I am
currently in my 8th week of DoggCrapp, which matches how long I ran it…13 years
ago, before competing in my first powerlifting meet and completely abandoning
the program in pursuit of becoming a better powerlifter. Oddly enough, at that meet I set my best ever
bench press in competition (342lbs as a 198 lifter), which was probably a
lesson I should have learned but never did.
But, either way, I’ve had 13 years to mature since then, and once again
felt the call to take on DoggCrapp again, and after another 8 weeks I saw fit
to get some thoughts down on it. This
isn’t a full on program review, as I’m not “done” with DoggCrapp, but a quick
check-in to express my thoughts so far: what’s been good, what’s been bad,
what’s simply “been”, and, of course, my tweaks and mutations.
**BACKGROUND**
In the beginning...
Let’s start
with “what the hell is DoggCrapp?”
DoggCrapp is the unfortunate name that Dante Trudel gave his training
style, which was a joke of a name he came up with on an online forum in the
early aughts that regrettably stuck with it for the rest of its life. Anyone that was online in that era totally
understands how these dumb decisions you make in the heat of coming up with a
screenname can last with you the rest of your life (self-included), but rest
assured that the programming style itself is no joke. Dante, himself not a bodybuilding trainer at
the time but simply an enthusiast, had made several observations on what were
the variables in bodybuilding training that seemed to ensure maximal success,
and decided to just take all those winning strategies together and make it into
its own training style, very similar to the alleged history of Bruce Lee’s Jeet
Kune Do: take what is useful and discard what isn’t. These ideas were circulated through various
forum posts and eventually captured and consolidated in a thread known as
“Cycles for Pennies”, with Dante eventually creating his own forum known as
“intense-muscle”, where he poured our more of his nearly prophetic ideas.
For myself,
my first exposure to DoggCrapp came via a t-nation article titled “How to Build
50 Pounds of Muscle in 12 Months” by Nate Green, which I’ll link here, because
it’s honestly a very solid primer on DoggCrapp and still what I rely on to this
day.
https://forums.t-nation.com/t/how-to-build-50-pounds-of-muscle-in-12-months/284515
And while
we’re talking about background, where was I when I started DoggCrapp
again? I had JUST finished up 5/3/1
Building the Monolith which, in turn, I took on because, prior to that, I was
running Jamie Lewis’ “Famine” protocol and was honestly burnt out with lifting
4-6 days a week and wanted to cut it down to 3.
Building the Monolith gave me that opportunity, after which I went on a
Disney Cruise, ate my face off, came back home and STILL only wanted to lift 3
days a week, and be able to spend the rest of my days walking or conditioning,
which was a great fit for DoggCrapp.
**PROGRAM
SUMMARY**
 |
| Kinda misses the point... |
You really
should just read that primer I linked, but for a quick overview of how
DoggCrapp works.
* 3 days a
week of lifting (yes, there are other splits out there in DC, they are for
advanced trainees, which I am not as far as bodybuilding is concerned)
*
Alternating A/B style workouts. The A
workout is chest-shoulders-triceps-back width-back thickness, the B workout is
biceps-forearms-calves-hamstrings-quads.
Yes, it is in THAT order.
* 3 workouts
PER workout. What that means is, you
have an A1, A2 and A3 day, and a B1, B2 and B3 day. So it takes a total of 2 weeks to get through
all workouts (A1-B1-A2, B2-A3-B3, repeat).
* One
movement per muscle, one workset per movement (in most cases). Rest pause for the majority of the worksets.
* “Beat the
logbook”. Each workout, you either do
more total reps than last time, more weight, both, OR, if you can’t beat the
logbook, you change out the movement.
* After the
workset, engage in a weighted stretch for the muscle (60-90 seconds).
* 30 minutes
of cardio on the non-lifting days (ideally fasted).
* 2g of
protein per pound of bodyweight for the diet.
**HOW I HAVE
CHANGED THINGS**
Perfectly designed!
* I’ve
honestly kept things pretty close to original.
