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Barbell Daily Dose Thread

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I just tried to find Derek's forum username and also struck out. It is good, anyway, to make sure your login on the web site and the blog are working - if you haven't logged in there before, please go ahead and do so - use the same username and password you use here, and the system should be able to sync the two accounts and then you can move between the two places seamlessly.

If you have trouble with this, please send a PM to me and also include SFAssistant and we'll get you going.

-S-
 
I'm just a little confused. Is it run daily? As in m-s at 75% then Sunday is your step up to higher %, then back to lower % m-s again? Or is it five days a week and one day the following week at 75% then step up on say Tuesday and back low again for the three remaining days
 
I'm just a little confused. Is it run daily? As in m-s at 75% then Sunday is your step up to higher %, then back to lower % m-s again? Or is it five days a week and one day the following week at 75% then step up on say Tuesday and back low again for the three remaining days
I did it M-F, weekends off. Every 7th session is heavier, then back to 75%. So Tuesday of week 2 is the 80% day, then back to 75% from Wednesday of week 2 until Thursday of week 3 (85%), etc.

I keep a grid on my whiteboard with 6+1 columns and 6 rows with each session numbered sequentially (see attached).
 

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Looking to start DDD next week, combining it with S&S 3 days/week and then pressing days on the other two days. I'll get squats in every day in the Easy strength fashion. Here's my question on combining S&S with DDD and I've read all through this forum and can't find the answer. Based on the mantra of "ballistics before grinds", wondering how people are combining the programs. 1HSw, then TGU, then DL? Or 1HSw, then DL, then TGU? Or does it matter??? Thanks.
 
Looking to start DDD next week, combining it with S&S 3 days/week and then pressing days on the other two days. I'll get squats in every day in the Easy strength fashion. Here's my question on combining S&S with DDD and I've read all through this forum and can't find the answer. Based on the mantra of "ballistics before grinds", wondering how people are combining the programs. 1HSw, then TGU, then DL? Or 1HSw, then DL, then TGU? Or does it matter??? Thanks.
I did this a year ago.... but I did my S&S in the morning and the DDD in the evening since the DLs didn't take much time, I could do a rep and rest while doing other family activities and come back and do another rep... Worked out great for me.
 
Reviving a bit of an older thread as a new member who just happened to come across this plan or program.

Looking to hit some high frequency pulling as a part of a bigger plan I have in 2020 but curious as to whether or not anybody with a bit higher strength base has tried this program. The original article advises it's a great option for those with 1x-2x BW deadlift maxes; mine is a bit above that.

For reference, all time best pull is 625lbs at 198lbs with some other key lifts of 605lbs at 189lbs and a beltless 1.5" deficit deadlift of 555lbs at 186lbs. These were all done at some point in 2018.

At the end of 2018, I spend 30 straight days pulling 500lbs or more beltless every day as a personal challenge which is what resulted in the 555lbs pull at the end so I do have a bit of experience in higher frequency (albeit low volume/high intensity) pulling but on a shorter time frame.

In 2019 and early 2020, I maintained relatively frequent pulling with deadlifts 3-4x a week. There really has been minimal structure though with no real direction and I find myself just going into the garage, doing what I feel like, and calling it. I want to be a bit more structured and thoughtful in my approach and see if I can progress to some higher numbers again.

I'm a 34 year old male (will be 35 later this month), 5'10", about 180lbs or so right now (trying to stay around this weight because of other athletic endeavors) and have been involved in competitive sports just about my whole life.

My tentative plan was to make two mods.

First, two days of standard "competition style" deadlifting (one of the 75% days and the higher intensity day) and the other 5 days be more specific variety (pulls in oly shoes, 3/4" block/mat pulls, 3/4" block/mat pulls in oly shoes, 3/4" deficit pulls, 3/4" deficit pulls in oly shoes) type work. The percentages I think are low enough that those slight variations shouldn't present too many issues and will help to keep things just a bit more fresh from a stimulus standpoint.

