Countdown to Strength Challenge Live Tutorial Transcript

Note: This tutorial video was recorded as a live Facebook event. The text below is an edited transcript of the tutorial intended to provide members with a convenient means of referring to and further researching the topics and content detailed in the video.

Transcript

Alright guys, happy Easter Sunday—also April Fool's, April 1st here—and I'm doing my Countdown to Strength Challenge tutorial. 

Countdown from Zero—Week Zero of the Challenge

So let's talk about the actual challenge. It'll be five weeks of training. Now, even though it's a five-week plan, it's technically six weeks, because there's a Week Zero where you're going to test your 1-rep max strength. 

You can watch my video below on how to test for your 1-rep max strength. Also, if you go to the link that I've put up on Facebook—for those of you that are watching right now, you're right there right now; scroll up, look for my link—I put the link for the Countdown to Strength program. You can go in there and read the whole program. Go there, and check it out now so that you can see all the different workouts while I'm explaining it to you here. 

Like I said, it's really five weeks, but in Week Zero you're going to test your 1-rep max strength. If you go to my Countdown to Strength link that I put, or you can go to JimStoppani.com, click on the Countdown to Strength link right there, it'll take you to the prep. It'll also take you to the overall program, so you can read about the program but also tell you about the prep on how to test for your 1-rep max strength on the bench press, squat, and the deadlift. 

Modifying the Challenge to Your Needs

Over the course of these five weeks, we're going to be focusing on increasing strength on these three lifts. Now, one of the questions I'm getting about these three lifts is, "What if I don't have a squat rack or a bench press station? Can I use dumbbell bench press?" Yeah! "Can I use the Smith machine for the squat?" Sure. Use what you have access to. Any chest, squat type of move, any deadlift type move can be done here. 

As a matter of fact, I didn't even do the standard bench press when I tested, I did the actual football bar which is a neutral grip bar because I have a shoulder tear—an old slap tear from grappling—that sort of got re-injured while I was doing some swinging stuff. I haven't learned yet from the knee, I still do a lot of acrobatic stuff. When you do stuff, you do get injuries, but that's part of life. 

So, I have a shoulder issue that's limiting my bench, and then those of you who remember I had surgery on my leg—four surgeries—so this is the first time I've actually tried to really squat and deadlift, and even the bench press really heavy because with the bench press, when you're really going for strength, the legs are absolutely critical on the strength for the bench press. People really don't realize, but if you watch a powerlifter do the bench press properly you'll realize just how much of a full-body exercise it truly is. 

I'm limited here, so this is really the first time that I'm going. So, my numbers, when I test it—like I said, I couldn't push myself, and this is me coming back from four surgeries. I've got 275 lbs on my neutral grip bench, 315 lbs on my squat, and then 365 lbs on my deadlift. Now, again, those look like terrible numbers for someone who's deadlifted well over 700 lbs, squatted over 700 lbs, and has previously benched pressed over 500 lbs. 

These look like horrible numbers, but I'm pretty proud of them—especially the leg work. This is the first time I've really tested my strength following the knee surgeries, so this is really—I really haven't been squatting that heavy, or deadlifting that heavy, or even bench pressing that heavy being limited, so this is the start of my comeback over these next five weeks.

Again, my knee's not 100%, so I really can't push it, and I probably could've gone a bit heavier on the squat and the deadlift, even the bench, but I didn't want to push it. For those of you who do have injuries and you're coming back, go easy. For the rest of you, you really want to get those numbers up because we're going to use these numbers to predict our 5-rep max, our 4-rep max, our 3-rep max, and our 2-rep max. I'll have, in the program, equations that will help you figure that out. 

Don't Miss the Chance to Train with Me and the JYM Army

Before you start the program, if you're planning on doing this with me, you'd be my training partner. That's the best part of the Train with Jim challenges, is you get to be my training partner. You can do the same workouts I'm doing each and every day, right along with me—we're just in different cities, different countries, but we're still training partners going through the same workouts and discussing the same issues that we have. 

Check out the JYM Army Facebook group page as you're going through this, because that's where your other training partners are going to be. So, you want to test today if you're starting tomorrow, and I would really recommend testing a few days prior to starting. 

More Frequency Means Greater Strength Gains

Now, let's talk about the five weeks of training. It's a countdown because of the rep ranges that you're using: In Week 1, we're doing 5 reps on the 3 big lifts—the bench press, squat, and the deadlift—50 reps on all other exercises. So, if we're doing pulldowns, curls, we're doing a total of 50 reps per exercise. Remember, this is a full-body training system, but we're focusing on the bench press, squat, and the deadlift. You're going to be doing the bench press, squat, and deadlift several times each week. 

