1000 Reps to Bigger Muscles

Training Bodybuilding
41

[quote]louisluthor wrote:
Go heavy fool wrote:

Mr Heavy: How fast has each rep got to be? and how many times per week should I train with this routine? Two times, or three times?

Are the sets are within the 45-60 seconds of time under tension per set guideline you mentioned once for hypertrophy?

How much should I rest between sets?[/quote]

Lou, this is the one exception to every rule routine. This routine is so brutal and it breaks every bodybuilding rule known to man. It has no parameters. That’s why I really don’t think any rules are valid… because this routine is the most successful one I ever did and it throws everything right out the window.

Don’t worry about tempo, TUT, or rest. It all matters none. Some of the reps will be fast, some slow. Some of the rest will be fast, some slow. And some of the TUT will be fast, some slow. You have to do whatever it takes to get thru the set. The amount of sets needed may on be just one… could be two, three, or four. Depending on your training ststus of beginner or intermediate or advanced will determine all the guidelines. Your recovery time and so forth will be determined by genetics and experience.

You could do just 3 or 4 different exercises in this fashion, all for one single set and work 3-4 different muscles. Or you could get 2-3 sets per exercise for each muscle.

Generally 1 set per exercise is all that is needed and a max of 3 exercises per muscle. Anywhere from 1 to 3 times a week.

You would have to try this and see how difficult it is first, so to determine how many sets and exercises of this type of training you would need. Also, to see how to fit it into your program. It can be used as the entire program or just for a few muscles. Say you continue with your regular program and slowly work into this one by starting off with one or two muscles worked in this fashion. If you’re going to do a full body or upper lower split… you will only need a few total exercises, so pick the best big compound movements like the bench press, deadlift and squat.

You could ideally start off with a few weak areas and use this blitzing style of workout to enhance them and get them past that lower level of development for you.

A good tester for this routine is the barbell curl… this will give you an idea of exactly how dificult this program is too do.

Now if you think this is not too difficult and you are a machine… I dare you to try the “breaking the law” routine. It is the exact same routine as this one but instead of the “speed limit”, you’ll be doing 110. You just reverse back to 1 rep after hitting 10. Now you will have to give 110% to get through that. I have done it and it will leave you with nothing left. Now this program holds true to everything that matters to me and that is “more work in less time”… I break every rule except my own.

You don’t have to do 55 or even 110… you can modify it and maybe do all the odd numbers if you’re new and inexperienced. You can go higher than 10… say 15. The point is to increase the intensity. I have always used routines that increase intensity. Sometimes the best way to do that, is to force intensity by creating a system that leaves no doubt whether or not you will have to be intense to get through it. Just simple trying to add weights to your bench press everweek doesnt always work and isn’t always enough. You try that and frankly you just dont get anywhere because you arn’t intense enough to go higher in weight.

My programs will force intensity. I just make most of mine up Lou. I don’t need advice or books to read on intensity… I just need to feel it. I experiment and just get the music going, get the right mindset and give it everything I got. You can make up your own routines too Lou, experiment a little and see what you come up with. I have tons od ways to lift that I’ve done and you’ve never even heard of. If I know that last week I did up to 8 sets, then this week I’m doing 10 no matter what and there’s your progressive overload principle guarenteed. Now you can also increase the loads… maybe it takes a few tries before you can increase your lower numbered lifts like 1-2-3 reps, but the 4-10 rep lifts you can go heavier on and increase the overload. Now that is almost not even necessary at first becuase this program is so intense that increasing its intensity is almost overdrive. Stay within your limits. Get thru the reps, when they feel to light, add the weight and put yourself right back into that threshold of pain.

42

[quote]louisluthor wrote:
Go heavy fool wrote:

Mr Heavy: How fast has each rep got to be? and how many times per week should I train with this routine? Two times, or three times?

Are the sets are within the 45-60 seconds of time under tension per set guideline you mentioned once for hypertrophy?

How much should I rest between sets?[/quote]

Now for specific answers. The tempo is different every rep, but generally fast-explosive and controlled. doing body part exercises will only need 1-2 times per week with a few sets each.

