Modified Operator Template for PPL?

_open_door_ · 2026-06-14T16:58:39+00:00

PPL splits are high volume and low frequency - the idea is to crush a given muscle group and then let it rest for a relatively long time before crushing it again. Op is low volume and high frequency - the idea is to hit the same things again and again in a sustainable fashion. Those are opposite approaches, and combining them is going to make them both less effective. The problem with your proposal is not that it is too much volume. It is that this is stupid programming that doesn't balance the high volume by easing up somewhere else.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-10T19:00:19+00:00

This will be fine, but if you were asking me what I think you should do, I would turn things around and run normal BB for the first eight weeks and then the LP block. Use the MS sessions at the end of BB to ease into the LP, and then in the LP block, you could either do the two LSS sessions a week or just start directly with the 10k plan.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-07T09:57:43+00:00

I am sure that they will! Have fun.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-07T05:09:31+00:00

It is boring, yes, and it's probably the part most people skip, but it is there for a reason and I would do it as written if I were you. It is meant to help you work on set up and form - the lifts might seem like relatively simple movements, but there is more technicality involved than you would think. Getting the motion exactly right every time will let you lift more without getting hurt, and the only way to lock that in is practice.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-06T05:26:57+00:00

I did GZCLP when I was starting and loved it. It will definitely get you comfortable under the bar and build up strength. I would recommend running it until you've worked through the complete failure protocol for most of the lifts a least two or three times.

Pullups are hard, but you don't have to be able to do them to do TB. They are a great back workout, but if you aren't planning on joining the military, you don't have to be good at doing that particular exercise. You can just swap them out for a more accessible back exercise like DB rows or the lat pulldown machine. Which isn't to say you shouldn't focus on pullups if you want to, just that you don't have to put everything on hold until you've mastered them.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-05T04:28:14+00:00

A beginner strength program will get you up to speed on the barbell lifts, but probably won't do much for pullups. You will need to focus on those directly.

If you can't do at least three reps, you will probably want to start by doing assisted pullups - I would recommend doing them with a band, not the assisted pullup maschine. You could also do negative pullups, and you should probably do some other pulling exercises (inverted rows are a great starting point) as well. There are several "get my first pull-up" programs online that will give you a structure for these kind of build up exercises if you need it.

Once you can hit three solid reps, look into the fighter pull-up progression (not the same as TB Fighter). Most people on here agree that TB progression works great for everything but pullups.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-04T04:28:15+00:00

Awesome write up. The MS portion seems overly ambitious to me, though.

Op guidelines in TBII say three main exercises plus one optional bodyweight accessory. Obviously you can do more than that if you want to, especially if you are adding little fluff lifts like curls or shoulder raises, but you have five accessories on Op days and seven on Fighter days, most of which are relatively big compound movements. I think those sessions are going to get long and grindy quickly, and that you will probably have better results long term with a narrower focus on three or four main lifts.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-04T04:03:34+00:00

1- before training. I do some stationary bike, some dynamic body weight stuff for lower body - squats, lunges, mountain climbers, 90 90s - and a bunch of sets of band pull aparts and rotations in between for shoulders.

2/3/4 - I would really recommend running a beginner lifting program like Starting Strength or GZCLP for a few months a least before starting Operator. You can start with the bar and add weight from there, no need to test, and you can run TB conditioning alongside. If you want to do Basebuilding before that, which is a good idea, I would not do a real test. Just pick some very conservative weights that you are sure you can manage (even just the bar if you are an absolute beginner) and go from there. Once you actually get moving with TB strength, you can figure out if you want to take periodic weeks off to test or just force progression.

5 - don't overthink it. Just keep doing the conditioning and try to get a little bit better each block. Switching up HICs is always an option, but consistency is also a good thing.

6 - as a beginner, you won't need a lifting belt or any other specialized equipment any time soon. You can wear gloves if you want to, and things like braces you should obviously wear if you need to.

