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Training Theory by AnimalMass, AngelFace, And JohnSmith
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Lord_Suston
New member
AnimalMass I have a few questions for you about your article and training for strength and hypertrophy.
1) since time under load is not a basis for growth would you recommend a progressive loading over time to induce growth? This is based on not going to failure but gradually adding weight.
2) to induce maximum hypertrophy should one train in a mixed rep scheme to stress all muscle fiber types? or just focus on white vs pink and red?
3) should one base their training on fatigue factors, getting tired or not able to lift the same weight the same amoutn of reps? or on goal factors such as them squating 3 sets of 6 reps and not feeling tired at all?
1) since time under load is not a basis for growth would you recommend a progressive loading over time to induce growth? This is based on not going to failure but gradually adding weight.
2) to induce maximum hypertrophy should one train in a mixed rep scheme to stress all muscle fiber types? or just focus on white vs pink and red?
3) should one base their training on fatigue factors, getting tired or not able to lift the same weight the same amoutn of reps? or on goal factors such as them squating 3 sets of 6 reps and not feeling tired at all?
Suston, let me answer what I can of your questions:
1) Progressive resistance is one of the keys to causing and sustaining growth. Any program that's successful for more than a few weeks has some form of progressive load. Some build in the progressive load (HST, 5x5), and others that have you train to failure all the time will probably incorporate some progressive loading unintentionally as one makes strength gains.
2) Here's the skinny on fiber types...
The way your body works is for very light loads, your body only engages the slow-twitch. As the load goes up, the body adds fast-twitch fibers as it needs to. It only calls upon enough necessary to just make the lift. So the recruitment goes like this:
slow-twitch->mid-range->fast-twitch. You never skip straight to the fast-twitch; the fast-twitch fibers are recruited ON TOP of the slow-twitch ones. The whole thing about "high weights for fast-twitch, low weights for slow-twitch" is a myth because when you lift high weights they all get recruited according to that order. Also people are rarely if ever lifting with weights low enough to engage only slow-twitch stuff.
3) Getting tired has very little to do with hypertrophy. It's all based on load. It's to your benefit NOT to go to failure because then your next training can happen sooner, keeping you in a more constant state of growth.
On that same note, goal reps might work. Although you shouldn't be so focused on getting that last rep that you need a spot to do it; that would overly fatigue your nervous system. A great way to go about it is to adjust your reps as necessary to accomodate the load progression. A lot of the HST guys do this: they don't really follow the established rep ranges, they just increase the load each time and stop the set when their rep speed slows down. This way they're never lifting to failure and can lift frequently.
I hope that helps.
-casualbb
1) Progressive resistance is one of the keys to causing and sustaining growth. Any program that's successful for more than a few weeks has some form of progressive load. Some build in the progressive load (HST, 5x5), and others that have you train to failure all the time will probably incorporate some progressive loading unintentionally as one makes strength gains.
2) Here's the skinny on fiber types...
The way your body works is for very light loads, your body only engages the slow-twitch. As the load goes up, the body adds fast-twitch fibers as it needs to. It only calls upon enough necessary to just make the lift. So the recruitment goes like this:
slow-twitch->mid-range->fast-twitch. You never skip straight to the fast-twitch; the fast-twitch fibers are recruited ON TOP of the slow-twitch ones. The whole thing about "high weights for fast-twitch, low weights for slow-twitch" is a myth because when you lift high weights they all get recruited according to that order. Also people are rarely if ever lifting with weights low enough to engage only slow-twitch stuff.
3) Getting tired has very little to do with hypertrophy. It's all based on load. It's to your benefit NOT to go to failure because then your next training can happen sooner, keeping you in a more constant state of growth.
On that same note, goal reps might work. Although you shouldn't be so focused on getting that last rep that you need a spot to do it; that would overly fatigue your nervous system. A great way to go about it is to adjust your reps as necessary to accomodate the load progression. A lot of the HST guys do this: they don't really follow the established rep ranges, they just increase the load each time and stop the set when their rep speed slows down. This way they're never lifting to failure and can lift frequently.
I hope that helps.
-casualbb
Vince Basile
New member
Adaptations occur in all humans according to the circumstances and stresses that one endures. Sometimes adaptations fail to occur because necessary ingredients are lacking or missing.
