dontdosadness
New member
tl;dr - The BWSF Routine is here! This will eventually replace the RR as the sub's main routine once all the exercise progression videos are filled out. Also we're doing another 14 day Primer event starting on New Year's Day 2023!
Pre-amble, Context, Blabbering:
Hi folks! And happy holidays to you all!
Nick-E here.
Long time no speak! Life has been real busy and time has flown! It has been a very unfortunate reality that the development of the sub resources, and in particular, the routine overhaul plan I had laid out just prior to the launch of the BWF Primer routine (first routine of those planned) at the start of 2021 has been on a long hiatus (until now! hehe).
This is because I started an accelerated masters degree program (in other words, living hell) that has been taking up exactly 103% of my time since mid-late 2021.
The big tragedy is as far as the Bodyweight Strength Foundation (BWSF) Routine (the next step from the BWF Primer that will eventually act as replacement of the RR) goes, I had nearly finished it by the time I started the degree, and it has been sitting in that state of near completion for about a year and a half now.
Thankfully the RR remained a decent next-step for all the BWF Primer graduates in the meantime, but since I started this degree I've had my eye out for a time period where I'd be able to properly finish off and release the BWSF routine to give the BWF Primer a proper deserving 'sequel', and to provide the much needed overhaul to the RR that has been a long time coming.
I'm still not finished with the degree (that'll be in late 2023), but over the winter holiday period I have the first proper break I've got so far and I want to take advantage of it!
Alongside that, because of just how well received it was to host a 14 day follow-along for the Primer when it launched, me and the other mods thought it would be cool to do it again this New Years (and possibly make it an annual thing if it continues to be well-liked!) to give all the motivated new folks a fun communal start to their journey, and breathe a little fresh life into the sub and the discord server (which is really the heart of our community and where most of the good discussion goes on, and if you haven't joined yet you absolutely should.)
(I repeat, come say hi in our discord server!)
I'm going to go over what the BWF Primer event looks like for new users who will have joined the sub recently first, and then get to my little special announcement after that!
BWF Primer Follow-Along Event!
Acutely aware of the fact that its been 2 years since any news came from me about this or anything else, I'm going to start with a quick explanation of what the BWF Primer is:
If you have ever wanted to get started with exercise, but found it a bit physically tough to start a whole routine all at once or felt overwhelmed by the amount of reading required before your first workout, that's what the BWF Primer is for!
The BWF Primer is a total-beginners program to get into bodyweight exercise. The way it works is as follows:
Starting from absolute 0, you will go through a guided 14 day period where every day you will be doing one or more of the following:
- Learning a new exercise
- Practicing that new exercise + previously learned exercises
- Reading a chunk of training theory to learn what and why you are doing what you're doing
All of this is previously something you would have to tackle all at once in your very first session of a more complete program such as the Recommended Routine (RR), but this way, you can gently ease your way into it, and let your body and brain acclimate over 2 weeks.
At the end of the 2 weeks, you are left with a 3x per week full body workout program that you can keep up with indefinitely, or eventually graduate from onto a more advanced program (like the RR, or soon... the BWSF Routine!)
From New Year's Day onwards, each day, the corresponding Primer day will be posted both on the subreddit and announced on our discord server for you to follow along with, and check in with others doing the same thing on how its all going!
If you've been looking to get started training, this is a great way to not only get some accountability for starting, but to potentially find a community of potential future friends! Lots of regulars on the discord server joined during the last New Years Primer event and are practically part of the furniture now, still going strong on their fitness journey.
Here is a link to a collection page of all the past Primer Event posts in one place, so you can have a look at how it all went!
Understandably for a New Year's event, it'll start on 1st of Jan 2023 and run til 14th of Jan 2023.
BWSF Routine Soft Launch! (Finally!)
Now onto the more exciting stuff for the long-time users!
For those that have been following since the routine overhaul plan I had laid out, you'll know that the BWSF Routine is basically designed to take place of the current RR (or 'Recommended Routine'). They fill the same niche in terms of the strength level they're appropriate for, but the BWSF Routine was designed with a lot of the longstanding critiques of the RR in mind. Instead of just updating the RR again as we did in 2017, I thought it would be good to get a fresh start, even if the final outcome was fairly similar in concept (beginner BWF routines necessarily cannot be THAT different from eachother at the end of the day).
