Body By Science help? page

[Dizzordr]

Hey, everyone
This is my second week trying out Body by Science. My first week, I did an exercise on Monday, was sore as hell for most of the week, and then went again on Sunday morning. I improved. I felt like I deserved the almost-one-week of rest.
However, now it's Thursday, and I'm not sore at all. In fact, I wasn't too sore for most of this week, just Monday and Tuesday. Should I go again this evening and just try to push harder, despite the fact that this week I spent less time resting?
I'm a weakling. Could that have something to do with it? I'm 5'10" and I have about 138lbs of lean mass on me. Could that have something to do with my shorter recovery time?

Also, how should I increase my weights? Should I just add a random amount onto my previous numbers? Should I add a specific percent? Should I stick with a weight until I can exceed 90 seconds, and /then/ switch to something heavier? I'm usually failing at around 75 seconds of TUL.

Annnnd finally, when I do the leg press, I push to fail at around the same time as my upper-body movements, and by the end of it, I'm shaking and I feel like there is no way I could do another rep if I tried. But come the next day, my legs aren't nearly as sore as my upper-body. It makes me feel like I'm lacking much progress in my legs. Any advice? Should I push harder, or try to go for a longer TUL?

Anyway, thanks everyone.
(PS to anyone hating on BBS -- I did some big-three-esque-heavy-barbell stuff for a few weeks before this, but until I can convince a friend who's willing to spot me on the bench to join the gym, I'm doing machines. I feel like if I push to failure on bench press, I'll end up killing myself. And I tend to overestimate my abilities on that last rep. I do wanna move to free weights eventually, but I figured I might as well be doing /something/ to increase my strength for a couple months, while I try to convince a pal to join the gym).
-D

[js290]

Soreness is not really a good measure of anything. Get a heartrate monitor and a stop watch. The HR monitor will tell you if you're putting out maximal effort. The stop watch will if you're using too much or too little weight. Shoot for 60-120 seconds.

BODY BY SCIENCE TRAINING VIDEO 2 — TODD BEARD »

[Neckhammer]

Each persons optimal TUL is a bit different. I shoot for about a 90sec TUL before I increase weight. For legs I go to 120. As long as your increasing either TUL or weight consistently then your obviously getting stronger. I go up about 10lbs at a time these days.

As to your soreness questions. Not really all that relevant to determine if you are getting stronger. There are quite a few reasons soreness reduces over time as you acclimate to a routine. As you might have read in BBS part of the philosophy is to spend more time ABOVE baseline than bellow before doing your next workout.....So for me, I work out on Saturday...definitely weaker than baseline on Sunday and Monday....Tuesday things are nearing baseline/normalcy.....by Wed. I'm feeling great so I spend Wed. Thurs. and Fri. above baseline before I wreck myself again on Saturday.

[MikeEnRegalia]

Soreness is not really a good measure of anything. Get a heartrate monitor and a stop watch. The HR monitor will tell you if you're putting out maximal effort. The stop watch will if you're using too much or too little weight. Shoot for 60-120 seconds.

BODY BY SCIENCE TRAINING VIDEO 2 — TODD BEARD »

Seriously? The heart rate will largely depend on which exercise you're performing - the bigger the muscles involved, the more your heart rate will ramp up. That doesn't make it the ideal tool to measure progress ... also, as your metabolic conditioning improves, your max. heart rate will go down (for the same exercise).