob,
I spit in the face of sarcopenia. I will never be fraile. That is my mindset.
For me it is a mental game. I talk to myself about BBS in a positive way and that makes me want to do it. In the middle of BBS I’m almost calculating the seconds till I’m done. Once I got to a place where I knew the metabolites were activated, and my heart rate was up, I got hooked.
So maybe try to psych yourself into it. Before I did BBS I was doing volmetric resistance training, which takes so much longer, and progress is very slow. But I did make some progress. For me that made it a little easier to go to BBS routines.
This is a good question. It doesn’t really make sense to me either. When I was doing StrongLifts 5x5, lifting was 3 days a week and it was very heavy sets of compound exercises like deadlifts and squats. I had no problems.
When I did some research on it, it seemed like the evidence that CNS recovery is measured in hours and minutes not days. I tried doing BBS workouts with just a couple days spaced between and it did not go well. I regressed rather progressed on my TUT. I tried sticking in some HIIT exercise like Tabata training in between BBS sessions so it didn’t feel like I was wasting a week doing nothing. Much better, but my lifts still stalled. The only thing that really seemed to work for me was spacing out the workouts by 5-6 days. My best performances usually come when I have > 1 week recovery. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and there is plenty of literature to suggest that CNS over-training is imaginary. I’m still not 100% convinced that CNS recovery takes a week, but I’ve given up poking that particular bear.
One confounding factor is that everyone’s recovery ability is different. Some folks may have no problem doing more than one BBS workout spaced just 2 days apart. I’m not one of them!
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#223
This is what I have discovered also.
Now Ted Naiman says he can do HIRT everyday. My body does not work that way.
I will take that advice!
I’m thinking of starting with BFR and go the BBS route in February, I want to find a nice little gym that isn’t too crowded
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#227
I’m playing with interactive plotting my BBS results. Since I’m going to combine upper and lower into one day of 6 exercises this comming week I wanted to get the most recent past plotted since some of this will change.
This is wt versus dt with the size of the circle the number of reps.
In the interactive chart you can mouse over the circles and see the reps. I also have some TUT values but I’m not consistent with collecting that data.
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#228
Interesting short clip from a longer video:
Key take aways:
20 g protein needed for muscle synthesis (eggs okay)
protein within 30 mins of completion of training (I haver heard other researchers talk about 90 mins)
chocolate milk is good source or protein (yuck)
protein source needs to contain leucine amino acid
20 grams is 3 eggs so that is easy. I’ll try to find the whole presentation later this week and watch it.
In terms of timing of eating I usually eat at 90 mins because I do a cool down exercise, hot tub, sauna and shower but since I’m going to do BBS in 1 day a week I can just be done and come home to eat.
That’s a phenomenal rate of progress over such a short period of time. Doing 5 reps at 140lbs suggests one rep max of 157 lbs. Doing 15 reps at 150 lbs is a one rep max of 225lbs. Put differently, you are literally 50% stronger than you were two months ago, which is batshit crazy.
This is a great website for the 1 rep max calculations, but it also an interesting feature where you can benchmark your lifts by sex/weight/age against their database of hundreds of thousands of lifters.
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#230
Nick,
I’ll post all the graphs later. Thanks for the analysis. I feel like I’m not making progress fast enough. I’m still working in “you can do more” self speak.
On the BFR restriction front I did my 4th one today for arms and this was the first push the heck out of it workout.
8 lbs bi,tri, wrist 30/15/15/15 rest 30/60
By the end of the biceps I started to feel it and my triceps it was difficult to finish. The wrists were not as hard but I do BBS wrists at 40 to 50 lbs each wrist.
It’s been an hour and I can feel some soreness and fatigue setting in. I fasted for 34+ hrs but had bone broth and collagen 30 mins before the workout.
Thanks again for the analysis.
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#231
I have not charted overhead because I’m still dialing in the right wt. Some will stop because of combining this week. Also, I don’t chart inner and outer thighs because I have maxed out the eqpt.
The leg ext and leg curl seem to be crazy progress as well
Yup. I see what you mean. Still, it’s terrific progress.
I’ve been thinking a bit about measuring and graphing progress myself. It’s tricky because there are 3 variables to track (date,weight,reps). There is also the problem of normalizing two different weights and reps into a meaningful strength comparison. The solution that I thought of is to combine two of the variables (weight & reps) into a single variable: 1 rep max. This seemed like a good thing to track, because at the end of the day, my priority is gaining strength, and 1RM is the best measurement of max power.
In Excel, this is very easy to do. There are a number of well researched formula’s to calculate 1 rep max as a function of weight & repetitions. They’re all simple, and they all give back similar results.