One thing I have been acutely aware of in the last 1.5 years of sitting on a nearly complete routine that is meant to replace the RR, is that in having discussions with trainees in the discord server about their training, it has become harder and harder to actually recommend the 'Recommended Routine', simply because of how glaring a lot of the critiques of it (that motivated this new routine creation) are. At the same time, because of logistical (and some personal health) issues, I've not been able to properly finish and launch the better alternative that I'd rather recommend to people.
In the last couple of weeks, however, I have been collating all that I had done already on the BWSF Routine and doing a little bit more, and what I am left with now is a 95% complete resource, only missing video examples for much of the exercise progression lists (most of which are the more advanced ones), mostly because I had wanted to film all of them myself for a sense of aesthetic homogeneity with the rest of the content.
I had hoped to film most of these myself, but due to the impact this degree has had on my ability to train consistently, some issues with my physical health and the consequent fact that I simply currently can't do free-standing handstand pushups anymore, for example, these lists are going to be incomplete for a while yet. The routine won't replace the RR in the subreddit's resources until then
At the moment, the resources I've written are all hosted on my site, but over the next couple weeks I will be migrating the information to be available all on the subreddit as well, just like the BWF Primer, so people don't HAVE to go to my site to access the content and that way no one can cry 'shill' :') .
Once everything is migrated to the subreddit and the video lists are done, the idea is that the BWSF will take the place of the RR as the actual main routine (alongside the primer) that is recommended to new users, and the RR (and some other routines) will be moved but still be available in a sort of 'legacy routines' section. The RR is, at this point, a massive part of BWF history as much as it is a routine so to remove it outright would be pretty criminal.
(Althought it will probably have to be rebranded to 'The Previously Recommended Routine' or 'The Routine Formerly Known as Recommended' /s)
I think ultimately, doing a bit of a soft launch so theres more of a gradual and public transition from the RR being the king routine of the sub to this new one will ultimately be for the best. It will be less of a jarring change, and the opportunity to get a tad of community feedback on the new routine will help to make sure its as much of an improvement as possible as it's being finished. Alternatively, if people seem to absolutely hate the idea of the BWSF routine replacing the RR, then that's also valuable information to know before we do all the work of editing up the wiki, but I'd hope everyone reads the routine and realises how much of an improvement it is!
On that note, here's a nice itemized list summarising the biggest broadest differences between the BWSF and RR.
BWSF Routine vs the current/'old' Recommended Routine
- No more mandatory blanket recommendation of a very long warmup that's useful for some people and an unnecessary waste of time for others
- Greater range in reps and rest based on the exercise performed and its role in the program because scientific understanding on the topic has evolved, and so 5-8 reps for everything is not actually believed to be the best approach for general strength/hypertrophy development anymore
- Removal of dips in favour of the pike pushup for an absolute myriad of reasons, not least because dips cause a lot of people costochondral pain and the old routine is missing a true overhead push
- Removal of excessive number of core exercises in favour of fewer, more bang for buck exercises
- Simplified by removing all the supersets and trisets (Although if you prefer them, by all means do it that way)
- Strict strength pre-requisites for pull-ups and pike-pushups to speed up journey through initial progressions and improve rep quality
- Related to above; removal of stop-gap exercises (e.g. scapular pulls, arch hangs, etc.) for people to do before they hit the strength requirements for pullups that are ultimately a very inefficient use of time and energy.
- Program templates for 3, 4 and two different ways of 6 times per week training frequency, all closely matched for weekly volume to be as equal as possible
- Way shorter and easier to read
- Has a pre-requisite strength requirement to do the program (3x8 Pushups and Horiz. Rows with good form, same as the Primer Graduation requirements!)
- Has an intended end/'graduation' goal before moving on to a more specialised routine, rather than trying to be effective indefinitely
- Different, better exercise progressions, with handy dandy homemade flowchart graphics to make understanding them easier, more expansive leg exercise progressions and less fear of "adding weight" as a progression
- Premade workout log for people that dont have/don't like using apps
The result of these differences is a program that hopefully:
- requires much less time to read on the first go
- is more accessible for people who dont have a long period of free time 3x per week, but may have a shorter period of time free 4/6 times per week
- is much tighter in time to completion
- is more effective overall due to better exercise selection
- is more focused on being good at what it should be good at (beginner strength routine), rather than trying to be good at everything indefinitely
- is more enjoyable!
That's all for now!
If you have any desire to learn more or have a chat (and in case you've not got sick of me pointing out that it exists yet), the discord server is the best place to go! I'm there at least a little while most days so would be happy to answer questions there when I'm available
Thanks for reading this long!
Nick-E