Sussing out FT

[righty]

A LOT of guys have made great gains with just Tier I. One of the best gainers (he goes by TinyTim on Testosteronemuscle.co.uk - you may know of him masonator?...) used Tier I throughout most of our time training together.

Training volume simply doesn't make up for a lack of intensity of effort. (No aspersions cast!)

-S

TinyTim aka righty checking in.
Thanks, Dr Scott - those words are appreciated.

It has probably been asked a million times but I am a volume guy...

Would I be a good candidate for starting on say Tier 2 of the basic rather than Tier 1, I just cant help but look at Tier 1 and think its not enough !!

Hi masonator,
I kinda got fed up with posting in my journal on TM in the end and deleted it - too much calling out of gains because people weren't having it that 15kg+ in 8 months was possible with barely a movement in multi-site caliper measurements (though I did gain some fat, for sure).

Still, Dr Scott received weekly pics and a ton of data, from which he managed my diet (I was a paid client of Dr Scott's).

Anyway, to the question of tier 1 vs tier 2.

Here's how I saw it: I have pretty crappy genetics - skinny fat by nature and an ecto frame. But I will not deviate from a plan and that was the key to making this awesome program work for me.
We set up a list of lifts which I had to beat every workout. Missing them meant potentially losing them and, as they were my favourites, I wasn't about to lose them. So, I had to beat them.

The first week was easy - because I hadn't yet worked out just how deep into muscular overload I could go.
Week two was hard - beating good (for me) lifts required effort.
Week three and I was thinking "how'm I gonna beat this - that was a cracking set last week?"
But they got beat.
And so on, deeper into overload every week and learning to push the mental boundary because there were plenty of physical fibres not yet fired and spent.

This was mostly all on tier 1 - I think we tried tier 2 for half a blast and it destroyed me - I needed an early cruise from that one.

If you can and do go further than you've gone before in terms of progression from week-to-week, and keep doing it week after week until it's time to cruise, tier 1 is "just" a tool facilitating very rapid progress - concentrating everything into as few lifts as possible and giving everything. Got quite anxious before some sessions because I knew they were going to be relatively insane but they got done. And I literally couldn't wait to leave the gym and get home to eating, as eating was the key between recovering and gaining, and burning out. I'll let Dr Scott go into the details of macro amounts he built me up to, if he's so inclined.

I was 46 at the time, so hardly in my prime of gaining youth.

One thing though - the cruise, as laid out in the book, played a huge role in sustained gaining. I came back from each cruise stronger and heavier and very refreshed. Not a meal was missed and not a cheat food was eaten. Just good old-fashioned slog.

I've been chatting with Dr Scott and it's shortly time for me to gain another 15kg under his wing (I laid the training up for a while as I swopped careers and got ready to move house). Unless he says differently, it'll be tier 1 again.