By doing it this way, it allows you to chart exercises in a simple line graph, and it allows you to put multiple exercises in a single graph. You can also change the unit to “% increase vs baseline” to see where you’re making progress, and where you are lagging. For example if you started with a 1 rep max of 100lbs on your chest press, and have made it to 125lbs, that’s a 25% increase. If by contrast you started at a 1 rep max of 40lbs on the pull down but have made it 60lbs, that’s a 50% increase. In that case it might make sense to change the exercise order so that you’re doing the chest press prior to the lat pull down so that it can catch up.
That’s actually the reason why I started looking into metronome apps and tracking repetitions. Dr. McGuff said in BBS that TUT is what counts and that reps don’t really matter, so I never tracked them before. By using a metronome to keep the duration of each rep consistent, I’ll be able to track both reps and TUT, make meaningful strength comparisons from week to week, and adjust my workouts accordingly.
I have a tendency to over-complicate things if you couldn’t tell already…
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#234
I can add the 1 rep max calc to my charting routine. I could represent 1 rep max as color density or rollover tool tip. Also can add % of base to the charts as another axis.
I’ve paid less attention to TUT than I should. I think I need to double down.
I think measuring TUT becomes more important the closer you get to hitting a plateau. When we hit the intermediate stage, progress comes in seconds rather than pounds on a week to week basis. You’re still screaming up the strength curve though, so you’re probably not missing important info at the moment.
Probably not a bad idea to start tracking it though, just to get into the habit.
BTW, you were talking about anti-fragility the other day, and this photo made me think of it. Here is a recent photo of the inventor/innovator behind BFR training, Dr. Yoshiaki Sato at 73 years old:
I’ve heard this as far back as I can recall but I only started questioning it in the last 10 years.
The reason is this: protein is generally said to be the slowest macronutrient we eat to digest, and as @Don_Q pointed out above, the period of muscle building is measured in days not hours. It peaks at one day but certainly the first two days are the most. Maybe the first three.
Why would a single high dose of protein at 30 or 90 minutes matter if it’s not going to be ready to use for several more hours? I’d think that just having more protein as a day to day pattern would matter more; that would keep circulating amino acids higher. The thing is, if you go down the rabbit hole of how much protein is needed in the diet, we don’t need that much more. This was one of the things that Barry Sears got right in The Zone (IMO) when he derived how much more protein you’d need to add a couple of pounds of muscle per month (which we all know is pretty hard), and it comes to about an extra ounce of meat at each meal. Meat or other high quality protein: (an ounce of meat or fish = one egg = one ounce hard cheese)
Does anybody know of any real studies that support this idea of extra protein at 30 to 90 minutes?
Where I’m coming from is trying to figure out patterns of fasting and working out. This week, for example, I did my hour bike ride on Monday morning and then did my (attempt at a) BBS workout on Monday night, a couple of hours after dinner with a couple of good-sized chicken thighs. Tonight will be 48 hours and by the graph, I’ll either do OMAD or fast tomorrow or Friday. I’m not doing BFR (yet?) so having protein to feed that second peak the day after that workout isn’t a concern, but I think extra protein just isn’t dangerous.
This is the most comprehensive research I’ve found on the subject of nutrient timing. My conclusion is that, if you were fasting prior to exercise, it’s a good idea to eat some kind of protein relatively soon, but you’ll still build muscle even if you fail to hit a specific window of time. Whey is probably better than egg for the reasons you mentioned (absorbtion rate and bioavailability). Personally, I just eat eggs and ground beef as soon as my hunger hits (usually within 1-2hrs of lifting) and call it a day.
Here is the summary/conclusion of the article:
In conclusion, current evidence does not appear to support the claim that immediate (≤ 1 hour) consumption of protein pre- and/or post-workout significantly enhances strength- or hypertrophic-related adaptations to resistance exercise. The results of this meta-analysis indicate that if a peri-workout anabolic window of opportunity does in fact exist, the window for protein consumption would appear to be greater than one-hour before and after a resistance training session. Any positive effects noted in timing studies were found to be due to an increased protein intake rather than the temporal aspects of consumption, but a lack of matched studies makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions in this regard. The fact that protein consumption in non-supplemented subjects was below generally recommended intake for those involved in resistance training lends credence to this finding. Since causality cannot be directly drawn from our analysis, however, we must acknowledge the possibility that protein timing was in fact responsible for producing a positive effect and that the associated increase in protein intake is merely coincidental. Future research should seek to control for protein intake so that the true value regarding nutrient timing can be properly evaluated. Particular focus should be placed on carrying out these studies with well-trained subjects to better determine whether resistance training experience plays a role in the response.