The biggest thing is I removed the forearm work and replaced it with a
shrug variant. I genuinely don’t care
about my forearm size, and figure I can get it to grow with grip strength
work. Meanwhile, I DO care about the
size of my traps, and wanted to use this as a chance to maximize it. I felt like these were both “small” muscle
groups, and fit in well as a swap, and having owned Kelso’s Shrug Book for a
decade, I’m at no shortage of shrug variations to employ.
* I am also
still implementing ROM progression deadlifts, because I have found that, for
me, this once a week pulling really gets me strong on the deadlift and doesn’t
tax my recovery enough to impact other training. I’ve even managed to factor it into
DoggCrapp: I include it in my A2 workout as my backwidth exercise. On the week I DON’T do the A2 workout, I do a
ROM progression deadlift on Saturday.
It’s one set and 5 minutes of work, and I often count it toward my
“sprint workouts” (described below).
* I also
tend to go above the recommended cardio recommendation. I still keep it low intensity, because I dig
how that’s effective for burning fat, but I tend to go on a weighted vest walk
for 40-50 minutes, and will also use this training day to hit some odds and
ends (kb swings, reverse hyper, band pull aparts, neck work and some lateral
raises tend to be the go to).
* I also
include 3x10 standing ab wheels on the end of the lifting days. Direct ab work really serves me well. Some folks don’t need it, but I do.
* I lift
M-W-F, I do the walking/odds and ends on Tues/Thurs, and on the weekends I’ll
get in non-fasted walking and “sprint” workouts. These are 3-6 minute high intensity
conditioning workouts: things like the Grace/Fran WODs, TABEARTA, 5 minutes of
ABCs, etc. It’s in my best interest to
keep those on the short side, as the lifting is intense and I don’t want to dip
too far into my recovery. And, as I
wrote above, once every 2 weeks I’ll be including a ROM progression deadlift
workout on a Saturday.
* With me
eating carnivore, I imagine I’m getting those protein recommendations, but I’m
not counting or measuring to be able to say for sure.
**WHAT I
LIKE ABOUT DOGGCRAPP**
Speaking of blasts from the past...
* Once
again, the big draw was 3 days a week of lifting, giving me more time to
walk. With it being spring leading into
summer, I want to get outdoors more often rather than be trapped inside a gym,
and this style of training allows me to get in the hard training that I need
while affording me the opportunity to enjoy being outside. That’s also a one/two punch as far as the
goals of a bodybuilding program goes, because I find walking to be the best
physique improving non-lifting activity to engage in. Low heartrate level exercise tends to be the
exercise that relies on fat as a fuel source rather than carbs, and I find it’s
an effective way to either strip fat away from the body OR, at least minimize
its accumulation when eating aggressively.
It also allows me to get out in the sun, get a tan, and just be in a
great head space.
* This style
of progression totally clicks with me. I
hate percentages, and am somehow able to overcome that when it comes to 5/3/1
and Deep Water primarily because they just use them as a starting point, but in
my most ideal world I’d never bother with them.
DC is just about doing more than last time until you can’t, and then
switching it up again. That’s what I
grew up on with Pavel, and it still clicks to this day.
* But along
with just not having percentages, I ALSO appreciate how the progression is
“slow”. And I put that in quotes because
it’s much like how silly people say 5/3/1’s progression is slow. What we really mean when we say slow
progression is “infrequent opportunities to progress”. You only play with the TM of 5/3/1 after the
cycle is over, but you can still progress as fast as you want. You only get a chance to beat the logbook
once every 2 weeks, but in between those 2 weeks you can make LOTS of progress.
* And you
really DO make a lot of progress between those attempts because of how
intelligently the whole thing is set up.
Forcing you to pick different movements for 3 different workouts is
going to force you to work the muscles/movements from different angles, which
is going to force you to bring up weakpoints whether you want to or not. So, for example, Dips for chest on day A1
strengthens the Incline Bench used on day A2 which strengthens the Dumbbell
Bench used on day A3, which strengthens the dip. This, once again, funnily enough harkens back
to my days following Pavel’s 3-5 out of his “Beyond Bodybuilding” book, which
was supposed to, of course, be BEYOND bodybuilding, yet here we are again. I’ve also used this approach for Super Squats
as well, and it’s really a lesson I just need to learn in general. Rather than having to keep a movement locked
in for 6 weeks at a time and then do a whole new training block, we can vary
the movements WITHIN the block to stretch it out longer.