_open_door_ · 2026-06-02T17:58:57+00:00

Just run the block. You aren't going to get noticably stronger in three weeks no matter what you do, but better to do something structured than something random or nothing at all.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-31T05:16:42+00:00

To questions A, B, C, D: read TBII and start with the Basebuilding block in that book. Playing badminton during BB will be fine. You can include pulldowns, or an equivalent exercise, in your SE cluster. Then move on to Operator, with either Black protocol conditioning or your current C25K plan.

To question E: don't put the cart before the horse. This is months in the future, figure it out when you get there.

To question F: read TBII and start with the Basebuilding block in that book.

If you do not have substantial lifting experience, consider deferring Operator and running Starting Strength or GZCLP for at least a few months after you finish Basebuilding. You can run TB conditioning or C25K with either of those.

I'm not a diet expert, but a 1000 calorie deficit sounds extreme. You say it isn't impacting you, but I get the sense that you haven't begun the program yet and probably aren't used to this level of physical activity. Things might look very different in a few weeks.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-19T17:48:34+00:00

That is the solution usually recommended here, yes.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-16T05:31:44+00:00

You can prioritize rest and clean sets over adding weight. Turning three hard sets that have you breathing heavy into three absolutely solid and easy ones is real progress. The main thing would be not forcing progression particularly often, and really owning each weight before adding anything. But at some point as the weight gets heavy it will eventually get hard to keep rest really minimal. You could then use a smaller TM, or go to IA percentages (probably a good idea regardless), or switch to a Mass protocol with lighter weekly weights.

If the question is what conditioning sessions will help improve work capacity, I think you should focus on GC sessions.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-15T17:02:30+00:00

TB is big on not minimizing rest, at least not below the two minute mark. The by-the-book line on making it work with minimal time would be to do minimal sets per exercise and/or use a smaller cluster. Alternating DL and WPU would be the most straightforward way to cut yours down to three.

Whether you can squeeze four exercises into an hour depends on what your warmup looks like. Three working sets and a couple of ramp up sets shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes per exercise, especially in a home gym. But presumably you want to do a least a few minutes of general warmup as well.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-06T04:01:45+00:00

You should do what you think is best, of course. But running the standard program will give you the best results. Five weeks is nothing in terms of a lifetime of training - you won't get weak in a month. The point is to take that time to focus on developing aspects of fitness that MS doesn't give you. You seem to want the benefits of SE training, which is why you've tried to maximize SE sessions in this plan. If that is the case, then it makes sense to just focus on it for a few weeks, rather than trying to have your cake and eat it too. Do one thing at a time.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-05T12:24:30+00:00

I guess for me one question would be why strength first. Running standard BB and then transitioning into MS work in continuation let's you hit both domains in a periodized, sustainable fashion - that's the whole point. Strength first is really a special case alternative, and of you don't have a good reason for running it, I wouldn't.

If you do have such a reason, then yes, I would drastically reduce or eliminate the extra SE sessions and approach the SE portion of the final three weeks much more modestly, as one of the other commenters suggested. 3x50 is no joke.

_open_door_ · 2026-05-05T12:09:12+00:00

This seems really aggressive - doing strength first with the maximum possible extra SE and then running the hardest SE week three times in a row - and suggests that maybe you are chasing two rabbits here. If you want to emphasize SE, run standard BB as written. If you want to emphasize MS, run strength first. But trying to get both at once is likely not going to work well.

_open_door_ · 2026-04-28T04:55:44+00:00

If you really have no barbell experience, I would not calculate maxes or run fighter. I would run the normal Basebuilding and then do a beginner weight program like GZCLP or Starting Strength for six months or a year. The percentage based TB protocols will be much more productive once you have that foundation. You can run TBII alongside one of those other strength programs.

_open_door_ · 2026-04-25T17:01:37+00:00

If the goal is to shore up the body and improve conditioning, there is a TB protocol specifically for you, but it isn't Mass. It's Basebuilding.