I’m preparing myself for my first BFR workout and I have a few questions and I would love your input. Too much information and now I am all confused
I have 1, 2 and 3 kg dumbells at home, so I will start with 1kg.
Question 1: should I do arms first and follow with legs or the other way around, since we shouldn’t band arms and legs at the same time? how do you guys do your workouts, where you combine squats with biceps, triceps? Do you just use the bands on the arms and do squats or do you do band legs to do squats then remove leg bands, band arms and do arm exercises?
Question 2: since we should limit the time under bands, how would you suggest I do my exercises? biceps, triceps, wrists, shoulder press, chest press, bent-over row… Should I do a chest press+bentover row on a different day and alternate between these two sets?
Question 3: for legs, is it ok if I do lunges, squats, calf raises, and deadlifts?
I don’t know what my 1RM is since I only have weights up to 3kg, but I will start light, 30/15/15/15 with 1kg weights.
edit: Just something I noticed last week… I worked out on the 31.12. and then “rested” till 4.1. since we were in Pula. My workout on the 4th felt very different, I didn’t have any muscle soreness, I could do a full minute of bungee jumps, etc. This made me think about BBS and the importance of resting. Maybe I have been pushing too hard by exercising 4 to 5 times per week. I am looking forward to trying something new with BFR and BBS, decreasing the frequency of workouts but making that workout more efficient.
daddyoh
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!)
#239
Recovery for BBS can be 5 to 10 days. If you are really young and healthy maybe 4 days. I do BBS once a week. Was splitting Upper Body and LB on two days but this week will combine them.
Warm up first. Walk, treadmill, etc. I do a cool down as well 5 to 10 to warm up and 10 to 15 to cool down for my BBS.
For BFR 15 mins total time on arms. That is 3 exercises. Biceps, Triceps and wrists or forearms.
For legs I have read 20 mins under restrition is okay. I don’t know if arms first or last matter. For BBS I will do upper first because my lower strength is already very good. I’m thinking I will have strength in reserve for lower for BBS after pushing upper hard.
Personally, I restrict both arms and legs at the same time. My total workout takes 10 minutes. I’ve read the recommendation not to restrict both arms/legs at once, and not to restrict any for more than 20 minutes. I’m one for 2. It’s probably prudent to follow Dr. Mercola’s recommendation to do arm & leg restriction separately though. I haven’t seen his justification for that recommendation, nor have I seen it elsewhere, but it’s smart to play it safe.
It doesn’t really matter whether you do arms first or legs first. I do body-weight squats first to get them out of the way, but that’s just personal preference.
Band the limb that will be emphasized during the exercise. If you’re going to be doing legs first, do all of your leg exercises while banded. When you’re finished all leg exercises, remove the band from legs, add them to your arms, and do arm exercises. The limitation of banding only arms or only legs means that some “full body” exercises will be pointless (since only one set of limbs are banded). Select your exercises accordingly. Deadlifts aren’t a good fit for example.
My suggestion is that you keep it very simple to start off. Your goal should simply be to get comfortable with the bands, and get your body used to training under restriction. You don’t need a lot of exercises to accomplish this. This is how I have started off:
Bodyweight Squat
Push-ups
Bicep Curls
Calf raises
Tricep Extensions
Bear in mind that a significant limitation of BFR training is that it will primarily affect the limbs under restriction and not the torso/trunk muscles. Doing crunches is pretty pointless under such circumstances! Select your exercises accordingly. This is not to say that you can’t do these exercises, just that doing them while restricted won’t add much.
You can do any of the above. Deadlifts make less sense because it’s a full body exercise, but the rest are fine. I wouldn’t do all of the above for my very first workout though. It could be too much.
This is totally fine. The first couple workouts should just be about acclimating your body to BFR training. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have done all 4 sets in my first workout. I think just 2 or 3 is perfectly fine. Go to “fatigue” not “failure”. The DOMS is unreal if you go to failure in your first session (ask me how I know )
Everybody has different priorities. My top priority is exercise efficiency. Exercise scrambles my satiety signals, so I find it extremely difficult to lose weight if I exercise too much.
My take on it is that BBS is way more important than BFR. It hits every muscle, tendon, and joint in your body safely. It yields amazing results with just 20 minutes each week. I want to do a bit extra on top of that, but I’m not able to handle two BBS workouts in one week. BFR doesn’t impair my recovery between BBS workouts. If I could do only one, I would go with BBS.
That said, I think trying to start both at once could be too much. It makes sense to get used to one and then the other. You’re all set up for BFR, so it’s fine to start with that. Do it for a couple of weeks to get your body used to it, and then add in BBS when you’re able. I’d suggest 3 BFR workouts a week tops to begin with. Let soreness be your guide.
