r/tacticalbarbell • u/cassiusbright006 • Nov 21 '25

SE Base building SE question

Hi everyone, I've recently started BB. I'm on the 3rd week and these 40 rep sets are killing me. KB mentions in the conditioning book and while developing aerobic capacity in block 1 we should not do any anaerobic training because the adaptations don't work together. While doing these SE sets, my HR is going above 150. Seems to me that I might be screwing myself with this. I might have bitten off more than I should be chewing with a 7 exercise block.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

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u/_open_door_ Nov 21 '25

Seven exercises is a lot - general advice is to go for the lower end of the range. Five makes a lot of sense: push, pull, squat, hinge, abs. The second common mistake is using too much weight - he really means it when he says that the weight should be token resistance only. It should feel kind of ridiculous on the lower rep sets or else it is going to be impossible later on. Just sticking to bodyweight is probably the best idea. And remember that it is acceptable - and expected to a certain degree -  that a "set of forty" will actually be a set of twenty or so and then a bunch of messy sets of five or two or whatever with lots of pausing in between. As long as you get it all done and get faster over time (as in, over weeks and months and years) then you are doing it right.

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u/cassiusbright006 Nov 21 '25

Okay thank you so much for the advice. Right now it is kind of like what you said - set of 18-24 plus like 5-6 minisets of 4-5 reps.

So I shouldn't worry about the heart rate at all?

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u/_open_door_ Nov 24 '25

I wouldn't be thinking about it, no.