Written by Corey Hayes
It’s time that I finally give the world a glimpse of my Cube Extreme method. Until now, it was only available via personal coaching from myself, Brandon Lilly, and JP Price.
What is the Cube Extreme?
The Cube Extreme is a spin-off of The Cube Method as written and practiced by my good friend Brandon Lilly. It came about as a way to help people with limited gym time or recovery issues. My goal was to decrease training time to about an hour per workout and have three training days per week.
How is it different than the original Cube Method?
To fit into my time constraints of three training sessions per week, the first major issue was the fourth training day, the “bodybuilding” day in which people focus on lagging muscles and do some curls for the girls. I think this fourth day is totally necessary and I wanted to keep it in the program. To do so, in the Cube Extreme, what would be the fourth training day has become the first training day of the following week. Here’s a basic, two-week template of Cube Extreme:
Week 1:
Monday: Lower
Weds: Upper
Friday: Lower
Week 2:
Monday: Upper
Weds: Lower
Friday: Upper
I still use The Cube’s rotation of max, rep, and speed days, it’s just stretched out over a few more days than the original. Each body part is worked every five days, while each major lift is worked every ten days, instead of once per week.
Since most people end up turning the bodybuilding day into a pure upper body session anyways, I also went ahead and beefed up this day, making it a full-on, ball-busting overhead press workout.
Simple, right?
The next issue was the volume. Don’t get me wrong, I love volume. But intensity is way more fun and it takes a lot less time. Time was the original issue here, so I chose to make the Cube Extreme intensity-based. Not only does this cut down on gym time, but the high intensity fits the extreme nature of the program. To eliminate some volume and save time on the assistance movements, I used an old bodybuilding method made popular by Dante Trudel called rest-pause sets. A rest-pause set is a short series of sets to failure. Here’s how I describe it to my clients:
-Do a set to failure with a weight you can lift for 8-12 reps.
-Rest 15 seconds.
-Do another set to failure with the same weight.
-Rest 15 seconds.
-Do one last set to failure with the same weight.
Needless to say, these are brutal. They also provide a lot of stimulus without requiring a ton of volume, so it won’t take forever to recover.
I also decided to alter the max effort and rep days. To simplify things and “dumb” it down a little, I removed a good portion of the percentages and replaced them with rep maxes. When I do use percentages, it’s either for speed work or for an AMRAP (as many reps as possible) set.
That’s enough for now. I plan on releasing a few more articles covering the basics before I put the book together, so be sure to look out for part two of this series. This should be enough to give you some ideas and get your brain working, but if you just cant wait, please contact a Certified Cube Trainer for a personalized plan.
Corey Hayes is an up and comer to the strength and conditioning world. He is currenty a student at Eastern Kentucky University and a Professional level powerlifter. His best meet lifts are 725/425/675 at 220 raw and 880/640/680 at 242 geared. He has future plans of taking over the world and making a living doing what he enjoys, the iron game. Facebook, YouTube
