WTF is this 5x5 routine that is so popular ?

[Tom Treutlein]

victorbr, you had one good arguement on the diet board months ago, which stated that caloric excess was all that mattered for gaining or losing weight. Despite the fact that so many people opposed you, you stuck by your belief. It was good to see you weren't swayed so easily by the conventional bullshit people spew like seperating carbs and fats, or cutting off carbs after a certain time.

What I don't understand is, why are you being influenced by these pro bodybuilder's bullshit now? To say 8-12 reps is ideal for hypertrophy is a bold statement. Perhaps to need to read up more on what causes hypertrophy. There are four main principles that Bryan Haycock, founder of HST, came up with after compiling tons of peer-reviewed studies. They are as follows:

1. Mechanical Load: Basically, lifting weights. Placing the muscle under stress. Simple and obvious.

2. Frequency: The more frequent your bouts of training, the better. Frequency is a severely underrated aspect of adding mass. I'm not going into details on this if I don't need to.

3. Progressive Load: The weights must move in an upward trend over time. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't mean one needs tons of strength in order to grow. Of course, should one gain strength, chances are they'll grow. However, lifting submaxial weights time and again, avoiding failure, will work just as nicely. You can milk a lot of growth out of lower weights than more people think.

4. Strategic Deconditioning/Time Off: Bryan coined the term, and it kind've pisses me off, but I guess it makes sense. You don't just take off when you feel like it, but you do so in a "strategic manner". The whole point is so your muscles decondition themselves and will again be affected by lower loads. This has to do with the RBE or Repeated Bout Effect that has been viewed time and again as a real thing. Studies have been done supporting its presence, and if you read up on it, it should make sense.

Okay, too much typing. Food time.

 

[psychedout]

Listen to Tom. He really knows his HST principles. I'll expand on number 2 in a second (not courtesy of me however).

 

[psychedout]

Courtesy of Calkid


2) Frequency Potentially the most controversial, so I'll be spending a lot of time on it.

The various growth factors initiated by training all peak at around 24 hours post-workout, and than fall back to baseline by 48 hours. (2, 3, 4, and especially 6, 7) Typically, programs will sacrifice training frequency for the ability to add volume. This is counterproductive if your goal is to have bigger muscles. Given the average split of once/week, this means one will spend two days growing and five days maintaining muscle size without adding to it. This has been confirmed in the lab. One study compared the effects of a volume of weight training performed all on one day of the week to the same volume spread across three days of the week. The thrice-per-week group saw greater muscle gains as well as strength gains over 40% greater than the once-per-week group.(5)
This can also seem counterintuitive, as muscle soreness and strength often do not recover after a mere two days. In actuality, neither of those factors (soreness or voluntary strength) is related to muscle growth.

The ability to recover one's strength is directly related to muscle failure. Training to failure directly inhibits voluntary strength. Basically, training to failure fries your nerves (not the technical term ) and prevents them from being able to contract the muscles for long periods of time. So when one trains to failure and then waits until strength is recovered to train a muscle again, oftentimes the muscle has long recovered and is waiting for the nervous system to catch up.
This means that sometimes, with HST, you will be training through soreness. This is totally okay! Soreness is not harmful, and people generally find that training a sore muscle will cause the soreness to stop.


References:
1) Warren GL, Hayes DA, Lowe DA, Armstrong RB. Mechanical factors in the initiation of eccentric contraction-induced injury in rat soleus muscle. J Physiol. 1993 May;464:457-75
2) Nosaka K, Clarkson P.M. Muscle damage following repeated bouts of high force eccentric exercise. Med. Sci. Sports Exrc., 27(9):1263-1269,1995
3) Smith LL., Fuylmer MG., Holbert D., McCammon MR., Houmard JA., Frazer DD., Nsien E., Isreal RG. The impact of repeated bout of eccentric exercise on muscular strength, muscle soreness and creatine kinase. Br J Sp Med 28(4):267-271, 1994
4) T.C. Chen, Taipei Physical Education College, and S.S. Hsieh, FACSM,. The effects of a seven-day repeated eccentric training on recovery from muscle damage. Med. Sci. Sports Exrc. 31(5 Supp) pp. S71, 1999
5) McLester JR., Bishop P., & Guilliams M. Comparison of 1 and 3 day per week of equal volume resistance training in experienced subjects. Med. Sci. Sports Exrc. 31(5 Supp) pp.S117 1999
6)MacDougall JD, Gibala MJ, Tarnopolsky MA, MacDonald JR, Interisano SA, Yarasheski KE. The time course for elevated muscle protein synthesis following heavy resistance exercise.
Can J Appl Physiol. 1995 Dec;20(4):480-6.
7)Phillips, S. M., K. D. Tipton, A. Aarsland, S. E. Wolf, and R. R. Wolfe. Mixed muscle protein synthesis and breakdown after resistance exercise in humans. Am. J. Physiol. 273 (Endocrinol. Metab. 36): E99-E107, 1997

