BBS Variations: How Did You Like Them?

Looking at doing negative birth or at the mouth. Has anybody ran either of these? Anything I need to be on the lookout for in particular? Thanks!

BBS is fine, just adds a little more time and I would suggest pairing the BBS movement with the opposite accessory movement. For instance, if you’re doing Squat BBS sets, then do some Dips or Chins in-between sets to keep the pace moving.

I’ve ran At The Mouth twice and Negative Birth quite a few times, and I’m running Negative Birth again next for my programming. At The Mouth was fun. I liked the idea of getting stronger at the lifts I wanted to while at the same time getting bigger in the places I wanted to. I made gains on this template (like I do on all templates when I do them properly) and it was fun to program in. Overall I like BBS better than BBB, but this template gives you some nice flexibility to play around with the supplemental work to customize it for you.

Negative Birth is one of my favorite programs from Forever. I love BBS, but for whatever reason, my press tends to lag behind my other lifts if I don’t give it some extra love and Negative Birth gives it that extra work. The only thing to look out for here is you do cut the supplemental work for one of the lifts to give more to another in this program. I was a bench bro for far too long in my younger days, so I don’t mind doing fewer bench sets to work on my press now and then.

I also don’t think I could do Negative Birth as a deadlift focus, and I would advise anyone thinking about doing so to consider it carefully. I don’t think I would BBB deadlifts again either, but that just might be me getting old.

So, yeah, both of these templates are solid. I’ve had them both work really well for me, and I keep them using them.

How did you run at the mouth? Bbs for upper and bbb for lower? Or bbs for one upper/lower and bbb for one upper/lower? I’m looking for a program I can run kinda long term for awhile. @jfulltime

I did BBS for press and deadlift, BBB for bench and squat.

I like to run BBS templates for three cycles of leader and then throw in some sort anchor with PR sets or jokers to see the progress I’ve made. I’m guessing you could run something like that long term if you’re enjoying it and seeing good results.

@jfulltime
How much/what kind of assistance did you run it with?

The book says 0-50 push, 0-50 pull, and 0-50 core/single leg each workout, so that’s what I did. I picked exercises I needed or wanted to work on, and I backed off them if I was either too tired or short on time.
After doing 13 working sets of squats I sometimes didn’t feel like even walking to my car, much less doing leg assistance work.