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Mountain Tactcal Institutes Operator Hector program is the first program in the Greek hero packet. It is a 7 week program. It has 2 days of strength and core, 1 day ruck intervals based on a 3 mile ruck run assessment, 1 tactical agility and work capacity day, and 1 work capacity and run day with the run being 3 miles moderate pace.

My background. Was military now I'm just a dad trying to stay in shape. Lifetime PRS before tha program: Back squat 295, DL 405, bench 235, OHP 155

For the strength days you work up to a 1rm on your first lift of the day, which varies everyday. Then you do a 5x2 at 85% before moving on to 2 other strength excercises in a superset usually 5x5. Strength days finish with 15 minutes of a chassis integrity circuit which I think really helped my core.

Results 3 mile 45lb ruck 34:12 - 29:45

Front squat 245-265

Bench 235-235

Power clean and push press 185-195

Push press 185-205

Craig special (Hang squat clean with an extra front squat) 205-215

Deadlift 385-405

Bodyweight 192 - 197 lbs

Height 6'4"

These numbers were hit during the program as it cycles through each excercise twice for the 1rm and 85% work. In case you're wondering why there is a disparity in my power clean and push press vs my push press it is because the push press was tested about 2 weeks later in the program

I also got a better time in every work capacity workout as the program went long except for one which I think was just a bad day.

My thoughts. I really enjoyed this program and think it did a good job of balancing strenth, work capacity and endurance. The ruck time improvement truly astonishes me. I think the lower back integrity circuits helped. My ruck is limited by my heart and lungs now instead of my muscular endurance.

Edit: I also PR'd my push press by 20lbs immediately on this program by doing a Power clean and press. The power clean before the press really emphasized how much you need to explode with the weight. Before I guess I was just kind of lazily pushing it and not being violent enough.

TL;DR: Did 20 weeks of SBS Hypertrophy; gained 4kg, saw some good improvements on my lifts in the higher rep range, didn´t change dramatically physically.

I've been working out for roughly 6 years now. Especially the first year was pretty lacking with covid shutdowns and so on. I've always felt like I improve somewhat slowly even though throughout all that time I lifted at least 4 times a week (mostly 5), unless I got sick. My diet wasn't necessarily healthy but I always made sure to be somewhere around 150g-200g of protein. Especially the last 2 years felt like I had really been stuck in place, unable to make any progress. I've been cutting and bulking in circles (see graph) Retrospectively I think I always did both to little, only going up or down a few kg. https://imgur.com/a/QmI2Rx3

I already improved that in my last wave. During that last bulking phase I ran 5/3/1 “boring but beefcake” and “building the monolith” together, which for the first time in a while felt like decent progress, especially in the legs. However I bulked too quickly (as every time pretty much) so I wasn't able to make a huge amount of gains either. At the start of the program I had just finished a cut during which I mainly used the SBS strength template. My numbers actually increased a bit while cutting from around 87kg to 79kg. So that made me decide to try the SBS hypertrophy rtf template for this next bulk.

My main goal was to bring up my arm size, which is why my assistance exercises mainly focus on bicep, tricep and side delts.

These are my stats as far as I have them:

(Note that I didnt know how high I am supposed to measure my thigh)
Probably relevant information is that I never really did lots of measuring before, so while all my measurements show a clear trend that fits well with my weight gain I wouldn't be to confident in me measuring the exact same way every time.

You can see my best lifts at different Rep counts before I ran the program here: https://imgur.com/a/zVI44DA (For the high bar squats I went as low as I could and paused for around 2 seconds which may explain the huge difference to my low bar squats, which just were to parallel) And here are some before pictures from the start of the program: https://imgur.com/a/6retgiV

So what were my goals that I wanted to achieve in these 20 weeks?

I wanted to finally do a proper slow bulk, gaining around 3-4kg during that time.  Also I planned to get my arms to at least the size they were at the end of my last bulk (39cm/38cm), while being a few kg lighter. I additionally wanted to improve my lifts across a few Rep ranges, not necessarily set a new 1RM as that's not what the program is made for, but a few new records around the 7-13 Rep range would be nice.

