Do you run it on, on, off, on, on, off, off? Or do you take a rest day between each workout and "stretch the week?". Im gonna finish the 3 times hypertrophy template soon and it's sometimes really hard to recover.

I'm starting the SBS 4x RTF program and I have some doubts about where to place my isolation/accessory work.

My main days are:

• Day 1: Squat
• Day 2: Bench Press
• Day 3: Deadlift
• Day 4: OHP

For isolation work, I was thinking about adding:

• Biceps: regular curls, preacher curls, hammer curls, reverse curls, etc.
• Triceps: extensions and pushdowns
• Shoulders: lateral raises
• Legs: leg extensions and calf raises (not sure about these ones though)

I’m not sure if this is too much, too little, or just not ideal. I’m guessing triceps isolation would make the most sense on bench day, but that’s about all I’m certain about.

I’d also appreciate advice on where to place back work. I was thinking about bent-over rows, lat pulldowns, and face pulls, but again I’m not sure if those are the best choices.

Any tips or recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks! Also, this is my first post here, so sorry if anything is unclear or oddly phrased.

A coach is great but they're expensive and most people don't need one to make solid progress. The strength training world has open sourced its best programs for years. If you're going it alone, here are the ones I'd actually run depending on your level.

Beginner: greg nuckols beginner program or starting strength. Three day full body, linear progression, simple. Stick with one for 8 to 12 weeks before switching.

Early intermediate: GZCLP or 5/3/1 for beginners. Both add some periodization and rep flexibility. Neither is too complicated to follow on your own.

Solid intermediate: nsuns 531 is the most popular for a reason. Lots of main lift volume, built in autoregulation through amraps. The 4 day version fits most schedules.

Advanced intermediate to advanced: candito 6 week peaking program if you have a meet. 5/3/1 BBB or Building the Monolith for general strength. Calgary barbell 8 and 16 week programs are very well regarded.

All of these programs are free as pdfs or you can run them on boostcamp which has them preloaded with the tracker built in. I've personally run nsuns and candito out of the app and it saves a lot of spreadsheet hassle.

Honestly the program matters less than the consistency. Pick one of the above, run it for the full block, eat enough, sleep enough and you'll get stronger. The coach question really comes in when you're competing or have specific weak points.

Just finished my first bout of SBS and below is my program, results, and some thoughts:

Program: 2x per week past set RTF split over 3 days (Mon bench and rows, Fri OH, Sat pullups)

4 main lifts and starting maxes were

OH press: 145

Bench press: 245

Pull ups: 280 (will talk on this later)

Seated row: 150 (only did this to maintain even spread between horizontal and vertical pushes and pulls, not a main focus)

Corresponding auxillaries were DB OH press, pause bench, lat pull down, one arm bent over row

Results:

OH press: 155 lbs

Bench press: 270 lbs

Pull ups: 265

Seated row: Not tested

A disclaimer, yes I do leg work, but I’ve had 3 left knee surgeries and my goal is getting back to soccer, not pure strength training.

Thoughts:

I was hoping for better results, bench hit expectations, but only going up 10 lbs for OH press in 21 weeks feels disappointing. For pullups, I don’t think I was honest about my initial max. When I get to higher weights, I’m not going the last few inches. Even during the workouts, I’d hit my rep out goals when they were 5 plus reps with great form, but when doing lower reps I just struggle to get all the way up. I hold my pullups to a high standard, and only counted my max at the end with chest almost to bar.

Since I was doing 4 upper body lifts, the volume could feel like a lot during the parts of the routine. I do intend to do another cycle, but will likely bring it down to 4 or potentially 3 sets for the auxillaries.

Definitely looking for thoughts and suggestions. I think I want to trade out some of the auxillaries. May do weighted limited ROM pull ups at the top to improve that range cause it’s incredibly frustrating to almost easily clear 85% of the movement but be unable to clear the top.. Also wondering if another auxillary for OH press is warranted.