The only other thing that crossed my mind was being mindful of daily volume. The article mentions 3-5 singles daily. Because my current baseline strength (probably set max conservatively at 505lbs or so) is about 2.8xBW and goal would be to get well past 3xBW again, I am thinking about waving volume to coincide with the "heavy" day to ensure that I am not getting carried away with 5 singles every single day for weeks and months on end. Days 1-6 would be 3 singles on 75% day, Days 8-13 would be 4 singles, Days 15-20 would be 5 singles; then repeat that wave through the next three "blocks", and only do 3 singles leading up to the test at the end.

Again, a lot thrown in here but curious as to anyone elses experience, feedback, thoughts, notions this is crazy, etc. Also, if someone or multiple people are interested in me trying this and logging it, let me know and I can try to keep a training log on the board as well.

Thanks in advance!
 
I am personally interested to hear how this turns out for you. I'd assume you don't do any heavy back squatting? I did the DDD previously but found that the heavy back squats just sort of had to go but I'm quite a bit older than you. When I try to drive my deadlift higher now I use the safety squat bar which i find is about 20% lower than my low bar squat which helps with recovery I think. Sometimes I think I should get rid of low bar squats altogether and just use the SSB all the time
 
@JPCross, welcome to the StrongFirst forum.

I think the DDD makes an excellent change of pace. I'm a competitive deadlifter, raw and no belt, in the old, skinny guy class - USAPL, 66 kg, most recent meets in 60-64 and recently turned 65, max 2.5 x bodyweight.

The article explains that the program is designed to co-exist nicely with other training and I think it does that really well. I'd read the article ...


... carefully again. It mentions that the author considers it a plateau-buster kind of program. My personal experience is that it works great for a cycle or two but I found it getting a little stale for me after that.

It does say to "use some specific variety along the way," but I'd be careful about using too much of it. One of the benefits of frequent lifting is really grooving a specific pattern.

Your idea of waving the volume seems, to me at first glance, not something I'd want to do, but maybe it will work for you. My change to the program was to add one more recovery day (I attribute this to age) but otherwise to do it exactly was written. The program calls for lifting 5 out of every 7 days - I changed that to 5 out of every 8 days by making my lifting days 2-on, 1-off, 2-on, 2-off. Derek (the author) says, "You can lift any five days as long as they are within a seven-day week," but mine was five days out of eight, so I marked it all out on a calendar for myself, working backwards from a planned max attempt.

So, by-the-book, you might start like this:

Mo/Tu/Wed/Thu/Fr @ 75%
Sat/Sun - off
Mo @ 75%, Tu @ 80%
Start next "week" on Wed

Mine was:

Mo/Tu @ 75%, Wed off, Thu/Fri @75%
Sat/Sun - off
Mo/Tu @ 75%, Wed off, Thu @ 80%
Start next "week" on Fri

Hope this is helpful to you. If memory serves, I got a meet PR out of this a couple of years ago.

-S-
 
I am personally interested to hear how this turns out for you. I'd assume you don't do any heavy back squatting? I did the DDD previously but found that the heavy back squats just sort of had to go but I'm quite a bit older than you. When I try to drive my deadlift higher now I use the safety squat bar which i find is about 20% lower than my low bar squat which helps with recovery I think. Sometimes I think I should get rid of low bar squats altogether and just use the SSB all the time

Heavy back squatting? I guess "heavy" is relative but I really have not been pushing the squat much over the last several years.

I have some deadlift friendly proportions but they are not so friendly when it comes to squatting.

I have hit an all-time PR squat of 495lbs x 2 at about 190lbs BW in the past (belt, no knee wraps) but I have also found that anytime I start pushing my squat 1RM up around the 500lbs mark or higher, I end up with some kind of tweak or injury and all but one time it's been an adductor. I end up backing off a bit, starting the build back up again, and inevitably get a tweak or injury as that 500lbs mark gets close. Luckily, no back issues to date.

