Barbell Barbell Daily Practice/S&S equivalent

[Meursault]

Apologies if this topic has already been covered, the search function did not seem to throw anything up...

Curious as to peoples thoughts on a daily barbell practice, similar at least in theory to a daily S&S practice. What has always attracted me (and I'm sure many others) to S&S is its minimalism, ability to perform frequently, the challenge of mastering a few basic exercises and the inherent discipline required to stave off the boredom of this.

However, if my goals lean more towards absolute strength and (dare I say) hypertrophy, is there a barbell program that anyone knows about that shares some of the qualities of S&S outlined above? Obviously barbells and kettlebells are very different modalities, and I have specified different goals, I'm just wondering if anyone more informed than me has suggested anything interesting or useful on this topic?

 

[oukeith1]

I feel like Power to the People shares the minimalism and frequency in common with S&S. Although I don’t believe you would see much hypertrophy.

There is some stuff in Beyond Bodybuilding that might fit the bill if you are looking for more muscle.

 

[bluejeff]

As someone who has a fair amount of high frequency training under my belt, here is $0.02.

Disclaimer: My experience is with bodyweight training mostly, but perhaps my experience will give you some ideas.

Load= when I say load, I generally mean weight/intensity x volume. So volume should be thought about as per-session AND per-week, per month.

Frequency and hypertrophy are....tough to balance. I find that if you train frequently, you either have to settle for less intensity/volume (and less hypertrophy) or you HAVE to vary the load. If you're training 5 days a week, lets say, then only a couple training days per week will allow enough volume/intensity to see hypertrophy. I have found that my weeks tend to ramp up, and then I feel some fatigure creeping in, and if I want to continue training, the load has to drop or I won't recover. I usually end up with a couple "tougher" days and a few easy/moderate days.

Another option is to keep most of your movements pretty minimalist; low sets/reps, moderate intensity/weight, and then choose ONE lift to incrementally build up. For example: say you do 5r x 2set of squats, 5rx2s of DL, and you choose to improve overhead press. Keep the 5x2 for the first two lifts, and then slowly add volume to the third (add a rep a day, for instance).

Last but not least is the patience game. If you do the same thing every day, the load cannot be so great that you can't do it again the next day. This is doable but progress can be sloooooooowwwwwww.

Beyond bodybuilding has a few higher frequency plans as well. That book has a LOT of interesting ideas. Chad Waterbury also wrote a whole program or two and some articles about high frequency training, if you do some searching.

 

[Antti]

I don't think the modalities matter that much, but the goals very much so.

There's a free book online called Squat Every Day which goes into it. Worth the price to read it.

I've done short bouts of daily training with the barbell, like squat squat every day for a month. I don't know.

One thing to consider carefully is exercise selection. Variety can help but maybe it's not so minimalistic anymore. Another possibility is to pick exercises easier to recover from, like minimise the eccentric, for example. Power cleans could be great and akin to S&S. Box squats are great.

 

[solarbear]

I would have a look at Power To The People. Bench and Deadlift 5x a week. Pretty simple and minimalistic.

 

[LukeV]

In my experience you can get away with working out in hypertrophy ranges on a daily or even twice daily basis provided the exercises are minimal (I used three for the whole body), you use single sets and stay away from failure. I've done twice daily, using my 10RM, with sets of usually five or six reps, sometimes seven and occasionally eight (towards the end of the cycle). I used a monthly cycle and tested my max at the end and recalibrated. That program keeps you within effective reps for hypertrophy, if you believe in that. I got satisfactory strength gains and while I don't have data on hypertrophy I don't recall being worried about it.

 

[Hung]

There is a mail-serie from Stronger by Science about Bulgarian Method with squat
I had done daily barbell squat for awhile (4 months) before switching to somethings else.

 

[Birddog]

Easy Strength can be done daily. Im really only familiar with Dan Johns Even Easier Strength but he does say it can be almost daily.

 

[Boris Bachmann]

I'm just going to flat out say that if your goals are absolute strength and hypertrophy, then doing the same (barbell) exercises everyday is NOT your friend.

 

[Adachi]

I thought I had read that muscle biopsy data showed that protein synthesis usually fizzles out around 36hours . Which may suggest that an every other day schedule may be fairly close to optimal for hypertrophy.

But, as to daily- ish training. I've just completed a daily dose deadlifts cycle and since the weights were feeling very light in the hands, in the end, I know I've gotten stronger training at what was 75% of a max that definitely went up during the program. Thinking about 1 rep max testing, this week after a few days off. But the program is very low volume. 5 reps a day.

 

[Steve Freides]

@Adachi, the weights were feeling like and you know you've gotten stronger - that's a winning combination if ever there was! I hope you'll do the max test and let us know how it works out.

-S-