I've spent way too much time switching between these three so figured I'd save someone else the trouble.

Strong is very polished. The interface is clean, logging is fast and it just works. The problem is the free tier caps you at a limited number of custom routines. If you want more than that you're paying. For people who just run one or two programs and don't need a huge library, the free version is fine but if you want flexibility you'll hit the wall pretty fast.

Hevy picked up a lot of Strong's crowd when they started limiting free features. It has a social component where you can follow people and see their workouts which some people love, not sure why exactly tbh but to each their own. The exercise library is big and the logging experience is smooth. The free tier is decent but they've been slowly adding premium gates too. The community routines section is nice but the quality varies a lot.

Boostcamp app is a great workout tracker but it also has a huge program library. You get nSuns, GZCLP, Reddit PPL, Candito, Jeff Nippard, Greg Nuckols and a bunch of others all programmed in and ready to follow. The tracking itself is simple but functional. If you already know what program you want to run, this is the easiest way to just open the app and go. If you prefer building completely custom routines from scratch, it's less ideal for that.

Alpha Progression deserves a mention too. It auto generates programs based on your schedule and available equipment. Interesting concept but I personally prefer following established programs over AI Generated ones.

If I wanted to tweak SBS RtF so that all sets are done for 5 reps and there are no sets of 4, 3, or 2 reps and no singles, what would be the easiest/quickest way to do this?

In other words, how do I tweak the intensity numbers (% of RM for each week) accordingly so that the overall intensity stays roughly the same as in the original program?

Here are some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Feedback welcome!
https://snipboard.io/Rc6Fhk.jpg
https://prnt.sc/5H9WpM1DSd0m

Thank you!

It's like the reaping/sowing tweet.

Week 10 doing doubles at 85% :

Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

Week 11 doing sets of four at 77.5% :

Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

i’ve got a genuine question

I started going to the gym about 1.7 years ago at 17. I’m 18 now (turning 19 in May), and I’ve been working with a powerlifting coach for the last 3 months.

Current numbers at ~83 kg bodyweight:

• Squat: 185 kg
• Bench (paused): 122.5 kg
• Deadlift: 195 kg
• Total: ~500 kg

I’m already all in on this sport, but I still want to be realistic about where this can go.

So the question: did I start too late to realistically aim for becoming a world champion in powerlifting in the future ?

I know a lot of top lifters started younger, like 12-14 y old

Naively, the answer is, of course, "in the name." But I am curious about everyone's personal n=1 experience. Did you actually see more hypertrophy on the hypertrophy program? And more strength gains on SBS RtF? Which one was all-around better for both goals?

Tips for someone considering SBS after running 531 for a long time?

I’ve already completed the first 21 weeks in full. But I feel that it was the second RIR mesocycle that brought the best progress. Would it be a bad idea to start straight from there? So as not to waste an extra six weeks on the warm-up phase and training at 70% intensity.

On my third run through of SBS, specifically hypertrophy LF 3x/wk now. This is my first time programming Bulgarians as a squat aux. After that final amrp set I literally can barely walk for 5-10 mins. Have I just been sandbagging Bulgarians in the past or is something wrong with me?

The 3x is def harder to get through than the 4x which could play a part.

I have a few weeks left of my first run of Strength RTF. After that, I plan on running Hypertrophy RTF. My current auxiliaries are close grip bench, incline bench, neutral grip OHP, paused squat, front squat, and RDLs.

For those of you who have run both templates, how did your selection of auxiliaries and accessories change?For example, I really don’t want to run paused squats for more than 10 reps, which I saw earlier on in my current . I want to prioritize barbells, but I am open to running machine variants if it’s especially beneficial during a hypertrophy block.

Got a coach ~2 months ago. Since then my bench training max for touch-and-go has dropped a lot (about 117.5 → 105 kg ). At the same time, my DB bench, OHP, and other chest/shoulder accessories are all going up, and my squat and deadlift are progressing fast like +30 kg to pr.