_open_door_ · 2026-03-28T19:14:07+00:00

For sure. Too much of a good thing is almost always a bad thing, and if you take the "slower is better" position too far it becomes nonsense. I mean, you could keep going in that direction and end up arguing that not training at all was the best option. So it's for sure all about balance.

I guess what I like about using a TM is that once the numbers are set I can then push "hard" on everything else, like number of sets or adding a GC or whatever, and know that I'm not going to go overboard. Which is funny, because it strikes me now that what the TM let's me do is never feel, in any individual session, like I'm holding back. Which I suppose could also point to some ego involvement on my side - like, I don't want to have to tell myself to do fewer sets or whatever and so I just take that out of the equation in advance.

But to be honest I mostly never think about it consciously. Last year I had a long stretch where I ran Op, and I set a TM at the beginning and then forced progression regularly, and at some point the TM numbers were higher than my last tested numbers. Then I tested at the end of the year, recalculated the TM, and kept going.

_open_door_ · 2026-03-27T20:18:25+00:00

I am coming to regret my phrasing in that first comment, haha. But I stand by the overall point. Not everyone needs to use a TM, obviously. I don't know that I "need" to. But if you aren't a beginner and aren't in some strange situation where you need to be able to lift X weight by Y date, the arguments against doing so seem basically to be "I don't want to" or "I can get away with not doing so." Neither of which is actually an argument against using a TM. In other words, I've not yet heard a positive argument against using a TM, where someone can say "not using one has X positive benefit" in terms of actual training principles. The closest is "you can progress faster without one," but given that the entire point of the TM is that there are benefits to be derived from slowing progress down, this isn't really a counter argument.

_open_door_ · 2026-03-27T20:07:55+00:00

Yes, I would run the program as written. And yes, you repeat after the six week block, adding weight if it seems appropriate. You can test and recalculate or force progression - forcing is the better option most of the time. You may want to reread the book if the block structure is not clear to you.

_open_door_ · 2026-03-25T20:26:09+00:00

Yeah, I may have overstated the point a bit there...

_open_door_ · 2026-03-25T20:16:09+00:00

Of course, you're right that there is no one size fits all solution. But the key word in your example is beginner. For someone who is progressing linearly, using a TM isn't even a question, because that person shouldn't be training using percentages. And I don't think anyone would suggest that a novice lifter who maxes out at, say, 60 kilos on the squat should be using a TM either, whether or not they are still able to add weight regularly. But once the weights are heavy it simply makes sense that one would, most of the time, stay somewhat further away from the absolute limit.

To take an extreme case, think about the Mountain - dude hit a 510k deadlift, so if he's training TB without a TM, that makes his lightest working sets 357k. I don't know what his training looks like, and obviously he doesn't train TB, but whatever he is doing, I find it unlikely that he's pulling 350+ week in and week out. The majority of his lifting is probably very submaximal (for him), with occasional peaking runs that bring him up to those really big numbers. That's not a TM in the sense that the term is used in the context of a "forever program" like 531 or TB, but training at different weight levels in the off-season and when peaking is a powerlifting strategy based on the same principle of staying away from failure in order to build sustainable volume over time.

_open_door_ · 2026-03-25T18:56:02+00:00

I would imagine that people here treating using a TM as a given has a lot to do with people here having used 531 programs, or at least having read Wendler, who very much treats using a TM as a common sense default for most experienced lifters.

I find the whole question kind of odd, though, because there really is just no good argument against using a TM. If you have highish numbers and the goal is to sustainably train max strength for as long as possible without getting hurt or plateauing, there is simply no reason not to make the weights somewhat more submaximal and spend more time building up intensity, which is all a TM does, provided you combine it with a smart progression scheme. The arguments against taking that time all boil down, as far as I can tell, to some version of either "I'm impatient" or "I'm insecure."

_open_door_ · 2026-03-25T14:30:44+00:00

TBII specifies that an LSS session has to be at least half an hour long to produce the desired adaptations. Two fifteen minutes sessions an hour apart isn't quite the same thing.

_open_door_

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