There are big changes ahead for BBC. This post will give an outline of what the future holds before moving on to this month’s program.
This year, and previously, BBC has moved through an annual programming cycle of muscle endurance, hypertrophy, strength, endurance, hypertrophy, strength. This provided progression and increased rep records. A rep record is where your squat has progressed from 100kg for 5 reps to 100kg for 10 reps, for example.
In the words of Jim Wendler, whose strength program we will be following: “Most people live and die by their one-rep max. To me, this is foolish and short-sighted. If your squat goes from 225 x 6 [reps] to 225 x 9 [reps], you’ve gotten stronger” (https://www.t-nation.com/workouts/531-how-to-build-pure-strength).
So, although we have focussed less on a strength program in the second half of this year than we did previously, you have increased your rep records and have therefore progressively got stronger, in some cases massively so. The last few months have predominantly focussed on one muscle group per month to teach you a range of different movements for each, as well as rep schemes and combinations so that you have all of these in your toolkit for when you train alone in the future. Taking the focus away from the annual 1RM test has been no bad thing.
That said, with the introduction of our new StrongCon class we can now focus our attention on achieving specific goals rather than trying to cover everything in BBC.
StrongCon will focus on muscle endurance, hypertrophy, and body composition/conditioning (fat loss/fitness)
Barbell Club will focus on strength. And massive arms.