HELLO?! your on STEROIDS REMEMBER?

[HOG]

Tell you what - if a guy can't tell when he is overtraining somethings wrong. I am the kind of guy that completely fuckin destroys the muscle, I feel it and beat on it every time out. 2 hours average to get it done, 4 days (workouts) to cover the body. I don't do periods where I go to the gym and train a few sets per bodypart to failure... I just hammer the muscles, past failure (partner assists), drop sets, etc. and I am fucked up when I leave the gym most nights! I think if you abuse your muscles and train very intensely, it takes a good 4 days to 5 days before you can treat your muscles that way again... at least I've found that's my best schedule. Some people could recover quicker, younger I KNOW I recovered faster....

 

[Quadsweep]

lately ( the past 5 years) there seems to be a minimalist approach to training

frequency, sets and reps

where 1 body part is hit each week
and with very few "working sets"

now I can see why this would be fine if your just maintaining or keeping things going

but even for a natural body one can get away with training each group 2 times a week with proper diet and traning

now many of you are "ON"

so

why are you not traing each group 2 times a week?

why are you not hitting the muscle at every concievable angle?

why are you not doing cardio?

your recovery ability should be in the stratosphere.......


do you wanna be like this:

http://www.schwarzenegger.it/gallery/musclegallery.html

or like this:

http://www.metalcorefanzine.com/chris_nasser.jpg


seriously....

I train everything once a week and maybe 6 sets (working sets) for arms, 8 for chest, 10 for back and 12 for legs. I train hard as a mother fucker and to be honest I do not think my body can take this twice as much. I am going on 36 with 26 years of training...I am beat up. Not saying you are wrong just saying if you are a mad man low volume works.

Quad

Oh and I do no cardio...5.3% is low enough I think.

 

[maldorf]

I train everything once a week and maybe 6 sets (working sets) for arms, 8 for chest, 10 for back and 12 for legs. I train hard as a mother fucker and to be honest I do not think my body can take this twice as much. I am going on 36 with 26 years of training...I am beat up. Not saying you are wrong just saying if you are a mad man low volume works.

Quad

Oh and I do no cardio...5.3% is low enough I think.

That fits in with where I am. Ive been lifting for 20 years and am now able to generate enough intensity during my workout that it takes me a good 7 days to heal up. Now some muscles get worked out indirectly again if you split it up right, and thats enough to stimulate those muscles that recover faster. For example I train shoulders and tris together 3 days after I hit chest, and those muscles were worked pretty hard on chest day too.

 

[dsh89]

Well, it has been said enought that everyone's body responds differnetly, hell that is why there are so many differnet cycles and diets out there, but I know that for me when I am on, I do not get sore as much and my recovery is awesome, so I do increase the number of days that I train in order to maximize gains. But you gotta know what works for YOU. And if you are still sore by all means give it some rest. It is a fact that you do not grow with out sufficient rest.

 

[Madcow2]

I train everything once a week and maybe 6 sets (working sets) for arms, 8 for chest, 10 for back and 12 for legs. I train hard as a mother fucker and to be honest I do not think my body can take this twice as much. I am going on 36 with 26 years of training...I am beat up. Not saying you are wrong just saying if you are a mad man low volume works.

Quad

Oh and I do no cardio...5.3% is low enough I think.

If you did implement higher frequency you wouldn't want to double your current workload each week - you are right in thinking it would bury you. Increased frequency alone has benefits and this is well documented as a significant detraining effect occurs separate from all other variables.

If you wanted to try something like this out and apply it, the best way is to distribute your volume over the new frequency without adding much if anything to it.

Example:

You do 5 sets of squats + 5 sets of legpress + some bullshit. These are usually done on a dedicated leg day (Thursday).

To implement increased frequency you move the squats and 1/2 the bullshit to Monday while leaving the legpress and the other 1/2 bullshit on Thursday. See how this works for a while.

What most people find is that they recover quite a bit better, reduce the detraining effect and actually end up being able to gradually handle additional volume over the same training period. All this equates to a better more efficiently supplied stimulus. The better the stimulus the better the response. This works like night and day for a natural lifter, drugs magnify the response to weight training so it gets obscured in an overwhelmingly positive anabolic environment because for lower level BBers from a training standpoint you can get away with murder if you take enough drugs. However for a drugged lifter looking to gain as much as possible from a given dosage or a lifter looking for equivalent gains from a lower given dosage this still becomes an important factor.

 

[romoranger]

hey madcow, i was wondering if you wouldn't mind outlining a sample routine for the dual factor style, i stil lfully do not understand it. i read up on it, kind of understand, but like physcially seeing what is going on helps me. is it comparable to HST?

 

[alanchiras]

I think for each individual person an expirment is in order. Isolate your body parts that you work out in a typical 7 day period and see what parts arent sore after a short while and could be worked twice a week. Now that i am seriously looking at changing my workout routine (one part per week) You might want to do something like legs once a week and around your squat days do two arm days in a week. For me, my Acilies(sp) heel on the natulis machine could take a twice a week schedual, and I soon maxed out the machine. Wish I could do that with the rest of my body parts! Thanks! Alan Chiras.