As I've gotten a bit older and wiser (my wife would disagree with the latter I'm sure), I have been complacent with keeping squats a bit lighter on the whole. I will squat but really try to keep form dialed in and bar speed up but lean on the deadlift more for overall strength and power.

I don't have any ambition to compete in a full power meet right now and with two little ones at home and some other goals, staying injury free is more important than a big squat.

I will get a log going which will probably provide some insight into the other endeavor as it's pretty unrelated.

@JPCross, welcome to the StrongFirst forum.

I think the DDD makes an excellent change of pace. I'm a competitive deadlifter, raw and no belt, in the old, skinny guy class - USAPL, 66 kg, most recent meets in 60-64 and recently turned 65, max 2.5 x bodyweight.

The article explains that the program is designed to co-exist nicely with other training and I think it does that really well. I'd read the article ...


... carefully again. It mentions that the author considers it a plateau-buster kind of program. My personal experience is that it works great for a cycle or two but I found it getting a little stale for me after that.

It does say to "use some specific variety along the way," but I'd be careful about using too much of it. One of the benefits of frequent lifting is really grooving a specific pattern.

Your idea of waving the volume seems, to me at first glance, not something I'd want to do, but maybe it will work for you. My change to the program was to add one more recovery day (I attribute this to age) but otherwise to do it exactly was written. The program calls for lifting 5 out of every 7 days - I changed that to 5 out of every 8 days by making my lifting days 2-on, 1-off, 2-on, 2-off. Derek (the author) says, "You can lift any five days as long as they are within a seven-day week," but mine was five days out of eight, so I marked it all out on a calendar for myself, working backwards from a planned max attempt.

So, by-the-book, you might start like this:

Mo/Tu/Wed/Thu/Fr @ 75%
Sat/Sun - off
Mo @ 75%, Tu @ 80%
Start next "week" on Wed

Mine was:

Mo/Tu @ 75%, Wed off, Thu/Fri @75%
Sat/Sun - off
Mo/Tu @ 75%, Wed off, Thu @ 80%
Start next "week" on Fri

Hope this is helpful to you. If memory serves, I got a meet PR out of this a couple of years ago.

-S-

Thanks so much for the welcome and response.

It sounds like I was a bit off base with my idea or plan but I appreciate the insight and course correction. I will likely position the DDD sessions around the other two quality sessions I have per week with relation to my other endeavor. I am just a bit younger so I might be able to get away without the additional recovery day but, I will say, with the other thing I am working towards, the training for that (especially the "quality" sessions or "workouts") are pretty challenging, so the extra recovery time might come in beneficial as well. There really is only one way to find out.

As far as the staleness goes, I can see that. There is someone out there who accomplished something pretty extraordinary in the endurance world who says that, paraphrasing, the ability to endure monotony is an underrated superpower. In some cases, variety is nice, but at the end of the day, I think keeping things simple and just repeating over and over (ie. pulling frequently) might just compliment this other goal well.

Thanks again!
 
As I've gotten a bit older and wiser (my wife would disagree with the latter I'm sure), I have been complacent with keeping squats a bit lighter on the whole.
Check with your wife on that one - the answer may surprise you. Staying away from something that's caused you injury on multiple occasions sounds pretty wise to me.

-S-
 
I ran the Daily Dose between the end of March and mid-June 2019. My last heavy pull prior to starting was 200kg in January 2019 at about 83kg bodyweight.

During the program I did some extra days at 75% as I had not checked my workout log and had a weeks holiday, but I was in no rush so it didn't seem to hinder the program. I pulled 210 kg after the program. The only other lifts I did were swings and get-ups as per Simple and Sinister.

