I’ve followed a variety of fitness plans and protocols but have never achieved the goals I wanted. First, because I suck at changing my diet. Second, because I never found a program that met the goals I had set in my mind. That was until I found Tactical Barbell Volume 2. (I now also own Volume 3.) In my mind, I wanted something functional, but when I looked for functional fitness, I quickly found out that functional wasn’t descriptive enough.
Tactical Barbell Provides Clarification
Tactical Barbell offered my definition of functional. Functional is useful for soldiers, Marines, Cops, EMTs, and other physical professionals. I wanted to be strong, but I also wanted to be able to run fast and for a long period of time. I wanted to be able to fight, shoot, and move fluidly. So, I started Tactical Barbell with that goal in mind. I have a long way to go, but I’m eight weeks closer now.
Stereotypes exist for a reason. The stereotype of dudes getting out of the military and immediately gaining weight is real. It turns out that yes, you can binge drink and eat pizza five times a week when you’re 21 years old and never gain a pound…as long as you exercise 30 hours a week and spend weeks in the field training. That’s the Marine Corps experience. Turns out you can’t do that when you get out of the Marine Corps—and I did.
Tactical Barbell – Conditioning
I researched the Tactical Barbell program before hitting the buy button. I knew nothing about it, what it was, or even where to start. When I read that the second volume offered a Building Blocks Program, I knew I had a place to start. Conditioning sounded like a great way for me to start the program. I’m fairly out of shape.
I haven’t completed eight weeks of Tactical Barbell; I merely finished the eight weeks of base building. It’s an eight-week program that took me 10 weeks. I hurt my back in an incident unrelated to working out, and Hurricane Helene also slowed me down by a week. Base building, or BB, sounds easy but proved to be mentally and physically taxing.
Tactical Barbell isn’t your typical follow-along program. It doesn’t say do these exercises this day. Instead, it’s more or less teaching you how to create a program based on your goals, equipment, and schedule. For someone like me, that sounds terrifying, but the program has suggestions and workouts you can use.
Workout Suggestions
For example, the book provides a Base-Building template for eight weeks that lists what you should do. The program uses lots of acronyms—things like SE, E, MS, HIC, etc. They each stand for a particular type of workout.
Each has guidelines, and things like E mean endurance. It doesn’t say you have to run, ruck, or swim; you can pick what you do. SE stands for strength endurance and its low-weight, high-rep resistance workouts.
You can use the guidance to design your own cluster of exercises or one of the many suggested clusters. Ultimately, you can design your own or use a premade solution.
Putting In Work
Week one seems easy, but as you look at the template, it continually escalates, and by week four, you’re doing at least an hour of long-state cardio, like running three times a week. I did three types of cardio. Every week, I ran, hit a punching bag, and rucked. The running was my only real challenge, and I didn’t think I could do it for an hour.
In reality, I didn’t have to. Tactical Barbell wants you to put out as hard as you can, but if you need to walk, walk. I didn’t just need to walk because my fat ass couldn’t run that far, but because my heart rate needed to come down. I needed to keep it within certain parameters, and when it exceeded those parameters, I took a break.
By week three, I didn’t think I could do 50 reps of my SE or strength endurance cluster. Mine consisted of six exercises using just the barbell: overhead presses, squats, rows, bench presses, shrugs, and deadlifts. Doing 30 reps felt like it killed me. Doing 50? Impossible.
Yet I was wrong. By the time I got to the days I had to do three sets of 50, I powered right through it. It didn’t even feel that hard, or at least as hard as my mind made it. After five weeks of strength endurance, my weighted lifts in the Maximal Strength days were much easier.
I didn’t get nearly as tired, and I could rest less and push through. My endurance has steadily improved, and I’m running faster and faster every week.
End Results
Oh, and I lost ten pounds without adjusting my diet. I increased my protein intake but didn’t count calories. My musculature has improved noticeably in my chest and shoulders, and I have no injuries. My form has improved drastically in everything. Now, I’m starting the Operator program, which is three days of weight training, and I can program cardio, endurance, and rest days in between the strength days.
My end goal is to be stronger, faster, and more healthy. My diet has changed a ton, and I am getting used to less Reeses and more broccoli. I’ll report again in six weeks after my first Tactical Barbell Operator block is complete, but for now, I’m loving Tactical Barbell.
For more information, please visit TacticalBarbell.com.