* Just to
keep speaking to how much I like the set-up: a 2 week break from a movement
isn’t enough time to get detrained on it, assuming you come into DoggCrapp with
a solid enough base. This is something I
learned first hand with Deep Water, where it was 2 weeks between movements on
the actual Deep Water days. And
considering Dante said not to take on the program unless you had 3 years of
training and were over 26 years old, there was something in place there to
ensure that. It’s honestly just a great
cyclical periodization approach.
* The order
of the split/movements makes total sense to me.
I like saving my hardest movement for last in a workout, vs most folks
doing it first. And I most likely picked
this up from the first time I ran DoggCrapp.
But saving widowmaker squats for the end of the workout REALLY allows
you to put your all into it and not have to worry about the swim back.
Additionally, the “back width” exercise at the end of the A days allows you to
employ a deadlift variant, which can make DoggCrapp more like a 3x a week full
body workout vs a bodybuilding split, and, once again, you can REALLY go all
out on the deadlift.
* I like how
unbodybuilder-esque this bodybuilding training is. Dante is really big on the whole 80/20
principle, and for movement selection it means picking big movements you can go
heavy on. A big part of that is because
you have to “beat the logbook”. If
you’re doing 15lb lateral raises, it’s hard to progress each workout, but if
you’re pressing 185lbs overhead, your shoulders have some wiggleroom. This really gels well with my meathead
background. There isn’t much nuance to
execution either. No tempo counts or rep
range trickery. The calves are the most
nuanced bodypart to train in the program, and I can tolerate that.
* I dig the
inclusion of a heavy set of quad work before hitting the widowmaker. Once again: very 5/3/1, and I feel like it
does a good job of allowing me to stay strong.
And being able to include a deadlift for my back width work allows a
similar benefit.
* Mandatory
cardio. I’m honestly pretty good about
doing that stuff on my own volition these days, but much like how 5/3/1 has
conditioning in it, Jamie Lewis includes required walking, and even Deep Water
has an active recovery day, I appreciate programs that are PROGRAMS and not
just a lifting routine. Taking the whole
picture into account is good. AND,
laying out that the cardio is a 30 minute walk gives a good perspective of how
hard to work on those non-lifting days.
Complying with that has been good for my recovery.
* I love
Dante’s approach to nutrition. Once
again, his 80/20 approach shines through.
He wants dudes to focus on getting BIG while they run DoggCrapp. Leanness can come AFTER we get big. And according to Dusty Hanshaw, Dante’s
philosophy was “If you’re going to overeat, it may as well be the stuff that
muscle is made of”, which is how he settled on 2g of protein per pound of
bodyweight, which aligns exactly with the same conclusion of Jamie Lewis in
“Issuance of Insanity”, and is very close to the recommendation in “Feast,
Famine and Ferocity” during the Feast phase.
Trainees NEED this sort of reinforcement. Plus, with the thermic effect of food being a
thing, there’s a fair chance that overeating this much protein is going to
result in the same sort of fat spillover that one would experience with carbs
or fats. And since insulin AND glucagon
tend to rise together when protein is consumed, there shouldn’t be as many
blood sugar spikes compared to what one experiences when overeating carbs. I think there’s a lot of method to this
madness, and it once again appeals to me as a nutritional alchemist.
**WHAT I
DON’T LIKE ABOUT DOGGCRAPP**
An easy identifier that you have lame friends
* Workouts
run longer than I care. I typically
limit my weight training to an hour, and was getting most of my training done
in about 45-50 minutes before DoggCrapp, but on DC it’s pretty rare for me to
get a workout done in under 65 minutes.
A big contributor to this is the warm-up sets. Because the dirty secret of High Intensity
Training style programs is this: though there is only “one” workset, there is a
LOT of volume to be found in the warm-ups.