 

[needsize]

madcow, the trainer is Laura Binetti, she is pretty much known as the top trainer in this area, her guys always finish in the top 3.
She trains a ton of people I know, one guy, last year i watched him go from 230-288lbs in a year(still had abs at that weight), and was on stage for his first show at just under 240lbs, which is huge. So her contest training is bang on, but her offseason stuff is even better

 

[Madcow2]

Never heard of her (which means nothing because the last time I followed BBing at all was a decade ago - although I did watch the Arnold on INHD because I like my HDTV and it happened to be on ). If she's having success with a range of others that's something then, especially if she is talented at adding muscle and retaining it while preping for a contest. I didn't mean to sound like a downer, but I've been categorically unimpressed with Pro training in the past so many times over the years but that certainly doesn't mean that an individual might not have a lot to offer specifically around getting in shape for contests which is something unique to BBing competition. If it works and works consistently, pay attention and learn about it. Maybe you adopt that style or maybe you eventually borrow what you like and integrate it into your own system. Either way it sounds as if she gets results accross a number of people on a consistent basis (that's generally an indicator of something working) so that alone makes it worth your time.

 

[needsize]

I'm with you as far as not being impressed by a lot of pros, many just seem to rely on genetics, which the rest of us dont have that luxury. This one really knows her stuff though, her physique is definitely impressive to say the least, but what I've seen her do with others is what impresses me the most

 

[WalkingBeast]

There is a lot more to training than going balls to walls to failure week in and week out. Single-factor bullshit like that may get you somewhere in the first 2 years of training, but after that it's all in the drugs. When you take juice it magnifies the stimulus by so much that you can grow of virtually anything.

Worked well enough for me! No drugs yet. Now Im just trying to get back to where I was, as in the signature and avatar. Ive been training over 10 years and nothing special about my genetics. Takes me very long to grow. Considering where I started Ive gained 9 inches on my arms with failure training. For me 5x5 only helped me gain back some lost strength from an injury, but after that it was my old routine that brought me above and beyond (strength and size wise). My tolerance is too high, I need much more abuse to grow or strengthen. I wasnt meant to grow, but that doesnt mean shit when you push yourself beyond limits and force that shit. KILL THAT SHIT!!

 

[WalkingBeast]

As was said, alot of it comes from intensity and forcing a routine to work. Of course with a completely worthless routine, that would only go so far. I dont like to have any doubts in my mind whether or not I pushed myself as hard as I could. Id rather go out training this way.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

You weren't meant to grow? Unless you mean that as in you've reached your genetic potential, it's an odd thing to say. I know of your fucked up stomach and such, but to say you "weren't meant to grow" seems a little misguided.

Either way, you've got a lot of dedication, and you put forth with a lot of gusto. It's impressive, to say the least. Still, I think if you took a severely long time off (3-4 months), your muscles would decondition a ton, thus making you susceptible to lighter loads and much less volume, which would allow you a new shot at hypertrophy without killing all your time.

Then again, you like that, don't you?

 

[WalkingBeast]

You weren't meant to grow? Unless you mean that as in you've reached your genetic potential, it's an odd thing to say. I know of your fucked up stomach and such, but to say you "weren't meant to grow" seems a little misguided.

Either way, you've got a lot of dedication, and you put forth with a lot of gusto. It's impressive, to say the least. Still, I think if you took a severely long time off (3-4 months), your muscles would decondition a ton, thus making you susceptible to lighter loads and much less volume, which would allow you a new shot at hypertrophy without killing all your time.

Then again, you like that, don't you?

ThanX brother!! All I mean by "not meant to grow" is its very difficult for me to get any amount of growth and just as hard to maintain. I dont believe that genetic potential is something that can truly ever be determined. With or without drugs. Yea, I just got off a 5 month lay off and Im plenty "deconditioned". Ill be training differently for a while since I dont have much choice at the moment. If I push too hard Ill fuck myself up once again. Ruptured disks as I mentioned before. So, we'll see how this deconditioning works out. Since Ill be testing it out unintentionally. Its an interesting theory.