Remember, research shows that those who do those heavy lifts—the bench press, the squat, and the deadlift—more frequently gain better strength gains. In fact, there was a Norwegian study done on competitive powerlifters, and they had them—there were powerlifters who trained on the squat three times a week, and they just looked at the squat numbers—squatted three times a week. 

They took another group and had them do six times a week. Same volume, so they were just doing half the amount of work each workout as the group that was doing three times per week. Same volume over the week, just split up into smaller workouts, but more frequent workouts. 

Trained powerlifters, remember—the trained part is critical. Not just trained—they claimed to train—these are competitive powerlifters, we know they're trained. The trained lifters—and again, remember when you're trained the strength gains you make are far less, especially if you're competitive—but the trained lifters who were squatting more frequently—six times per week versus the three times per week—gained twice as much strength as the group doing three times per week. 

So, are you going to get stronger during these five weeks? You'd better believe it. You're also going to be dropping massive amounts of body fat, and getting more muscular—as long as your diet is appropriate. When you sign up for the challenge—that's one of the benefits of being a member—is you get the diet recommendations to follow based on your goal, whether you want to really maximize fat loss or truly maximize your strength and muscle mass gains. It's based on your diet. Same program.

Countdown Breakdown: Week 1

Now, let's talk about the countdown: 5 reps for the first week, 50 reps for the other exercises; 4 reps for the three in Week 2, 40 reps—you see it counts down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. That's the countdown. We're not just going to be doing 5x5s, 4x4, 3x3s the typical way, right? I never do anything the typical way, right? We will be doing it the typical way, but we'll also be doing it other ways. 

Sometimes during the week, you're going to be doing your 5x5s normal-paced reps. You're going be using as much weight as you possibly can. And what I would recommend is not using your 5-rep max, because you've got to get all 5 reps on all 5 sets, that's the key here. We're not just putting on a weight that limits you to 5 reps and then you're doing 5 sets and seeing how many reps you can do. No, you have to get—have to complete—5 reps on all 5 sets. 

Then in Week 2, you're going to drop the rep and the sets down to 4, but you have to get them—that's 16 total reps. So, if you used your 5-rep max, you would get 5 reps on the first one, maybe on the second set—but you're not getting 5 reps on set number 3, 4, or 5. So, you can't use your 5-rep max here, guys. What I recommend you use is about 60-70%, somewhere around there. 

Now, we're going to base that off of our 1RM test that we did in Week Zero, right? That's why it's critical to test, we get a true measure here. If you have any injuries and you don't want to do a full max test, you could also do other versions where you're doing 10 reps and then you can put it in the 1RM calculator based on your reps and your weight. You can do that as well, but again it won't be quite as accurate as if you do a true 1-rep max test because that's going to help us determine what weights you're going to be using.

As I said, you'll be using 5x5s at normal-paced reps some of the workouts. Some of the workouts, you'll be doing 5 sets of 5 reps at an explosive, fast pace. What are you going to use then? 50% of the weight you used, or 50% of your 60-70%—this week right here, 60-70% of your 5RM—you're going to use 50% of that when you do the fast, explosive reps. You're not going to go to failure, you're not going to fatigue yourself, you're just going to do 5 as explosive as possible.

Remember, it's explosive on the positive—you're still controlling it on the negative. 50%. Then, some days you're going to be doing the 5x5 reps super-slow: 5 seconds on the positive, 5 on the negative. Again, you're going to use this 50% of the weight that you were using for your typical weight to do 5x5s. 

Rest Periods during the Challenge

Now, rest periods—what are the rest periods here? It's up to you. Obviously, the longer you rest, the better you're going to be able to complete those 5 sets of 5. I don't like wasting too much time, it's going to be based on your conditioning and your ability to recover between sets. I'll still probably only rest about a minute on this, somewhere around a minute or so. But I'm only using 60-70% of my 5RM. 

You can certainly rest two, even three minutes, particularly if your goal is really maximizing strength during these five weeks. If your goal is to increase strength but also maximize fat loss, which the full-body training's amazing for, then keep your rest periods to a minimum, and if you find that the 60-70% is too heavy? Just drop it down as your rest periods drop.

Beyond the Big Three: Assistance Exercise Rep Schemes

Now, let's talk about these 50 reps here. What does that mean, 50 reps, 40 reps, 30 reps, in addition to—this is for all the other exercises, not the bench, the squat, and the deadlift. This is for your pulldowns, your curls, your triceps extensions, your lateral raises. We're going to do one exercise for every other muscle group, and even on the days where we're not bench pressing, for chest you might be doing flyes—you'll be doing 50 reps for that exercise. 

It doesn't mean you're going to sit there and do 50 outright. You might. You might do one set of 50, but the goal is just to complete 50 reps. I've thrown a few speed bumps, so we've got sometimes it's going to be 2 sets of 25 reps. Sometimes it'll be 10 sets of 5. Sometimes it'll be 5 sets of 10 for all the other exercises. 