This style of training uses a ramping up warm-up, where you’re not
necessarily burning out in the warm-ups, but you ARE getting a solid pump and
putting in some work before you actually get to that work set. You want to really prime your system for max
execution. Once again, 5/3/1 already
trained you on this with the way Jim builds the lifts leading up to the topset
of the mainwork, and we saw this also back in The Complete Keys to
Progress. People will LOOK at a
DoggCrapp workout and think “I’ll be in and out of the gym in 15 minutes”,
which is once again why I say you can’t judge a program until you run it. When you actually do the workouts, to include
the warm-ups in a meaningful way, it’s going to take some time to get it done.
* A solution
to the above would be to follow a split that has fewer muscle groups per day,
but this would require training MORE days per week, which would rob me of the
benefit of only lifting 3x per week.
Instead, I just wake up 15 minutes earlier.
* And
because I’m being a good DoggCrapp citizen, I’m not in there knocking out giant
sets or squeezing in a million assistance exercises between sets like I would
on other programs. I AM keeping those
warm-up sets very tight and short, but I’m still keeping myself focused on the
movement, and will even grant myself a full minute rest before the squat and
deadlift workouts. It’s hard for me to
stay disciplined liked this, and I would prefer to get in a LOT of training
density, but I also recognize how much I’ve written about periodization to know
that I’ve done a LOT of training density work, so now it’s time to go
abbreviated.
* It’s
really hard to care about calves, and they take SUPER long to train on the
program, because each rep itself is 20 seconds long at least (5 second
eccentric, 15 second hold), followed by a 70-90 stretch once it’s done. Just another way for the training days to run
very long.
**WHAT I AM
INDIFFERENT ABOUT DOGGCRAPP**
Indifferent dog! Full props if you get this reference
* The
weighted stretching. It’s just something
I do because it’s part of the program, similar to the pullovers in Super
Squats. It does suck because it’s just
more time spent in the gym (adding to the long run time), but I don’t feel like
it’s the secret weapon of the program NOR do I feel like it’s stupid to the
point that I don’t need to do it. With
only one big workset per bodypart, I figure the loaded stretch is just another
way to get some more time under tension.
**BORROWING
IDEAS**
* I like to
think of DoggCrapp as “conjugate bodybuilding”, and I feel like a lot of its
ideas could be lent to other programs. I
have an idea in my head of taking Super Squats and turning it into 3 separate
workouts to be run in a week (A1-A2-A-3, repeat). Still only go up 5-10lbs each time you cycle
back. It would allow the program to be
run for longer…which might not be a good thing at all! But also, dig how you do the pullovers in
Super Squats and how that is a “weighted stretch”: it was DoggCrapp before it
was cool. You could also move the squat
to the very end like DoggCrapp and have the DC blessing even if it goes against
the instructions of Super Squats.
* Meanwhile,
if we’re worried that we’re not getting strong enough with DoggCrapp, one could
always take Easy Strength and use that to nudge up numbers. Think about how completely different the
programs are: one is about cycling through 3 different workouts, not coming
back to a movement for 2 weeks. Easy
Strength has you stick with the same movement 5 days a week for 40
workouts. And Dan specifically says Easy
Strength is there to take care of the strength work so that you can go on to
“everything else”, and in a recent podcast specifically stated bodybuilding
work as being included in the “everything else” portion of things. So you could open up with Easy Strength and
roll into DoggCrapp if you had that some of training time. And since Easy Strength can be run as
infrequently as 2-3x a week, there’s even an avenue to do it on NON-lifting
days of DC. Especially if you run “Easy
Strength for Fat Loss”, which specifically has you go for a fasted walk AFTER
the Easy Strength workout. That may
actually be a fantastic idea that I might just have to steal sometime. If you have any pet lifts that aren’t getting
the love they need, this could be the answer.
**IN
SUMMARY**
Holy crap,
look at how much I write when it’s NOT a program review. I haven’t even done a before/after or talked
about results, or even my specific set-up this rotation (which is a good
overview on how to make the most of a home gym, considering Dante advises
strongly against trying that), but needless to say I am progressing well on
this and have my first cruise ala “blast and cruise” coming up at the end of
May, at which point I’ll have to see what my appetite is for continued
crapping.
Thanks for reading! Always happy to discuss further.
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