Built For Battle as Straight Sets Not Circuit?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Christian Thibaudeau Coaching
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CT, how much of a “negative” effect would performing all sets of an exercise before continuing have? How much does the circuit set-up add to it?

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  1. There’s another built for battle thread.

  2. It would absolutely ruin the entire point of the program. I am running it in 2 circuits: dead:squat/OHP, and bench/row, and I can tell you that my strength stays great during the first circuit but it has been almost impossible to progress in my bench because I’m fairly fatigued by the time I get there. This is fine with me, because out of the 5 lifts I’m least worried about bench, and my other lifts have progressed beautifully.

  3. The circuit set up sort of tricks your body into thinking you’re working up to a 3RM on 1 long lift.

TL;DR Do not do built for battle if you can’t do it in at least 2 circuits, and always try to do it exactly as CT wrote it. You’d just be doing a lame pseudo 5x5 that would take forever and burn you out.

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So much this. All very true and good points.

At max splitting it into two “circuits” but ideally do it in one straight session as written. Sometimes what I will do is actually do 4 in a circuit and then treat the last single exercise (a big move maybe like squat or deadlift) as a “practice strength move”. I do some isolation/pump work as I go through this last one.

But yeah, lame pseuedo 5x5 that would take forever adn burn you out is very very apt.

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If it were better to do straight sets I would have written it that way.

If you do straight sets, the performance on the last 2 exercises will suck because you will be fatigued and will still have to do sets of 5 and 4 in a fatigued state.

When you do the circuits, yes you build up some fatigue near the end of the workout. But that will happen when you are up to the sets of 1 (maybe 2 for some people) and performance won’t be negatively affected.

You also get some conditioning effect from doing the exercises as a circuit.

As it was mentioned, I can live with doing 2 groupings instead of one large circuit, although that is also a bit inferior. But if you want to do the exercises as straight sets it WILL be less effective and I cannot vouch for the results.

You can do whatever you want, but if you decide to do the exercises with straight sets, do not mention that it’s a program by me (it’s not) or inspired by me (I told you NOT to do it) because if you get bad results do not want to take the blame for your bad decision.