This is the third book in the Tactical Barbell Series, and whereas the first two books are written for operators who need to keep weight to a minimum (e.g., special ops), this book is a guide for the many other tactical professions where some extra muscle mass is acceptable or even beneficial (e.g., police officers). In other words, this is a guide to hypertrophy for athletes who also need to maintain high levels of other types of fitness (unlike bodybuilders, who can focus solely on hypertrophy).
Just like the first two books, this one has no fluff or filler. You get right into the content, which includes the following key insights:
Don’t mix hypertrophy and LSS endurance training
The first Tactical Barbell book mentions developing maximal strength and LSS (long steady state) endurance at the same time is hard. Of course, depending on your profession, you may have no choice (e.g., LSS training is a daily part of many military programs), so the book includes some routines that let you do both, but the recommendation for most people is to do them separately (e.g., do a block of base building for endurance followed by a block of max strength + HIC).
This book, Mass Protocol, makes the recommendation even stronger: don’t mix hypertrophy and LSS endurance at all. The routines in this book keep them completely separate, as significant amounts of LSS training can hinder hypertrophy.
The routine
At a high level, the routine recommended in Mass Protocol is:
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Nutrition. This book contains more detailed nutrition advice than the previous books, as nutrition is an essential part of hypertrophy.
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Base building. This is where you develop your aerobic engine and prepare your muscles for heavy resistance training.
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General Mass + Green Conditioning. The book includes several flavors of “General Mass” protocols which have you do resistance training to add as much mass across the whole body as possible. It also includes a Green Conditioning protocol that helps you maintain a degree of aerobic conditioning in a way that does not interfere with hypertrophy.
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Bridge Week. To give your body a rest, you take a week where you mostly rest and recover, and, if necessary, towards the end of the week, you test your 1RMs so you know what weights to use for exercises in subsequent blocks.
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Specificity + Black Conditioning. You then move on to resistance training focused mostly on hypertrophy for specific parts of the body. It also includes a Black Conditioning protocol that helps you maintain a degree of anaerobic conditioning in a way that does not interfere with hypertrophy.
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Reassess and repeat. You might do more blocks of General Mass or Specificity, or a mix, or move on to the protocols from the other books, depending on your needs.
More details about each of these steps next.
Nutrition
The nutrition advice in this book mostly comes down to (a) eating sufficient calories and (b) eating the right proportions of macronutrients to maximize hypertrophy. To make this easier, the book provides two simple formulas that tell you how many grams of each macronutrient (protein, carbs, fat) to eat each day, from which you can also calculate your caloric requirements (as protein and carbs have 4 calories per gram and fat contains 9 calories per gram):
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The standard formula. This is for average builds and anyone who has trouble putting on muscle:
- Protein: BW x 1.3 (grams)
- Carbs: BW x 2.0 (grams)
- Fat: BW x 0.5 (grams)
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Formula 2. This is for anyone who is overweight:
- Protein: BW x 1.3 (grams)
- Carbs: BW x 1.0 (grams)
- Fat: BW x 0.33 (grams)
Base building
The base building in this book is similar to that of Tactical Barbell II, in that you do three endurance workouts and three strength-endurance (SE) workouts per week. The key differences are:
- The base building is optional (but highly recommended) and only lasts 6 weeks.
- Endurance solely consists of low-intensity LSS conditioning strictly capped to 30 min per day.
- SE solely uses exercises that you’ll be doing during the hypertrophy workouts later on.
General Mass
The book includes 4 different “General Mass” templates which consists primarily of heavy, compound lifts (squat, deadlift, bench) that are designed to build strength and large amounts of muscle mass across the entire body. You typically do them for blocks of ~3 weeks. The routines resemble those in Tactical Barbell, but there are some key differences:
- You do a higher number of sets and reps (more volume overall).
- You occasionally do AMRAPs (as many reps as possible) or peak sets (where you try to find a new 1RM, 2RM, or 3RM in an exercise).
- Rest times between sets are up to you. Unlike in Tactical Barbell, you are allowed to rest less than 2 minutes between sets if you want to.
In other words, this routine breaks many of the “rules” that Tactical Barbell put in place that prevented your resistance training from affecting other aspects of your training (e.g., conditioning). This is intentional! Hypertrophy has a significant cost and heavily impacts recovery. Therefore, this book recommends you put most other activities (training, conditioning) on hold as much as possible; otherwise, those activities will be affected, and hypertrophy will be slowed.
Green Conditioning
This is a conditioning template that is meant to be done with General Mass. It is not the same as the green protocol of the earlier Tactical Barbell books. The green conditioning in this book is designed to avoid interfering with hypertrophy, and even to help hypertrophy, as much as possible:
- You only do low intensity exercises: e.g., walking and rucking.
- You do 1-3 conditioning sessions per week.
- Sessions are limited to 30-60 minutes.
Specificity
The book includes two versions of a Specificity protocol, which is where you do more targeted hypertrophy on specific parts of the body: e.g., if your biceps or calves are lagging behind, this is where you focus on exercises to grow those specific muscles. You typically do this protocol for blocks of ~3 weeks. The two versions of Specificity are:
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Alpha: two days per week of maximal strength training consisting of a very small number of heavy, compound barbell lifts, and two days per week of pure hypertrophy training consisting of high volume (many sets and reps) exercises that target specific body parts (e.g., isolation exercises like bicep curls).
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Bravo: four days per week of pure hypertrophy training focused solely on high volume (many sets and reps) exercises that target specific body parts (e.g., isolation exercises like bicep curls).
Black Conditioning
This is a conditioning template that is meant to be done with Specificity. It is not the same as the black protocol of the earlier Tactical Barbell books. The black conditioning in this book is designed to avoid interfering with hypertrophy, and even to help hypertrophy, as much as possible:
- You primarily do various types of short sprints with full recovery.
- You do 1-2 conditioning sessions per week, solely on non-lifting days.
- Sessions are limited to 15-20 minutes.
Weaknesses of the book
It’s a solid book overall, but there are a handful of weaknesses:
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Myofibrillar versus sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. The first Tactical Barbell book made a big deal of minimizing hypertrophy in general, but especially avoiding sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, as that was the type of hypertrophy that makes you look bigger, but with little impact on actually making you stronger. This book seems to drop that whole discussion. It’s not clear if this is intentional or not. Is the idea that, if mass is the goal, any type of hypertrophy is fine? Or is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy still something you should minimize, and the routines in this book somehow do that?
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Self-published? Just like the previous books, this one seems to be self-published, so the editing, typography, and cover design are all subpar.
Overall
This book is a terrific addition to the Tactical Barbell Series. With all three books for guidance, you now have solid routines you can use to develop strength, conditioning, and hypertrophy, as needed.
