Hi there. I have just listened to the latest BBM Podcast episode “How Much Lifting is Enough? How Much is Too Much?” and in it, if I understood correctly, Jordan recommends that people do double the current exercise guideline volumes, i.e. instead of 2 resistance training sessions per week do 4 sessions, and instead of 150mins of conditioning do 300mins. Can you tell me which of the BBM Templates meet that recommendation? Or if I didn’t understand correctly, which of the BBM templates is consistent with your tldr recommendation for weekly volume? (All assuming that the recommendation does not break the various constraints you mentioned: time available, recoverable… I forgot the other ones). Thanks!
BTW I really enjoyed both this and the last podcast on some of the history of lifting and training methods came from - thanks for putting them out!
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Thanks for the kind words re: podcasts. I appreciate it.
All of our templates are consistent with my recommendations. I do think many people would continue to benefit from additional conditioning provided they had enough: 1) time, and 2) recovery capacity, but that increase in conditioning volume would occur gradually over months and years, long after someone completed a couple rounds of a single template, or a number of templates in succession.
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Thanks Jordan - by my quick scan I didn’t think that any had 300mins of conditioning?
Yes, I don’t think that minutes tells us much about training load, so when pressed, I am not necessarily recommending double the guideline minimums for time, which would be 300 minutes. The guidelines themselves use MET-minutes as a metric of training load, with 500 MET-minutes again being the minimum.
As you know, a MET is a multiple of how much energy you burn sitting still. Sitting is one MET. Brisk walking is about three. Running is seven or eight. When you multiply the MET cost by the duration, you get MET-hours or MET-minutes. Two and a half hours of brisk walking at three METs is about seven and a half MET-hours, which is the guideline minimum.
You can achieve 15 MET-hours by brisk walking for 5 hours/wk, or by doing higher intensity (higher MET) work that is also more likely to increase cardiorespiratory fitness. Most of our templates include enough volume and intensity to get close to that mark (15 MET-hours).
Thanks for clarifying Jordan! I had been naively thinking just in terms of “150-300 minutes” (and that 300mins seemed like a lot to fit in!). Appreciate the clarification!
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Oh yea! 5 hours is a lot of time for most when it comes to exercise, no doubt. That’s one of the reasons higher intensity training can be useful, and a reason why I think zone 2 training is a bit overhyped. Zone 2 is great if you’re doing a ton of conditioning…but most people aren’t!
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