Tudor Bompa question

In his book, Serious Strength Training, Tudor Bompa makes the recommendation that for recreational bodybuilders, a full body 3x’s a week approach will probably work best.

Anyone have any thoughts on this??? I’ve thought a little about it and it kind of makes sense…I mean you’d do all the big lifts every time…and you could tailor the program to be either strength, hypertrophy or cutting (GBC??)

Anyway, you guys have any thoughts on this??

im not sure you could recover from doing the big 3 three times per week. I know i couldnt recover from squatting, benching and deadlifting. that often

Hey, T. I have Dr. Bompa’s book and I find it to be a very good resource. I also found what he said to make sense, in order to achieve supercompensation. However, as I’m sure you’re aware, he only recommends doing around 4-6 sets/bodypart/workout. With such a low number of sets–especially in a hypertrophy phase–you need to hit it again in 2-3 days. He also says you can do a traditional split and outlines the recommended sets/session for each bodypart. I tried both and I liked the “bodybuilding” split rather than try to split the body into two workouts with a lowered volume. What I really like about his book is how he explains periodization, supercompensation, resting the energy systems and so on. Also the explanation of the phases is pretty well done. However, the workouts and their explanations could have been a little more detailed.

Thanks for the input guys. Anyone else have an opinion???

This is similar to what Bryan Haycock recommends for a hypertrophy phase. I’m a bit skeptical, but I’ve been thinking about giving it a try. It would definitely be a different type of stimulus for me. He (Haycock) also claims its ok to work through soreness. I would probably gradually increase my intensity through the week to facilitate recovery.

I think recovery is the main issue at hand, and that’s why Bompa bases his methodology of training on periodization. And for those who don’t have this book, I don’t simply mean alternating periods of high and low intensity loads, or hypertrophy and strength phases. While this book is geared towards bodybuilding, no doubt, Dr. Bompa trains professional athletes and has written several other books directed toward strength coaches primarily for the purpose of periodization. To get back to the point, Bompa recommends alternating load on a microcyclic basis (week to week) throughout the macrocycle (in this case hypertrophy, mixed, maximum strength phases). Bompa recommends gradual increases in intensity and in load. He also recommends alternating between high, medium and low intensity days, which he means basically only go to complete failure every couple workouts and definitely not on back-to-back workouts. It’s detailed in manner but I think you get the picture and see how training this way might be possible. I think it would be very easy to overtrain (I am sure that I did, training six days a week and not heeding the advice of letting up on going to failure). Not to mention that Bompa also recommends cardio before and after. So one might want to give something like this a shot, but I think you’d really have to monitor for signs of overall fatigue and overtraining. I hope all this mumbo-jumbo makes sense.

I think the Tudor Bompa workouts are more for roid users than the natural weight lifter. I have the book and the pictures are all of roiders plus I used to do that kind of workout and became overtrained very quickly.

I think this could work for beginners for the first 2-3 months or so. After that, as the person develops form, intensity, and mental drive to withstand discomfort, more rest is required between workouts. I just went through this in 2000 after a long layoff.
After several months of working all bodyparts 3x a week, I quickly plateaued. I began to alternate upper and lower body, retaining the 3x a week schedule, and started growing again. - Nylo