Is there a perfect range??????

[WalkingBeast]

Just from my personal experience, take what makes sense to you. Fuck trying to be a bodybuilder, powerlifter, strongman, whatever. No need for classifications. If you focus on becoming big and strong you can refine and make adjustments later. Ive personally never identified with any class. I wanted to just becoming a big nasty motherfucker. A demon from hell was the imagery in my head. Never to be pretty. You sound like you just want to be big and powerful. Thats plenty to work with. All the various classes (powerlifter,bodybuilder, etc) are derived from that one goal. You can split off in any direction you like, if you really feel the need to belong to one class, later on.

Fuck programs. I would reccomend you train with a few specific short term goals. One is progressive resistance. Pushing your weights and reps higher each session (atleast trying like its life or death each set), will move you in the direction of becoming stronger and way beyond what most people are doing in the gym. Keeping records and logging your lifts will help greatly to see where youre at. Its hard to remember each set, but you should strive to break records on anything that is not a warm up set. There is no ONE lift to try and break personal records on. Every lift should be that way and nearly every set. I rarely see anyone train like this, but its what ive always done. My routines are different now after 21 years but its what got me where I am.

The next thing is consistancy. You really should only need to train 4 days a week and be able to hit everything. The rest of the time should be eating as much good food as you can and resting, preparing mentally for breaking records on your upcoming sessions. I reccomend high volume to failure and beyond (high intensity). Your body will adapt to whatever you throw at it, over time. The eating needs to be consistant and diet is really dependant on the individual. Im just addressing the core values that have worked for me.

Rep range is bullshit that has been advertised in magazines for decades. There is no universal rep range as we all have different fiber make ups and respond differently. Different body parts even have different types of fibers within an individual. So forget about that shit. You can embrace all rep ranges while training to failure. As you pyramid up, for example, you can take even warm ups to failure. Hitting records after being heavily pre exhausted means youve gained even more strength, since you are at a deficit. Your lighter sets , as you pyramid up, will be very high rep since they are to failure. As you reach the top of the pyramid you get your lower rep sets in. This can be done on all movements.

Make sure you take enough rest between sets to hit those records on each set. You wont every set of course, but thats the mindset and goal. Diet is atleast 80 percent of this shit from my perspective. Thats something you have to tweak. I can tell you that most dont eat nearly enough. Its not about eating until full. Its about continually feeding throughout the entire day. Inbetween feedings such as milk (doesnt fuck with my appetite, drink 60-90 oz daily) and light non cook items, peanut butter, etc. Dont worry about eating 6 meals. Meal number doesnt mean shit. Worry about getting in all your nutrition. Set an amount and dont dip below it. If its not working, increase it. Be consistant.

There are many techniques to increase intensity without going heavier, but those are more valuable when you are either purely focused on bodybuilding or injured. So I wouldnt concern yourself too much with them. You can get in some more volume with dropsets at the end of a pyramid (going down the stack without rest), but I would focus mainly on straight sets with enough rest to perform your best on each set.

Drugs you do not need until you have maybe 10 years of straight training or more. I waited about 10 years before I fucked with any hormones. Once you get into your thirties and mid thirties maybe look into HRT. You dont need mega doses if you eat heavily and train hard enough. Its slower but you wont burn out either.

No need to worry about the smaller variables really. Just focus on getting stronger through progressive resistance and bigger through the volume of abuse and eating. Everything else will fall into place around those core values.

KILL THAT SHIT !!

 

[WalkingBeast]

Protein, I see as another bullshit advertising myth as well. Even at my stage 200-250 grams is plenty. Its the carbs and calories that need to be higher to drive size gain. Again, my personal experience. There is no magic number , just something you have to tweak for yourself and increase as needed. Variety in training is also good, aslong as you keep notes of your best lifts with each movement. I didnt bench press for a year and half (for example). My chest and everything got bigger and stronger. I went back to bench and hit a PR my first time on bench. 50 reps with 225 without spotter or lift off (was good for 60 plus with those). Point being, when you build muscle you dont lose strength on other movements. So you can mix it up. Same idea behind how powerlifters use assistance movements and often rarely do the competition lifts until near the comp. Just have fun with training and do the shit that you feel. Aslong as you get in the volume and intensity,food,progressive resistance, youll grow.

 

[FlexManning]

The only reason why i hate the idea of doing 5x5 is that i have not really read anything on people getting bigger from it, i'd like to try it of course but i really want mass of strength, and it might be harder to gain anything on a program like that because i'm not juicing and i never will so i have to keep it realistic. I used to be a big believer in heavy weights/low reps for size, but it has a very low possitive feedback responce from forum on bodybuilding.com, again i'm not saying that it doesn't work i'm just curious about higher reps, victor costa mentions not lifting heavy at all, instead he ops for light weights and he doesn't count reps, and does about 4-5 sets in this style, but if any info from you guys is a huge help, i maybe need to start applying some of methods to see if i can benifit, but its really size i'm after.

You don't see a lot of people getting "big" from it because the truth of the matter is it works like this for 99% of the population: huge, cut, natural>pick two

Plus, most of the people using 5x5 are natural, most don't have a lot of experience with or knowledge about strength training either. What if somebody who had been training for a few years naturally gained 10 lbs of muscle in 2 months of 5x5? That's a tremendous gain (we're talking more than a pound of muscle per week). Would you even notice that over the course of seeing them a few times in the gym?

5x5 is about concentrating on squats, deadlift, bench, chins, etc. instead of isolation work. And the truth is, there's not much evidence out there that adding isolation work will increase gains for natty lifters, in fact it's the opposite, there are studies that show no additional benefits.