Ben Strong
Level 5 Valued Member
Hey all,
I recently purchased both the Giant and KB STRONG from Geoff and have been cleaning and pressing my way through 1.0 for three weeks now. Just wanted to share my experience and give some additional praise for the programming (as if there isn't enough of it already in this thread). For those that haven't bought them yet, I felt that owing both The Giant and STRONG is very beneficial and would recommend getting both. KB STRONG is worth it just for the video instructional alone.
I am still somewhat new to double bells. I have practiced the double clean and press quite a bit after other sessions and I had run Dry fighting weight (DFW) in the past. However, the volume of squats in DFW was a bit much for me at the time and I wound up stopping due to extreme muscle tightness in my glute which persisted for about 3 weeks. I decided then to build a greater base strength before doing double bells again. I had been performing a few blocks (~12 wks) from Tactical Barbell's Operator and Base Building plan prior to starting this. I feel like the new stimulus has already begun creating some gains in muscle mass which is interesting coming from a barbell block.
For my initial testing for 1.0 I was able to do 10 solid reps and a shaky 11th rep with the 16 and 20 KG bells. Unfortunately I don't have any matched doubles at home other than 8s and 12s. However, I haven't noticed any big issues with doing the program with mismatched sizes. I just switch every set and if I happen to do an odd number of sets I make a note to start on the opposite side next session. I have been running pretty steady around 30 - 50 reps and I can tell that the RPE is lowering. My goal is weight maintenance/recomp and to eventually work up to using double 24 KGs as my working bells.
Overall I am really enjoying it so far. I feel like it's a very forgiving/flexible program and I can get in and get it done quickly which is great since I am pretty time constrained. I am planning on running 1.0 -> 1.1 -> 1.2 in order and then reassessing from there. I will be sure to report back with my progress and results.
I recently purchased both the Giant and KB STRONG from Geoff and have been cleaning and pressing my way through 1.0 for three weeks now. Just wanted to share my experience and give some additional praise for the programming (as if there isn't enough of it already in this thread). For those that haven't bought them yet, I felt that owing both The Giant and STRONG is very beneficial and would recommend getting both. KB STRONG is worth it just for the video instructional alone.
I am still somewhat new to double bells. I have practiced the double clean and press quite a bit after other sessions and I had run Dry fighting weight (DFW) in the past. However, the volume of squats in DFW was a bit much for me at the time and I wound up stopping due to extreme muscle tightness in my glute which persisted for about 3 weeks. I decided then to build a greater base strength before doing double bells again. I had been performing a few blocks (~12 wks) from Tactical Barbell's Operator and Base Building plan prior to starting this. I feel like the new stimulus has already begun creating some gains in muscle mass which is interesting coming from a barbell block.
For my initial testing for 1.0 I was able to do 10 solid reps and a shaky 11th rep with the 16 and 20 KG bells. Unfortunately I don't have any matched doubles at home other than 8s and 12s. However, I haven't noticed any big issues with doing the program with mismatched sizes. I just switch every set and if I happen to do an odd number of sets I make a note to start on the opposite side next session. I have been running pretty steady around 30 - 50 reps and I can tell that the RPE is lowering. My goal is weight maintenance/recomp and to eventually work up to using double 24 KGs as my working bells.
Overall I am really enjoying it so far. I feel like it's a very forgiving/flexible program and I can get in and get it done quickly which is great since I am pretty time constrained. I am planning on running 1.0 -> 1.1 -> 1.2 in order and then reassessing from there. I will be sure to report back with my progress and results.