Just finished my first week with 531 beefcake and I’ve got to say my triceps are fried. The 50 dips before my press and bench session just kill me the next day.
Is this because my triceps are super week or is this normal for the first week of beefcake.
Just to clarify I’ve not added any extra volume and I’ve just come off the tried and tested 4 day BB split on t nation.
Wow oh wow my triceps are just totally gone after this week!
I actually just finished running Beefcake for six weeks, and by the sound of things I was running the same split as you (the one Jim lays out on his website).
I also encountered a similar problem, where towards the end of the 6 weeks, the hard squatting and deadlifting followed by hard chins and dips was having a negative effect on the press/bench the next day. Although it should be noted my triceps specifically weren’t as fried as yours seem to be.
I think the only real solution would be to rearrange your sessions - I had a few people advise me to do that and I think if I ran it again I would take that advice! Of course you can just stick it out and see what happens, it may well improve. If it’s not affecting your performance then probably best to leave it, I suspect.
You just need to get better conditioned. 50 body weight dips will not affect you the next day if you’re in good shape. Just stick with it, and you’ll get used to it. If you need to for a bit, spread the dips out into more sets that are easier on you.
That’s what I needed/ wanted to hear. I’ll keep at them.
Great attitude. But yeah, just be smart with the assistance. The barbell work is what really matters. Don’t let the assistance interfere. I don’t know what your strength level is or conditioning, but say for example you’ve been doing 5 sets of 10, break it up into 10 sets of 5. Or any combination really. And slowly cut the number of sets down. But it really isn’t super important, it’s just getting the work in. Cheers and good luck with it.
With just bw on the dips I was doing 5 sets of 10 hitting 10, 10, 10, 8 8 (so not doing the total 50 reps) but was surprised how everything else from my works outs recovered apart from triceps.
Since they aren’t a great feature of mine this time will help them grow some!
Cheers all.
Quick follow question. When I hit 5x 10, do I add weight so I’m still doing 5 sets of 10 dips or try to do less sets so eventually do 2 sets of 25? Type thing.
Always keep it bodyweight.
Well as long as it’s affecting your recovery, you need to move more towards making it easier rather than more difficult. There are programs where you could push dips weighted and unweighted, but this isn’t that program. Don’t go anywhere near failure.
But if it’s just body weight that gets old fast. I do weighted dips but probably wrong to do so.
Getting big and strong never gets old for me.
What if you feel that you can handle weighted dips?
Up the TM
But if you can really do a set of 50 bodyweight dips, you should be able to figure out the next move.
Go really deep on unweighted dips and/or pause extra sec at the bottom/do 10 sec negative for first 3 reps -all will make the sets MUCH harder.
Broscience but you often get a fuller look to the muscle also.
Could alternate one session like this and one weighted
Yeah, I did bodyweight dips yesterday and was doing just that. Going as deep as possible and slower. It was just as tough as the weighted ones if you also decrease rest time too
Your assistance work should not affect your main and/or supplement work negatively. If it does you should change something. I can see a few options: 1) Lower the volume, ex 3x10 instead of 5x10. 2) change movement, ex push ups 5x10 for one or both days, or an even lighter movement such as push downs. 3) Add in extra recovery between sessions, a personal favorite is to run a four day template just three days a week. You can also mix these options. Let’s say push ups instead of dips on Monday and keep dips for Thursday but move the Friday session to Saturday.
Yeah the dips on this program should be easy. If you get better at doing them and it’s easier to complete them, it’ll contribute to your strength and hypertrophy. There are plenty of programs where you could really push your dips as assistance. This just isn’t a great one for that. Heavy weighted dips are by far my best assistance exercise for the press. I was big on Bill Starr stuff when I was starting out and he wrote that once you can do dips with 100 lbs plus added for at least 3 reps, it’ll start helping your press. And he was right.
As a follow up, three weeks in the 5 x 10 bw dips now feel smooth and easy.
So it took about two weeks to get to this. Guess I’ll increase the set numbers to keep 50 reps going forward.