The Body by Science app. Big Five, tracked to the second.
Dr. Doug McGuff's Body by Science distilled resistance training down to five compound movements, one set each, taken to momentary muscular failure, roughly once a week. The book gave us the protocol. Intensiq gives you the stopwatch, the log, and the progression coach.
The Big Five, unchanged
- Seated row — mid-back and rear delts.
- Chest press — chest, front delts, triceps.
- Pulldown — lats, biceps.
- Overhead press — shoulders, triceps.
- Leg press — quads, hamstrings, glutes.
That's it. No accessory work, no split routines, no daily gym visit. Intensiq preloads the Big Five as your default workout — you swap only if you have to.
What the app tracks that a notebook can't
- Time under load to the second, with a 10-second up / 10-second down cadence enforced by voice cues.
- True failure — detected by the moment the bar stops moving despite full effort, not by a rep count.
- Auto-progression — load only goes up when the previous set hit honest failure inside the target TUL window.
- Recovery — HRV-informed readiness tells you when the next session is due (typically 5–9 days).
Why the tracker matters
McGuff's central claim is that the stimulus works only when it's honest. A set that ends because you got bored, or because "10 reps" was the plan, is not the stimulus. Intensiq's job is to make the honest set the easy one to log and the dishonest one impossible to fake.
Who this is for
Readers of Body by Science, The Time-Saver's Workout, and anyone tired of a five-day split that has produced nothing measurable in eighteen months. The protocol works for a 24-year-old and an 84-year-old — the load changes, the method doesn't.
The tracker is free, forever. Twelve minutes a week is all the protocol costs you.
Start free — forever →