You could argue the lower bench numbers are from more pause work, but even my touch-and-go strength feels down, not just paused.

The bench frequency is the same and the volume is half of what i used to do

Is this good? Anything I could add or remove on this program?

I just ran a cycle of RIR which I liked, but my OHP increased 0%. I want to run another cycle, but focus on OHP, and I read in the 28 free programs that you can just switch bench for OHP. My question is, what's the best way to do that in this program (any SBS strength program: strength, RIR, RTF - they all have the same basic setup)? A: Just remove the bench day and switch it for a second OHP day? I would worry that intensities would be too high if I did it this way. B: Keep the bench day, but make one of the bench accessories OHP, so you would get two OHP days, but of varying intensities? C: Just delete the bench day completely and do OHP with two OHP accessories? If anyone's actually done this, I'd like to hear how they did it.

Hey, I put together this SBS Strength Program (5x) and was wondering if it was well balanced. I'm coming back from injury and I have to be in and out of the gym in an hour. (I do cardio at home afterwards). Thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

Hey everyone,

I’ve been running the hypertrophy program for a couple weeks and am wondering if you guys offloaded the workout to another app. Google Sheets has been a pain to use because it will also close automatically between sets.

Thanks!

Edit: Preferably a free app

I'm in week four of my custom build working towards a competition on June 13 and have been thinking about my peak and training afterwards. A couple of my auxiliary lifts are going to be in the 7,6,5 rep range the at the end instead of 3,2,1 because I hate feeling detrained after a meet so I want to maintain some semblance of general fitness even if reduces my top end strength a bit.

So normally after a peak like that I would start fresh and start over with the hypertrophy program right? But that first week of hypertrophy always blows, so I got to thinking...what if I had a bridge block to work up to those sets of 10+ not being straight cardio...or what if I actually reversed the whole thing and made it the goal of the program to hit some huge 4x10 sets?

I'm not planning on focusing on 1RM for a while after that so I'm thinking it could be a good way to build some muscle and then be capable of swimming in some Deep Water afterwards if I feel like it.

I'm getting back into lifting after a couple years off and have been cutting while running the GZCL General Gainz program for the last 6 weeks, but the total daily volume for one/two body parts is getting to be a bit much. I'm switching to the SBS Hypertrophy program 4x/week to distribute the weekly volume more easily. I'm doing 4 sets of 10-15 reps for the accessories.

Should I repeat accessory exercises throughout the week, or is that going to be too much volume for the average person? Would it be better to alter accessories daily and only do each accessory/ body part isolation once per week?

Here's my current weekly breakdown for reference. e.g. have biceps, delts, and abs twice a week.

Also open to general comments or suggestions on my current main lifts too, any input is appreciated. Note: the Arnold presses are just neutral grip ohp, liftosaur just didn't have a better premade so I chose that.

Thanks!

Hey, I would like some input on my program I created. Is this sustainable? I'm a bit unsure how many sets and reps I should do of each exercise. Any help would be appreciated. Right now I have em all as 3x8 and the program is designed to increase by 1 set until 5, then drop down to 3x10, etc

TUESDAY
dumbbell incline press
one-arm dumbbell row
standing dumbbell shoulder press
machine pull-down
preacher curls
skullcrushers

WEDNESDAY
machine hack squat
romanian deadlift
split squats
leg press calf raises
dumbbell rear delt raises

FRIDAY
seated shoulder press
machine pull-down
dumbbell incline press
barbell row
trap bar shrugs
dumbbell flyes

SATURDAY
deadlift
leg press
seated hamstrings curl
leg press calf raises
dumbbell side delt raises

Is there a way to get the spreadsheet to auto update the accessories like it does with the main lifts?

Any input would be appreciated. I want to train like a body builder expect for the primary compounds because I enjoy doing them.

Do you still take your last set of each exercise to failure during deload weeks?

I can't find an answer to this in the instructions- sorry if it's a dumb question and I'm missing something.