This business of recovery is one of the things that seemed to be known. Over the last 50 years bodybuilders have trained each muscle less frequently than previously. In the 1960's many believed you alternated upperbody with lowerbody days. Thus one trained upperbody on MWF and Lower body on TThSa. Eventually most trainees found this too taxing and dropped out or stagnated. Along came Arthur Jones and many read his articles and even ads and changed their training. Most eventually trained more intensely but less frequently. Many believed that a muscle grew best with intervals of between 4 and 7 days. Training a muscle every fifth day seemed a good compromise. The exception was the calves and many felt more frequent sessions were required to make the calves respond.
Along comes Mr Haycock and others armed with evidence from science that shows that muscles can grow with more frequent intervals. Since protein is synthesized up to about 48 hours after workouts it was assumed training should be done every second day to provide a stimulus to continue protein synthesis. These thinkers applied other research to training methods and varied the load by changing the reps. Clever application. From what we hear this process has the support of most people who have experimented with the HST method.
I personally have trained a target muscle and got it sore and kept it sore for about a month. I ended up with sore connective tissue but the muscles grew rapidly. That convinced me that the potential for growth is much more than is seen on most trainees. Most people at any one time are probably NOT growing. Why is this so? There have been some "explanations" but I am not convinced it is a matter of intensity or any other factor. Somehow regular training is adapted to and that is why progress stops. Trainees have to vary things in order to sustain an adaptation.
Women clearly find if more difficult to hypertrophy. I doubt that their muscles are different at the cellular level than what we find in men. Can women grow when a muscle has not recovered? I have no doubt that this can happen in everyone. Of course we assume that all other conditions such as nutrition are optimal. We are learning about the hypertrophy process and when more information is available we will have to abandon many of our assumptions because they will be found to be lacking or plainly false. That a particular person feels they need to 'recover' is no proof that they really do. How would they know? What exactly is recovery, anyway? We all use such terms but the actually internal processes in muscles are hardly understood by most of us.
Either a muscle can continue to grow while it is growing or it cannot. It is not a matter for conjecture. It doesn't depend on opinions but on physiology. That is what must be discovered or learned.
If you take a moment to go way back in time to primitive man who we evolved from and consider the following situation it might help our understanding here. Suppose a man or woman were in a struggle with another animal over a food source. Suppose the man got exhausted from the ordeal and had to sleep rather wasted from it all. In the morning he still lacked food and had to keep looking and perhaps even struggling for it. His muscles would be sore from that struggle. Do you think this individual would be unable to search for food? Well, if he couldn't then he wouldn't survive and it would be unlikely that his poor genes would be passed on to any of us. Thus, only those who could use their muscles, even if sore, would survive. This means that we can still adapt even if our bodies are suffering.
There is sufficient evidence from scientific studies on fowl to suggest that continuous tension over long periods of time lead to rapid and significant hypertrophy. We are talking about increases of up to 300% in a short period of time. That means that the potential for hypertrophy is hardly tapped in humans.
Instead of clinging to our beliefs we should try to falsify them. Test them and if they continue to work then continue to embrace them. Otherwise, keep an open mind and be prepared to abandon precious beliefs.
This business of recovery is one of the things that seemed to be known. Over the last 50 years bodybuilders have trained each muscle less frequently than previously. In the 1960's many believed you alternated upperbody with lowerbody days. Thus one trained upperbody on MWF and Lower body on TThSa. Eventually most trainees found this too taxing and dropped out or stagnated. Along came Arthur Jones and many read his articles and even ads and changed their training. Most eventually trained more intensely but less frequently. Many believed that a muscle grew best with intervals of between 4 and 7 days. Training a muscle every fifth day seemed a good compromise. The exception was the calves and many felt more frequent sessions were required to make the calves respond.
Along comes Mr Haycock and others armed with evidence from science that shows that muscles can grow with more frequent intervals. Since protein is synthesized up to about 48 hours after workouts it was assumed training should be done every second day to provide a stimulus to continue protein synthesis. These thinkers applied other research to training methods and varied the load by changing the reps. Clever application. From what we hear this process has the support of most people who have experimented with the HST method.
I personally have trained a target muscle and got it sore and kept it sore for about a month. I ended up with sore connective tissue but the muscles grew rapidly. That convinced me that the potential for growth is much more than is seen on most trainees. Most people at any one time are probably NOT growing. Why is this so? There have been some "explanations" but I am not convinced it is a matter of intensity or any other factor. Somehow regular training is adapted to and that is why progress stops. Trainees have to vary things in order to sustain an adaptation.
