Hi everyone, interesting in all your thoughts on this.
I feel like part of why the Ultimate Strength journey felt too random is because they tried to squeeze all progressions and periodisation in on 12 weeks. For me it resulted in doing pullups progression only for a couple of weeks, same with bench press, push press or squats.
I feel like for real strength gains, the journey should be minimum 6 months or even 9 month. Each 12 weeks block could focus on 1 or 2 main lift with accessories towards that lift. The final week of each 12 weeks blocks would be a realisation week with new 1 RM tests.
For example, 1st 12-week block focusing on back squats, Romanian deadlift and push press. 2nd 12-week block would focus on front squat deadlift and bench press, etc.
I feel like having longer journey could enable the Coach to focus more on these progression and realisations, instead of being rush in 4 weeks for each block, not really having time to go through all variation of a movements to have real strength gains.
Hi Ben, really interesting post. I think the same about this TJ: it lacks effective progressions on the main lifts because it includes too many exercises. This is why I’ve suggested many times to include a “favourite” setting to select the exercises that should never be missed every week.
I also like your suggestion about a different periodization scheme, but I wouldn’t spend long periods without training a specific exercise.
This is why I like the TJ “barbell gain” , with all its pros and a lot of cons (in particular, the lack of personalization.
Hey @GianLuke, thanks for your reply and comments.
Just to precise, I’m not suggesting to completely avoid certain exercises but rather focus on a specific goals. For example if the goal is to increase push press, I’d expect the coach to still assign me some sort of bench press variation as this would transfer to the push press. However, it wouldn’t assign me bench press as the first big exercise of the day and more focus on the bench as an accessory work to increasing pressing strength.
I like your favourite idea, this could be the “main goal focus” of the coach