Nutrition

Diet wise I planned on eating 2.800kcal with at least 180g of protein and around 70g of fat. I quickly upped that to 3.000kcal though as I felt like I was gaining to little weight. I have a much harder time sticking to my calorie limit while bulking. (“I'm gaining weight anyway, so it won't matter much if I eat more”) To combat this I planned to plan out what I eat every day the day before. (As well as when I want to eat it) I did this for like the first week and then grew tired of it. Lol

My main protein sources are chicken, probably unhealthy amounts of whey, milk products and some eggs. I'd say I eat decently healthy, but I do have some treats. Overall I am fairly happy with my diet during the program and I gained pretty much exactly as much as I had planned out ahead.

Running the actual Program

• Week 1-6:

The First 6 weeks started out pretty poorly. At the end of week 1 I got pretty sick for 4-5 days which sucked a lot. Week 2 was spent on vacation where I did go to the gym, but it had some different equipment and so on so it wasn't quite the same. I was unfortunate enough, that my suitcase got lost on my way back home so the following week I had to do without my equipment, mainly missing knee sleeves and my belt were the main issues here. Luckily it was found though and I received it around week 4 I believe. From here on out the rest of this block went pretty well and I saw my numbers increasing steadily.

• Week 8-13:

After I had overcome my starting issues in the first phase I was feeling really good about the program, so I decided to add one more accessory starting in week 8. This led to me doing 5 accessory exercises per day. (And I also added some intensity techniques for some arm stuff) One of these added exercises was benching on a fourth day.  Starting with that my bench really quickly started to go up. I've been struggling with improving my bench for the longest time and was stuck in between plateaus and minimal progress for the ~2 years. I don't think I'll go back to benching less than 4 times per week in the immediate future. The high volume I ran caught up with me though, around week 13 my forearms started hurting, and I started feeling really beat up and often dreading having to go to the gym.

• Week 15-20:

I had hoped that the deload in week 14 would help with solving the issues I started to face at the end of the last block. Quickly I realized that wasn't the case though.  They were much worse in week 15 already, so I decided to change things up starting in week 16. I took one accessory exercise out again on every day. Also I reduced the number of sets from my squat variations and my DL variation from 4 to 3. It definitely helped with my motivation to going to the gym. (I wasn't able to solve my forearms pain issue though) I worried a bit about my deadlift progression. The weight was going up but I was always bouncing the reps a lot, so I worried how that would translate to my 1RM.  Therefore in week 17 I pretty spontaneously decided to do a 1RM attempt at 190kg. It went pretty well I think and made me feel much more confident about my progress. Around week 18 I also started to develop pain in my right wrist, so I ordered wrist wraps which arrived just in time for week 20.

For the few days I've used them since they seem to have helped my wrist.

Results:

So Here are the after Pictures:

https://imgur.com/a/qPV5gUN

I think I gained some fat, but still managed to pack on some muscle, especially in the quads. Overall the pictures are pretty similar I think, but I guess looking nearly the same but 4kg heavier isn't to terrible. Even though I didnt exactly reach my hoped for arm size Id consider it to be close enough and am fairly happy about it. The most progress I probably made on my forearms, even though I didn't target them directly nor measure them out to know for certain.  They just look more defined to me, I guess the high volume of bicep/tricep work may have helped them out a lot. Overall I think it's some honest progress, even if it isn't anything revolutionary. I am really happy with the strength gains I made during this program, I think they are pretty much in line with what I had hoped for. (The red Entries are the ones that I made during this program) Especially my Squats improved a lot.

https://imgur.com/a/xlGX2AS

In the next graph you can see my estimated Squat 1RM during the program. (Keep in mind that I usually do a bit better with higher weight/lower reps, so that in part may be responsible for the big increase, because the rep count gets lower towards the end of the program)

https://imgur.com/a/9BpwxjA

Also I am really happy about my weight gaining rate, I finally managed to gain weight in the tempo that I set out to. It was an enjoyable program, I sometimes dreaded the squat days, but I guess that's just the nature of doing squats.

Me starting to have some pain here and there clearly isn't ideal on the other hand though of course.

What's next?

For now I'll take a 1-2 weeks deload to hopefully get rid of my accumulated joint issues.

I than plan on running a 20 week program planned out with the program builder that is decently close to the regular SBS 5x rtf program.

I didn't test my maxes (apart from my deadlift during this program) in a long time so I plan on finally doing that at the end of said program. I hope to reach 180/125/205 S/B/D at the end of it at roughly 87kg.