Women clearly find if more difficult to hypertrophy. I doubt that their muscles are different at the cellular level than what we find in men. Can women grow when a muscle has not recovered? I have no doubt that this can happen in everyone. Of course we assume that all other conditions such as nutrition are optimal. We are learning about the hypertrophy process and when more information is available we will have to abandon many of our assumptions because they will be found to be lacking or plainly false. That a particular person feels they need to 'recover' is no proof that they really do. How would they know? What exactly is recovery, anyway? We all use such terms but the actually internal processes in muscles are hardly understood by most of us.
Either a muscle can continue to grow while it is growing or it cannot. It is not a matter for conjecture. It doesn't depend on opinions but on physiology. That is what must be discovered or learned.
If you take a moment to go way back in time to primitive man who we evolved from and consider the following situation it might help our understanding here. Suppose a man or woman were in a struggle with another animal over a food source. Suppose the man got exhausted from the ordeal and had to sleep rather wasted from it all. In the morning he still lacked food and had to keep looking and perhaps even struggling for it. His muscles would be sore from that struggle. Do you think this individual would be unable to search for food? Well, if he couldn't then he wouldn't survive and it would be unlikely that his poor genes would be passed on to any of us. Thus, only those who could use their muscles, even if sore, would survive. This means that we can still adapt even if our bodies are suffering.
There is sufficient evidence from scientific studies on fowl to suggest that continuous tension over long periods of time lead to rapid and significant hypertrophy. We are talking about increases of up to 300% in a short period of time. That means that the potential for hypertrophy is hardly tapped in humans.
Instead of clinging to our beliefs we should try to falsify them. Test them and if they continue to work then continue to embrace them. Otherwise, keep an open mind and be prepared to abandon precious beliefs.
Lord_Suston
New member
cassualbb thanks for the lesson. got a good feel for the methods many have describe earlier. on a 6 day training cycle incorporate a few speed sets on day you don't train a certain muscle.
example d1=back/traps and then on day 4 after two days rest I would do three speed sets, two of back and one fro traps, not max load but around 50% at max speed but not to failure. This is just to place a little stress on those area and to increase neuromusclular efficiancy
example d1=back/traps and then on day 4 after two days rest I would do three speed sets, two of back and one fro traps, not max load but around 50% at max speed but not to failure. This is just to place a little stress on those area and to increase neuromusclular efficiancy
Legion Kreinak2
New member
Lord_Suston said:
I've seen something similar to that where you work each bodypart twice a week and on one day do explosive exercises, another heavy weights. I believe WSB uses this, but I also remember seeing it elsewhere before I read about Westside and it having a different name.
Tell us how it goes, Lord_Suston.
coolcolj
New member
Good Post!
It seems I've been training right all this time
explosive concentrics, low reps (to minimise effects of fatigue on force output), fairly fast eccentrics, right number of sets to make up the volume and never going to failure. I do use slight pauses to change things up.
With concentrated loading phases along with the required deloading periods. Fairly high frequency
Gains have been good from the strnegth and hypertrophy angles so far, all things considered.
It almost feels alien to me to even reach failure
Long live modern scientific training.
It seems I've been training right all this time
explosive concentrics, low reps (to minimise effects of fatigue on force output), fairly fast eccentrics, right number of sets to make up the volume and never going to failure. I do use slight pauses to change things up.
With concentrated loading phases along with the required deloading periods. Fairly high frequency
Gains have been good from the strnegth and hypertrophy angles so far, all things considered.
It almost feels alien to me to even reach failure
Long live modern scientific training.
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nclifter6feet6
Guest
interesting posts guys about this continuis overload
i may have posted this before but their is a guy at my gym who used to play for the xfl. hes about 6feet8 and weighs a ripped 275 a real monster. but when he goes to the gym he is a big talker. he mainly bullshits with people then he does a few sets and talks more and does a few more sets. he stays their like a few hours doing that shit. makes me think he knows somethin that i dont
i may have posted this before but their is a guy at my gym who used to play for the xfl. hes about 6feet8 and weighs a ripped 275 a real monster. but when he goes to the gym he is a big talker. he mainly bullshits with people then he does a few sets and talks more and does a few more sets. he stays their like a few hours doing that shit. makes me think he knows somethin that i dont