I have started the program again using 210kg as a starting point and am at day 14. My bodyweight has increased to around 86kg. I chose to do the program again as I enjoy deadlifts. It is nice to feel the weight in the hands! It will be interesting to see the results from this cycle and I look forward to seeing yours.
 
Steve et al

Could the Daily dose be applied to Bench, OHP, Squat? It seems like a little more structured Easy Strength, but only one lift. I wonder if you could follow your "normal" workout, but use the daily dose for 1 lift and, i.e. Deadlift Cycle, then a Bench Cycle, Then a Squat Cycle then OHP. Or use for a lagging lift.
I've done it with deadlift, squat and bench

deadllift 5 singles
squat 5 singles
bench 10 singles

5 days a week and I did quite well on it.
 
Just for information I completed the daily dose on 22nd June 2020. Session 1 was started 10th April, session 45 completed 19th June. That is 70 days, or 7 weeks, an verage of 4.5 deadlift sessions each week. Over that period there were 4 sessions where I did less than the 5 prescribed reps. These were all on 75% load sessions (160 kg in my case).

During this period I was practising S&S with 32kg and 40kg. Over the period the swing and TGU volume came down as I completed less kettlebell sessions each week. This was not planned but as I can become distracted, I wanted to put more focus on the deadlifts, rather than chasing more 40kg reps in the swing and TGU.

For max lift day on the 22th June 2020 it went like this:
130kg x 1
160kg x 1
200kg x 1
225kg x 0 - failed above knee
225kg x 0 failed above knee again
215kg x0 failed above knee. My energy was spent on the previous two attempts.

My previous max was 210kg so not exactly what I had in mind! Positives were my grip was holding strong on the 225kg. Learning points, I started the lifts with no plan. I was going by feel. Which for me may be enough on a practice session but I should have had a plan on max effort day. I also tried to squeeze the session into a busy period of the day. Mentally it would have been better to wait util the days distraction were done. I prefer to lift in the morning but for a max effort day wanted to be properly fed and hydrated. Especially for deadlifts. I could also have done some more movement preparation but as I was squeezing the session in, I did the bare minimum.

Roll forward a week to 29th June 2020, during which time I compeletd one session of kettlebell swings and another mex effort deadlift session:
100kg x3
130kg x3
160kg x1
190kg x1
215kg x1

A new PR of 5kg. The lifts and reps were planned the day before. I warmed up properly and took my time. The lifts were done once all the kids were tucked up and distractions were minimal.

Now to rest the deadlifts for a while. Thanks.
 
Just for information I completed the daily dose on 22nd June 2020. Session 1 was started 10th April, session 45 completed 19th June. That is 70 days, or 7 weeks, an verage of 4.5 deadlift sessions each week. Over that period there were 4 sessions where I did less than the 5 prescribed reps. These were all on 75% load sessions (160 kg in my case).

During this period I was practising S&S with 32kg and 40kg. Over the period the swing and TGU volume came down as I completed less kettlebell sessions each week. This was not planned but as I can become distracted, I wanted to put more focus on the deadlifts, rather than chasing more 40kg reps in the swing and TGU.

For max lift day on the 22th June 2020 it went like this:
130kg x 1
160kg x 1
200kg x 1
225kg x 0 - failed above knee
225kg x 0 failed above knee again
215kg x0 failed above knee. My energy was spent on the previous two attempts.

My previous max was 210kg so not exactly what I had in mind! Positives were my grip was holding strong on the 225kg. Learning points, I started the lifts with no plan. I was going by feel. Which for me may be enough on a practice session but I should have had a plan on max effort day. I also tried to squeeze the session into a busy period of the day. Mentally it would have been better to wait util the days distraction were done. I prefer to lift in the morning but for a max effort day wanted to be properly fed and hydrated. Especially for deadlifts. I could also have done some more movement preparation but as I was squeezing the session in, I did the bare minimum.