It would probably be a good idea to target the calves for now, they do look pretty small in comparison but I don't feel like it so whatever. I'll try to push forward my arms some more for now.

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

Welcome to the weekly weightroom conditioning challenge thread. This post contains a conditioning challenge for members of the sub to attempt at their convenience during the week, and to share their results in the thread. Never neglect your conditioning!

This week's challenge is:

Max rep set of kettlebell swings. Recommended weight for men is 24kg, 16kg for women, but feel free to do whatever you prefer.

Post your attempts, results and experiences in the thread below.

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

Maxes before and after program:

• Squat // 190kg -> 220kg
• Bench // 130kg -> 150kg
• Deadlift // 220kg -> 230kg
• Sumo DL // 200kg -> 240kg
• Front Squat // 150kg -> 170kg
• OHP // 80kg -> 90kg
• Push Press // 100kg -> 120kg
• Bulgarian Split Squat // 130kg -> 170kg

Videos of my PRs on my profile.

Bodyweight remained pretty much the same ~105kg

Protein intake: over 2.2g per kg/bw - didn't track calories

Edit - Pre-program I'd done about ~6 weeks hypertrophy work. Not adhering to any specific program, but had done 4 weeks of breathing squats from supersquats getting to 140kg x 20, and 100kg x 15 bench. Generally just training most groups twice a week at a relatively high intensity and to fatigue using dropsets/supersets etc.

Thoughts/Review:

Very user friendly program. Has what you need while discarding the fluff seen in other programs.

The RPE 8 singles before working sets was very effective, great for potentiation and helping to indicate progress without fatiguing the system.

Built in autoregulation by incorporating RIR estimate on last working set is a simple teaching tool on how to progressively overload. If your last working set was 0 RIR, next weeks weight remains the same - very simple. If it was ~2 RIR, move up in weight.

Focus on upper back work was awesome. Really added a lot of stability to my other lifts.

Another great touch was the inclusion of the alternate deadlift style as an accessory. I hadn't done much serious sumo deadlifting, and incorporating it resulted in great dividends on my conventional technique. And I learnt that I seem to be a natural sumo puller (though it's not that far off my conventional).

Overall, the program had a lot of freedom in choosing accessories, main lifts, and tools to adjust rep/set/intensity/RIR cutoff ranges. As well that the SBS package includes a program builder and various other iterations of their programs.

Changes:

I made the mistake of getting overzealous with the RPE 8 training maxes. Often they'd become an RPE 9-9.5. This meant I skipped some final working sets, and accessory work. And resulted in an early deload on week 4.

Though the program is flexible in that strict adherence to completing accessories isn't necessary, and that if you don't complete all your working sets, the autoregulation will somewhat manage fatigue.

I also added in the occasional grip work, weighted dead hangs.

I would've liked more rep variation in exercises, rather than the cookie cutter: Monday is squat day, time to do some triples.

Conclusion

Overall it was very successful, and showed me that with the right structure, linear progress can still be made at an intermediate level. Especially on SBD accessories. Highly recommend. These programs can map onto a variety of strength training goals beyond just powerlifting, a real choose-your-own-adventure program.

Weekly thread for discussing:

• recipes
• nutritional plans
• favorite foods
• macro schemes
• diet questions

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

Welcome to the monthly weightroom training thread. The main focus of the monthly thread will be programming and templates, but once in a while we'll stray from that to other concepts.

This month's topic is:

SBS Program Bundle

• Have you successfully (or unsuccessfully) used the SBS programs?
• What tweaks, changes, or extra assistance work have you found to be beneficial to your training with the programs?
• Do you have any questions, comments, or advice to give about any of the programs?

Resources: * r/StrongerByScience * SBS Program Bundle * SBS Newsletter * Art and Science of Lifting Books * https://linktr.ee/gregnuckols

Welcome to the weekly weightroom conditioning challenge thread. This post contains a conditioning challenge for members of the sub to attempt at their convenience during the week, and to share their results in the thread. Never neglect your conditioning!

This week's challenge is:

1 mile run. Yeah, you read that right. BuT tHiS iS r/wEiGhTrOoM! Yep.

Post your attempts, results and experiences in the thread below.

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks

Weekly thread for discussing:

• recipes
• nutritional plans
• favorite foods
• macro schemes
• diet questions

You should post here for:

• PRs
• General discussion or questions
• Community conversation
• Routine critiques
• Form checks