Week 2

Then, in Week 2, as the countdown goes, we drop down now to 4x4. Again, you've got to complete all 16 reps, so you don't want to use your 4-rep max. What should you use here? Probably somewhere in the 70-80% range of your 4RM. Remember, once we know our 1RM we can calculate the 4RM, and I'll have that available to you as well. So we're going to use about 70-80% of the 4RM, same style here as 5x5, just 4 sets of 4, so we can go a bit heavier. 

Now, 40 reps, that's for all those other assistance exercises. So, how's that going to break down? It might be one set of 40, or 2 sets of 20, 10 sets of 4, 4 sets of 10—a variety of ways. You'll notice the 2x20, now, see the weight is getting heavier. So if we were doing, say, flyes—2x20 in Week 2 now—we're still doing 2 sets, 20 reps, doesn't mean it's getting easier because now you're able to use heavier weight. 

Week 3

Then we continue: Week 3, 3x3. So, again here I would recommend somewhere around 80-90% of your 3RM. And then again, with the slow reps—I'll go back to the 4x4, on the 3x3, this applies to each of these weeks—with the slow and the fast reps you're going to be doing the 4x4s, and the same thing—you're going to be using the 50% of this weight that you used for the standard 4x4s, same with the 3x3. 50% of this weight.

When you do the fast reps, 3 sets of 3 explosive, and 3 sets of 3 super-slow. And as you see the percent of your 5-rep or 4—it goes up as the weeks go. That's not because you're getting stronger—although you are, but it's because you're using heavier weight, you have less volume. Fewer sets, fewer reps, so we can get closer to our 3RM for all 3 sets of those, versus when we do 5 sets of 5, we have to be a lower percentage of our 5RM.

And then again, the 30 reps, you just break up all those into 2 sets of 15, 10 sets of 3, 3 sets of 10, 6 sets of 5 would also be 30, 5 of 6 would be 30, so you'll see different set and rep schemes for those other exercises as well. 

Rest Periods on Assistance Exercises

The rest periods on the assistance exercises, I would keep those to a minimum, but you'll see I will have recommendations on what to do for the program. It'll give you some tips on resting only as the other arm trains, or resting less than 30 seconds. So you'll follow along there, but you can also adjust the rest periods: If you want to focus more on strength gains, increase the rest periods; if you want to focus more on fat loss, decrease the rest periods.

Week 4

When we get into Week 4 where it's 2x2s, here you can use about 90-95% of your 2-rep max because you're only doing 2 sets of the 2-rep max, right? You might even be able to get close to 100% and be able to 2 sets of 2 if you rest long enough; then the 20 reps for all the other assistance exercises. 

So, weight progressively gets heavier, volume goes down—classical linear periodization. For those of you who have followed my Shortcut to Size and read my periodization articles, this should be making sense to you. Weight increases, reps go down, and so does volume. 

Week 5: Retesting Your 1-Rep Max

As we get into Week 5 here, here's the difference. If we go up here—it's a five-week program, right, but I said we really have a Week Zero so it's sort of technically six. We get five workouts per week in Weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4. You're going to be training Monday through Friday—I will be training Monday through Friday. I'll be training Saturday and Sunday, I'll do some other work on Saturday and Sunday; nothing too crazy, nothing specific to the challenge, probably tabatas or something. 

In Week 5, we only train three times per week because we're dropping now to 1x1 which is your 1-rep max test. We're going to retest, in Week 5, our bench, our squat, and our dead, and then on all the other assistance exercises—we're not just going to test, because we're also going to train, right? So we'll be training at least three times that week for this program. You can do other workouts on the other days. 

Bench press, squat, and dead: These will be three separate workouts so that you're really maximizing your strength gains on each one of these instead testing them all in the same day, and then you'll follow with the other full-body workout, completing 10 reps. So it'll be a pretty heavy three workouts that you're doing, so those other workouts to fill in the gaps during the days I would do lighter weight, maybe even tabatas like I said, or my 50s style. 

Full-Body Training for Strength Gains and Fat Loss

Then you retest—show me the numbers—and I can guarantee you're going to make impressive strength gains during this program. It's going to give you a whole new appreciation for full-body training if you really haven't tried it because you're going to see just how impressive the strength gains are when you're focusing on strength. But, at the same time, you're going to be amazed at the fat loss. 

It's one of the biggest and most common comments I get from people who switch over to doing the full-body style of training: They're amazed at the fat loss. They have to literally eat more because the fat just starts melting off because, like I said, you're activating all the genes, all those metabolic genes in all the muscle fibers of the body each day, basically keeping you a fat-burning machine, keeping that metabolism revved up. 

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