Evolution of Best Damn Program for Natties?

So train at slightly lower intensity and slightly higher volume.

Accept that your progress will be a little slower over one month but it’s going to be a crapload faster than spending 3 months nursing an injury.

Only week 4 will be potentially problematic. BUT it’s only one week and followed by a week of relative deload. See that as a was to stimulate surcompensation. You do need to challenge your body to stimulate maximum growth. But if you do that too much, for too long, it will decrease your gains.

Correct. And as I also mentionned, the high RPE/high volume only lasts one week and is followed by a relative deload. That’s not like training like that all the time which is what I meant by a problematic situation.

What is problematic is people training like that ALL THE TIME (see how capping can be annoying… hint: don’t do it). Those who base their whole program on doing a high volume of sets with avery high RPE and train like that pretty much every session, will have a problem. This program calls for that for one week and the next week is a relative deload. That is not the same at all.

cool, glad I’m not the only one, lol. I think the key mistake in the first iteration of the natty program is the intensity multipliers. For people that are advanced and can actually, legitimately go into dark places and push the perceived intensity, this kind of programming will fuck you up and can be performed for only short blocks of time - 2-3 weeks max before you fizzle and break.

Dante says as much with dogcrapp and even his program is only 3 days a week. Even Mike Israetel cautions against hitting the failure wall continuosly because of how quickly it will shut you down systemically.

I’ll run the first program again, saving my high RPE’s to that final week and then deload. I wont rest pause, cluster, drop set or anything like that until week 4 and see how I go. If things don’t pan out, I’ll do the new volume program as written. (Which is notably absent of the original intensity multipliers I noticed)

To the person burning out, were you doing the 6 day/ week option or the 4 or 5?

It could be as easy as just lowering the amount of training days by one per week.

I think he is right on. That sums up your confusion to me: you aren’t seeing that the RPE is driven by additional volume and not by making the lift heavier or adding an intensifier. Lifting 225 five times will have a lower RPE than lifting 225 ten times.

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If I may make a few (hopefully) related points:

The OP was concerned that taking the first set to an RPE of 8.5 or 9 in that fourth week would wipe out either the performance of or need for all of the subsequent sets, thus leading to a crash similar to the one experienced with the original program were he to attempt to complete the prescribed volume. This was already addressed by CT and others, who note that the progression scheme is set up to have you building to a clear peak (in terms of overall tonnage), so, sure, a lifter isn’t supposed to repeat the performance of week 4. If one truly is a volume lifter, then they should have just enough in them to handle that volume in week 4.

If a lifter really, honestly can’t handle that, then I think it indicates one of two things: You’re not a volume lifter, which means you probably shouldn’t be doing this new program, or you’re mistaken about the RPE of your sets. So much attention is paid to those who aren’t lifting as intensely as they believe they are, but I’ve definitely experienced lifting MORE intensely than I think I am. If you’ve been focusing on going to failure or beyond for an extended period of time, you’ll likely need to learn (or re-learn) how to hold something back on each set. Keep in mind that in this new program, you’ll still have just a little in reserve at the end of each set in week 4. That’s a skill unto itself. If lifting to an absolutely true RPE of 8.5 in that first set of week 4, after weeks of lifting at an even lower RPE, leads to a significant drop-off in the next set, then, yeah, you may not be a volume lifter.

So let’s say that is, in fact, the case, and you want to go back to the original (intensity) program, but you want to cycle the intensifiers. Here’s where we always need to focus on the big picture and not get TOO caught up in this program or that program. Every one of these articles is written to appeal to as many readers as possible, but I’m sure every one of these authors also understands that some small tweaks may need to be made. Hell, if there’s ONE thing you can take from CT’s neurotyping work, it’s that he’s acknowledging that we all exist along a very long spectrum. Therefore, if you want to do the original BDW but maintain the core principles (e.g. emphasizing a lower volume but a higher intensity and frequency) while cycling the intensifiers, I don’t see how that’s a problem. In fact, look at how CT structures the hypertrophy work in the following program:

Granted, it’s set up that way to accommodate the heavier work, but that should show how the core principles are somewhat adjustable. The problem is when someone decides to slap a bunch of power or max-effort work at the beginning of the original BDW and then claim it doesn’t work, as that’s violating the program’s primary intent.

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