Your TBT Experience/Result

Just to get this thread started, I have just started Get Huge in a Hurry by Chad Waterbury, no surprise, it is compromised of three total body workouts a week. Just wondering what kind of results/gains other people had from total body training. I used to stick to a split routine, but I am willing to give this TBT a shot and see how it goes.

Here’s my workout log so far :
http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/blog_sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding_log/mondys_log

General Feedback:

  • Very tiring/ felt burned out
  • Surprisingly I got sore for the first 2/3 weeks of my 4 week routine, perhaps it was because there was three distinct workouts a week.
  • Interesting change of pace, I have seen gains in my lifts. * Measurements and pictures will be uploaded at the end of each phase, which is about every 4-5 weeks.

My goal is general mass/strength, in my log i mention some lift goals, but I would love to gain some mass in the process, hence the routine get huge in a hurry.

What was your experience/results with TBT? Just a thought.

death

[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
My results with TBT were that it is good for maintainence or body recomp, but not for adding serious mass.

BBB[/quote]

What about strength wise?

[quote]crod266 wrote:
death[/quote]

LOL care to elaborate?

i’d been doing splits forever so it was a good change up for me. i definitely got stronger. but as it progressed in volume and the added weight, i admit i had trouble getting thru the workouts. they were long and tiring so it’s not something i’d keep up indefinitely.

I’ve personally had great results with Waterburys TBT programs. I did them when I was just starting out and found they really helped build a good foundation of strength and coordination; as well I was alot more comftorable doing TBT since I really did not have the physical abilty to do a 4 or 5 day split yet.

It sounds from your post like TBT is working really well for you right now so I would stick with it as long as YOU feel its helping you acheive your goals.

Currently I do mostly 4 or 5 day splits tho I still like going back to TBT for a month here and there to break things up a little.

for me, splits stagnate my growth, i just can’t hit one body part a day hard enough and recover. splits burn me out.

TBT, in this case Waterbury’s Huge in a Hurry programs, have me gettin bigger than ever. im only on week 3 of get ready, and all my lifts are prs(not 1rm, i dont seem to have the ability to hit it). this is followin a month of more or less infrequent training due to exams and xmas.

i like is and its great time wise. in and out fast and its easy to schedule

I really enjoy full body lifting. I don’t have ambitions to ever step on stage at a show, but at the same time I feel, like you, that I want to be strong and muscular and have a physique that turns heads. The best results I’ve had with lifting have happened with one of Waterbury’s programs, Waterbury Method. Some people have an aversion to the sickening feeling of doing full body lifting, but I love the slightly nauseous feeling I get after a good full body lifting session.

I haven’t had the chance to look at this book yet, but I personally believe in lifting for health as well as for aesthetics, and for me it’s the best of all worlds.

I’m confused…how are you all gaining size without getting stronger?

Weighing under 190lbs sure is complicated.

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I’m confused…how are you all gaining size without getting stronger?

[/quote] And how do they keep gaining size/getting great results without ever weighing more? Must be holographic muscle… Provides no added strength but also doesn’t weigh anything… [quote]

Weighing under 190lbs sure is complicated.[/quote]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I’m confused…how are you all gaining size without getting stronger?

Weighing under 190lbs sure is complicated.[/quote]

hmmm. lol

I used a 4 day total body routine to get into the shape I was in for my avatar. I hit every muscle group each of the four days but I tried to vary the rep range as much as possible.

Low-carb, moderate-fat and moderate protein diet plus tons of peri-workout BCAAs and BCAAs inbetween meals allowed me to gain srrength on certain lifts on this program.

How much?

Well, when I started, my deadlift day was 5x5 at 495. Other lifts, such as DB bench press, improved as well, but I basically got stuck after 100s for 14-16 reps.

Towards the end, I was doing 5x5 with 565.

Its tough to say if I gained any “size” because I was dieting and losing lots of fat. However, as far as body composition went, I was much more muscular and looked a hell of a lot better.

I went to failure on everything though, so I didn’t just use a Waterbury routine. I basically just did my normal exercises I would normally do over the course of 4 days instead of doing each body part on its own day.

The thing I liked about it the most was, while dieting, I could maintain my use of heavy weights more effectively than I could on split routines in the past. For example, especially while dieting, after my first chest movement, all my other subsequent chest movements suck.

I have to reduce the weight, and I don’t feel as if I am getting the most out of them (could be wrong?)

Splitting it up, I can do DB bench to the fullest in a certain rep range one day, then on another day do decline BB bench to the fullest in a certain rep range.

Towards the end, though, I was training so much (weights and various other activities) that I started to hurt all over…elbows, forearms…knee gave me trouble.

The routines I used before the TBT stuff were mostly splits or upper/lower. I haven’t don’t a 1-bodypart-per-day split in a while.