Roll forward a week to 29th June 2020, during which time I compeletd one session of kettlebell swings and another mex effort deadlift session:
100kg x3
130kg x3
160kg x1
190kg x1
215kg x1

A new PR of 5kg. The lifts and reps were planned the day before. I warmed up properly and took my time. The lifts were done once all the kids were tucked up and distractions were minimal.

Now to rest the deadlifts for a while. Thanks.

Thanks for the reports, @rodgie ! I've been doing the DDD for many weeks now and I'm set to test my max next week. I'll probably do what you did and test it again a week later if I don't like how it goes. It's probably affected by other training to a large degree and I'm not sure I'll get proper rest days in before testing it, but we'll see how it goes. I'll report here when I have results.

How did you like doing the program? Did you find any other interesting effects or results? One of my favorite things so far is that I can deadlift the working weight with no warm-up at all on some days. For me the working weight, the 75% weight that is used for most of the sessions, is 235 lbs.
 
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Thanks for the reports, @rodgie ! I've been doing the DDD for many weeks now and I'm set to test my max next week. I'll probably do what you did and test it again a week later if I don't like how it goes. It's probably affected by other training to a large degree and I'm not sure I'll get proper rest days in before testing it, but we'll see how it goes. I'll report here when I have results.

How did you like doing the program? Did you find any other interesting effects or results? One of my favorite things so far is that I can deadlift the working weight with no warm-up at all on some days. For me the working weight, the 75% weight that is used for most of the sessions, is 235 lbs.

For the 75% days I did no warm-up unless I did them after some morning mobility work or S&S session. Most deadlifts were done during the day and I just left the bar setup ready for the pulls. Working at home has its advantages!

I have not been doing much variety in my training so don't have much to report on other effects or results.
 
I finished the DDD program and got a deadlift PR of 320 lbs! I'm very happy with this result.

I stretched it out a bit due to several factors -- 1) doing other programming concurrently, 2) age 52, and 3) the break in the middle was due to a strained adductor from split squats. Other than that, I followed the program pretty much as written. I started on 4/25/20, lifting 5 singles at 235 lbs on all the green days, and higher intensity as shown to the right on the blue days, and ended today on 7/20/20.

1595295905606.png

 
I am new to Strong First's training methodologies. I was first introduced in the Covid onset while searching for a way to keep my training consistent and progressive w/ limited equipment, etc. I was fascinated, having never trained with a KB before and unfamiliar with any of Pavel's prior books or articles.

I began with a simple 5 week alternating KB swing and KB clean and press / pull up routine I saw in Muscle and Fitness. Myself and my two older children would follow the protocol, as both compete in HS / MS wrestling as a means for them to keep active and train together as like everyone, we tried to navigate through the shutdown the best we could.

However, once some of the restrictions had been lifted and they could begin training again on their own with their club / school teams, I couldn't wait to get a barbell in my hands to apply much of what I had learned reading every Strong First article I could find in the layoff.

I decided I would start with the DDD program, having not deadlifted in over two years due to a hip injury (torn labrum) that had previously required surgery.

Finished today and wanted to share my results:
Starting max deadlift: 365 lbs
1RM deadlift today (sumo stance): 465 lbs

I couldn't believe it! An over 100 lb increase.

I felt I had a little more in the tank (a very little), but felt a tweak in my lower back in the final pull and didn't want to risk it. Especially for what would have probably only been another 10 lbs at most.

I followed the S&S protocol Monday-Wen-Friday: Eventually progressing to Simple standards over the course of the DDD program. The only difference is on Wen I would do two handed swings, with a slightly heavier KB (80lbs).

On Tuesday and Thursday, I would do a ladder progression as laid out in ETK (which I read also in my search to learn as much as I could, even emailing Dr. Craig Marker once with questions).

I would alternate weeks, one week doing single arm KB presses both days and the next week doing military presses both days.

Just starting this journey at 43, so looking forward to where it will take me.

Excited for what the future holds, and definitely now a believer and student of SF.

Thanks again.
 
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