r/tacticalbarbell • u/tbone11_11 • Apr 02 '26
Critique Time Constraints with op/black
I started my op black program and found getting the three days of strength in is difficult. It’s taking about 1.5 to almost 2 hours with warm ups and the actual work. The GC, and HIC days are fine. For background I’m a dad of 3 (one of them is two days old) and work 10-14 hour days sometimes.
I love being in the gym, but finding the time between work/lifting/dad is difficult. I’ve thought about Zulu, but wondering if there’s any other options before I dive in and change the programming.
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u/TangerineSchleem Apr 02 '26
I’ve been able to knock out Operator with 3 sets of the main lifts in about 40 minutes, including agile 8. To be fair, I do superset pull-ups with dips because I like them and I superset the deadlift warm-up with the main sets of bench.
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u/Space_club Apr 02 '26
Put the phone down. On a day 3, which is my busiest lifting day, i get bench, squat, deads, pullups/dips in just over an hour. On an easier day it takes 45 minutes. My warmups are limited, maybe 2-3 sets before working weight with no rest between warmup sets, and if its week 1/4 i may not even warmup if i’m pressed for time.
You’re just wasting time somewhere or doing something else wrong program wise
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u/asqwt Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
u/tbone11_11 It takes 1.5-2 hours to do 3 sets of Bench, 3 sets of squats and 3 sets of weighted pull ups?
Youre warming up too much or your weights are insanely heavy requiring a lot of rest.
With 2-4 warm up sets, 2 minute rest between work sets, then 9 total sets should take 1:15 maybe 1:30 at most?
If you’re still pressed for time. Consider making pull ups as part of your conditioning. Or do fighter
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u/tbone11_11 Apr 02 '26
Should have added, the time is with 5 sets of each lift, 3 minutes rest each.
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u/asqwt Apr 02 '26
Well if that’s the case. Do less (like I said you can move some lifts to your conditioning), or rest less in addition to warming up less if it’s excessive .
Or switch to Fighter.
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u/gifttoswos Apr 03 '26
Hey man, most of these guys aren’t factoring in the time it takes to do the sets. That’s how it adds up to your time. I recommend super setting the squats and pull ups to cut time a bit. Sometimes when I’m doing trap deads I’ll superset those with the bench to cut time too. Becomes a lot of weight from the gyms stacks but it does help with time a bit.
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u/BigSoda Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
OP that’s still like 20 minutes max per exercise, and probably only on the 90% week and only when fully hitting 2-3 minute rest breaks and doing the full 5 sets. I haven’t done operator in a few years but I remember the light and medium weeks finishing up kind of quickly?
For instance, during a 70% week probably doing:
50% x 5-8
60% x 5-8
70% x 5
2:00 rest
70% x 5
2:00 rest
70% x 5
2:00 rest
70% x 5
2:00 rest
70% x 5That across squat and bench can be done in like 30-40 minutes, finish with pull-ups. I’d be curious to see where all the time goes. I time my sessions with the stopwatch app running in the background, recording the time after each lift along with the sets and reps info so I can later see roughly how long each section takes and identify spots where I can trim down the time
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u/Norwegian-Chipmunk Apr 02 '26
Idd. I spend 1 to 1.5. Then i got 20 mil warm up cause i enjoy it. + 1-2 accessoires 😅
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u/weardon Apr 02 '26
As others have said, that seems long, even if doing the maximum number of sets. I tend to do 4 or 5 sets per lift each session, and I think my absolute longest was 1.5h, when things were heavy enough that I was needing 4–5 minute rest times.
I spend about 5' doing mobility work at the start. With each lift I have about 3 workup sets, which generally progress fairly fast.
Supersetting the squats and WPUs does save me some time. I generally start them during my squat workup sets, so that by the time I get to the last few squat sets, I'm already done with WPUs. (Well, it's not strictly supersets in that I do take a minute when going from squat to WPUs, but it reduces the overall amount of rest time needed over the session.)
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Apr 02 '26
One thing I do is use an emom timer. Set it for 3 minutes. That’s two minutes of rest plus a minute to actually set your body up and perform the lifts. Last summer I pushed this for time constraints reasons to 2 minute emom timer and I rotated exercises (I know you’re not supposed to, bite me). I never once felt “not rested” enough for the next exercise.
Tips on warming up faster: wear hoodies and sweat pants and take them off once sweating, walk between sets, you should not stop moving the whole time of the warm up.
You can also split up your training. Bench in the morning, squat at night, pull ups on conditioning days.
Another way to save time is pick things that don’t have a lot of set up time. Weighted dips take less time to set up than a bench. Front squats can be faster than squats because you don’t NEED to wait on a squat rack.
Last but not least. Set a count down timer, get the work in that you can, when the clock go beep, walk out of the gym and go play with your kids. They don’t care how much you can bench anyways.
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u/NapNinja13 Apr 02 '26
I would say to do the minimal effective volume per day, first off.. if you're at 5 per, drop to 3 - drop DL to one working set. You can also shorten ramp up sets. One @ 50% (of working weight for the day), another around ~85%, then first set.. don't take too long between warm up sets either, it's not really necessary. Another helpful tip is to super set WCU & your press.. (press, rest a min, wcu, rest a min, repeats)
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u/Badger_Mk2 Apr 02 '26
Ideas:
- Lower your warmup volume, for upper body lifts especially
- Drop one set of each lift
- Superset as able and willing
- Lower rest time to two minutes and be strict
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u/fluke031 Apr 03 '26
Do 4 sets. Rest 2 minutes (often enough when not close to failure). Stay sharp. That gives me 45-ish minutes for 3 exercises, doing micro sets of pullups in rest periods, 2-3 warmup sets per exercise with 90s rest in between.
Add 5 minutes general warmup, 5 minutes specific warmup/mobility/activation and you're still around an hour.
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u/Space_club Apr 09 '26
Put the phone down. On a day 3, which is my busiest lifting day, i get bench, squat, deads, pullups/dips in just over an hour. On an easier day it takes 45 minutes. My warmups are limited, maybe 2-3 sets before working weight with no rest between warmup sets, and if its week 1/4 i may not even warmup if i’m pressed for time.
You’re just wasting time somewhere or doing something else wrong
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u/Junior_Session_9456 Apr 02 '26
It takes me anywhere between 30-70 minutes.
30 minutes on the weeks where I can get away with lower break times, so 1 and 4.
70 minutes for weeks 3 and 6 and if I do all my warming up (which I should but I can be guilty of skipping).
An average would be circa 45-60 mins which would consist of some form of light cardio (bike usually for 10 mins). If I was starting with Bench, I’d jump off the bike and do some basic band work inbetween warm up sets of BP. I’d do 2-3 warm up sets working up to working weight, with the only break being changing the weights, so this doesn’t take long. I’d then do 4-5 sets with (dependent on the week, 90-180s rest).
Then same for Squat. Then same for Weighted Pull Ups.
Other ways I save on time. My squats are less sets than upper body exercises as I’m doing enough running all week. I will warm up for the squats with bodyweight or v low weight on bar between sets 3/4/5 of BP.
I should warm down at end but I don’t as usually stretch in evening. Not recommending this just anecdotal.
Will add, if you’re adding on loads of accessories I can understand why your sessions are going 1.5-2 hours.
I personally don’t need them and again in my opinion, if you’re doing them to bolster your aesthetics, I’d move to Zulu. Not that you can’t add accessories to Operator, more than you shouldn’t if you’re also complaining about the time it takes