 

[Madcow2]

hey madcow, i was wondering if you wouldn't mind outlining a sample routine for the dual factor style, i stil lfully do not understand it. i read up on it, kind of understand, but like physcially seeing what is going on helps me. is it comparable to HST?

So there are a lot of versions but this is one that many BBers have gotten great results with. It's a dual factor version of the Bill Starr program from the 1970's which is still very much in use today by athletes at all levels. In the training forum we've had 2 naturals put on 21 and 18lbs respectively in 9 weeks (I think they both started somewhere between 200-210lbs) as well as a high school lifter (160ish I think) add 12lbs in 6 weeks and then get a horrendous case of the flu which wiped him out. This is off the top of my head, there are others using it now but not yet completed and a few who finished and loved it but didn't track their stats outside of strength increases which although impressive isn't what most BBers are interested in hearing about.

The example is here:
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375215
Specifically the program is described in posts: 1, 10, 11, 12.

It's important that weight training stimulus be viewed as being applied over a training block rather than workout to workout. This is the essence of dual vs. single factor and this is really how the body works and adapts, it's just that a novice lifter or a druged lifter will respond so well to anything that the importance is obscured and single factor theory is fairly effective. In the initital volume phase you are training with a volume that cannot be maintained. This volume is scaled upward week to week until you hit the two record weeks. This should zap you. Take you right to the point of overreaching where you are teetering on overtraining (meaning that if you tweak this perfectly, your lifts will begin to deteriorate if you continue and overtraining will fully set in and this is detrimental). At that point a period of lower volume and frequency but higher intenisty is brought in. This allows you to continue to provide good stimulus but at a volume that allows your body to recover from the loading. Most of your gains will show up in this stage as the body recovers. In that link there are 2 versions where the 2nd phase (intensity/deloading) is 3x per week in one and 2x per week in another. If followed to the letter, the 3x per week is frequently too much for people, specifically those unused to this type of training. The goal in that period is to push the weight upward but allow for extra days of rest as needed or cut volume here and there - just keep the weight moving up. Most people used the 3x and followed it to the letter against my specific instructions - if you set your weights reasonably you will get away with this without eating into gains too much but every single one found themselves having to deload again after the end of the intensity phase before they could begin again.

Here is another example in a word doc format that might shed some light also. This one is a bit shorter and more concentrated.

http://jalaine.com/Documents/Dual_Factor_Hypertrophy_Training.doc

Now obviously this is an anabolic board so the question becomes how to use this on a cycle. The problem is that most BBers are not used to following an organized training plan over a period of months so when they start to map out runs of loading/deloading under dual factor theory this is already a stretch especially since they have no reference for how much loading and deloading is appropriate for them. Even if they had a natural range, drugs squeue the equation. Also note that handling more or less loading is not a matter of pride or a macho thing. It's simply the amount of stimulus that is optimal for you to get a response. At the world level you can have two equivalent weightlifters with the same totals and lifts but vastly different training tolerances - doesn't mean a thing besides what works for one or another (humans are all common enough to apply dual factor though so let's not stretch the argument back to "I'm so fucking unique that concentration curls and pec dec 1x per week are optimal".) Anyway, this is what I've written in the past to try to help people understand how you have to merge your cycling and training programs.

As far as dual factor programs and anabolics this really complicates things for most people. Most guys don't have any type of training plan mapped out so they just use drugs over a random # of weeks based on the drug and their own preference. Well, a dual factor program has loading and deloading. And when you come off drugs you need to make sure you aren't loading or deloading after a heavy period of loading. Makes it a lot more complicated for people that aren't used to this stuff. Post #94 on this page might shed some light - http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375215&page=5&pp=20 as does post #153 on this page: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375215&page=8&pp=20

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[Madcow2]

I think for each individual person an expirment is in order. Isolate your body parts that you work out in a typical 7 day period and see what parts arent sore after a short while and could be worked twice a week. Now that i am seriously looking at changing my workout routine (one part per week) You might want to do something like legs once a week and around your squat days do two arm days in a week. For me, my Acilies(sp) heel on the natulis machine could take a twice a week schedual, and I soon maxed out the machine. Wish I could do that with the rest of my body parts! Thanks! Alan Chiras.

Alan, it's definitely a good idea to try new things and see how they work. There is one problem with your theory though. Soreness, or DOMS, has absolutely no correlation to the effectiveness of a workout and you absolutely don't want to plan training around it. DOMS is most common in people who use low frequency and relatively high volume. Those accustomed to higher frequency programs (even those people who handle staggering amounts of volume under these) rarely get sore. I'm talking about guys squatting 3x per week and pulling from the floor 5 days a week mutliple sessions (frequently those pulls involve squatting cleans and snatches back up so figure those as full body too). The regulate their training, are never overtrained, load and deload appropriately, and rarely get sore unless they are coming back from a break in training.

So the best way to view DOMS is that, you may get sore, you may not. It's of zero consequence. If you are sore, train through it. If you are so sore that you might injure yourself lifting on it, you need to do some concentric only and light work to get some blood moving and help the muscles along before training again.