Now, I am trying a different approach and am adopting a DoggCrap style split.

We’ll see how it goes.

Also, note, I’m not implying it is the best way to train at all.

This is something I did that worked for me, based on my goals at the time.,wel, worked until I hurt too much…lol.

[quote]Kanada wrote:
for me, splits stagnate my growth, i just can’t hit one body part a day hard enough and recover. splits burn me out.

TBT, in this case Waterbury’s Huge in a Hurry programs, have me gettin bigger than ever. im only on week 3 of get ready, and all my lifts are prs(not 1rm, i dont seem to have the ability to hit it). this is followin a month of more or less infrequent training due to exams and xmas.

i like is and its great time wise. in and out fast and its easy to schedule[/quote]

You’re only on week 3 and it has gotten you bigger than ever? By how many inches did your measurements go up by, or how much weight did you gain?

There’s a good chance you weren’t eating enough to recover between sessions.

Just saying.

[quote]Kanada wrote:
for me, splits stagnate my growth, i just can’t hit one body part a day hard enough and recover. splits burn me out.
[/quote]

I’ve done a Waterbury style full body program a few times. I generally use it when I want to do olympic lifts too. It’s pretty enjoyable. Got somewhat stronger, but mass-wise it didn’t do that much for me, other than my traps and legs.

I used to get too sore to recoer properly, but I’ve found that by periodizing up the volume from a low base on the first week helped me with that.

[quote]NewDamage wrote:

Towards the end, I was doing 5x5 with 565.

[/quote]

Fuck me, that’s strong. No wonder you’re pushing 700.

I had a similar experience, albeit not near those kinds of gains. I used a total body plan one summer as an experiment–it was a mixed olympic/PL routine comprised of solely whole body lifts (clean, clean/jerk, snatch, clean and snatch high pulls, barbell bent over rows, squat/box squat, deadlift variations, good mornings) except for bench and chins. Not a Waterbury routine.

I started training 4x a week and increased frequency to 5x a week over the summer (I kept the daily volume pretty low, so after a point I upped frequency instead). My strength went up and it felt great.

I did in fact gain some size from it, and that’s all the more surprising since I was umpiring baseball in 100+ degree weather 6 nights a week for 4 hours, along with doing construction work during the day.

I’m convinced if I could have cut one of the jobs so I could have eaten more, I would have actually gained appreciable size. It was literally, get up–> construction–> eat–>train–>officiate–>eat–>collapse at 1 am and do it again the next day. I didn’t get any heavier, but I did lean up a lot, which amounts to a net gain of muscle.

That being said, I’m not going to go back to it any time soon. It didn’t allow me to focus on any one lift or to address technical problems in any problem area for me. And it may have just been my schedule, but I was DRAINED after a while following this.

Now that I think about it, my volume wasn’t as low as I thought at the end of the program. I burned out on it.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:
NewDamage wrote:

Towards the end, I was doing 5x5 with 565.

Fuck me, that’s strong. No wonder you’re pushing 700.

I had a similar experience, albeit not near those kinds of gains. I used a total body plan one summer as an experiment–it was a mixed olympic/PL routine comprised of solely whole body lifts (clean, clean/jerk, snatch, clean and snatch high pulls, barbell bent over rows, squat/box squat, deadlift variations, good mornings) except for bench and chins. Not a Waterbury routine.

I started training 4x a week and increased frequency to 5x a week over the summer (I kept the daily volume pretty low, so after a point I upped frequency instead). My strength went up and it felt great.

I did in fact gain some size from it, and that’s all the more surprising since I was umpiring baseball in 100+ degree weather 6 nights a week for 4 hours, along with doing construction work during the day.

I’m convinced if I could have cut one of the jobs so I could have eaten more, I would have actually gained appreciable size. It was literally, get up–> construction–> eat–>train–>officiate–>eat–>collapse at 1 am and do it again the next day. I didn’t get any heavier, but I did lean up a lot, which amounts to a net gain of muscle.

That being said, I’m not going to go back to it any time soon. It didn’t allow me to focus on any one lift or to address technical problems in any problem area for me. And it may have just been my schedule, but I was DRAINED after a while following this.

Now that I think about it, my volume wasn’t as low as I thought at the end of the program. I burned out on it.[/quote]

Heh, thanks man.

Aside from working as much as you did, sounds like we had similar experiences.

Basically, I wanted to lean up, and get stronger, but because of a bunch of shit going on in my life, I wanted to just wreck havoc in the gym.

So, I wanted to work. Hard. A lot. I was determined to gain strength even though I was cutting, and I also BELIEVED I could gain strength during the process, which helped a lot.

It probably wasn’t optimal, but in the overal scheme of things, I’m bigger and stronger because of that summer.

I think you mentioned something about this before, Aragorn, where you just wanted to destroy yourself in the gym - serious motivation can make all the difference in the world.