Doing fullbodys will only need 2-3 times per week with a few sets of the bullbody type exercises. The time under tension is roughly around the minute range and close to a second per rep… maybe a tad longer. The rests intervals are as long as you need to perform the next set of reps… try to go as quick as you can and it will still be close to the 3 to 1 rest to TUT ratio.

After the first set you may need 7 seconds rest, but it only took you 2 seconds to perform the lift. After the 8th set you mya only need 5 seconds rest and it took you 10 seconds to perfrom the reps. Generally the time to change the weights is all you need.

If you need a few extra breaths, then take them… take as much rest needed to get thru the set by maxing on the prescribed rep, not by doing it with ease. And don’t do it so fast you pass out. Know your limits and push them.

43

[quote]Go heavy fool wrote:
louisluthor wrote:
Go heavy fool wrote:

Mr Heavy: How fast has each rep got to be? and how many times per week should I train with this routine? Two times, or three times?

Are the sets are within the 45-60 seconds of time under tension per set guideline you mentioned once for hypertrophy?

How much should I rest between sets?

Now for specific answers. The tempo is different every rep, but generally fast-explosive and controlled. doing body part exercises will only need 1-2 times per week with a few sets each.

Doing fullbodys will only need 2-3 times per week with a few sets of the bullbody type exercises. The time under tension is roughly around the minute range and close to a second per rep… maybe a tad longer. The rests intervals are as long as you need to perform the next set of reps… try to go as quick as you can and it will still be close to the 3 to 1 rest to TUT ratio.

After the first set you may need 7 seconds rest, but it only took you 2 seconds to perform the lift. After the 8th set you mya only need 5 seconds rest and it took you 10 seconds to perfrom the reps. Generally the time to change the weights is all you need.

If you need a few extra breaths, then take them… take as much rest needed to get thru the set by maxing on the prescribed rep, not by doing it with ease. And don’t do it so fast you pass out. Know your limits and push them.
[/quote]

Ok…I got this at 6:45 A.M. of my time…I worked out on the gym today, fresh from being 2 days at home because of the bad weather, and I am still smashed now, at 5:10 P.M…it feels like somebody used my chest and back as a stage for a session of tap dancing with cement shoes, and injected my muscles with acid and red-hot lead pellets. It feel damn good!!!

No kidding, it’s one of the first times after some months that I actualy feel my muscles worked to their real capacity. It feels good to know you did something at the gym rather than just work up a sweat.

After some thought, and accoridng to a reasonable recovery ability standard, I have solved the frequency issue. I have decided to use a split routine: Chest, Triceps, Forearm and Shoulders on day 1 and day 4 (Monday and Thursday), and Back, Biceps and Legs on days 2 and 5 (Tuesdays and Fridays) resting on days 3, 6 and 7 (Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays).

I have also decided to use no less than 2 and no more than 4 sets per bodypart, and also use no less than 2 exercises per bodypart, in the main 2 angles of resistance: vertical (dips, chins) and horizontal (bench pressing, seated rows). The rest periods will be kept around 1 to 2 minutes between sets…such was the idea I had for this day, as a test day, for my chest, triceps shoulders and forearms routine…

I admit to have only used 1 exercise for the shoulders and triceps, whereas I did use 2 for the chest, flat and decline bench pressing, for I was a little weak today, and I was doing some sparring at home yesterday, so I had to count the tiredness factor for these muscle groups.

I also added some accessory work, I felt like adding 2-3 sets of max reps (15-20 reps per set) would be good for the chest, in flyies and pullovers, and for the shoulders and triceps, on pressdowns and windmill raises.

Surely mr Go heavy, it felt great. If I do recover as well as I think I can, then I’d plan to give mr. Vandal’s idea a try on saturday or friday if I can be strong by then, because as deeply stimulating on the muscle fibers and as high as the recruitment of motor units was on these sets, truly hardening and pumping on my targeted muscles, I still want to know how to stay in the sweet zone a lot longer, it’s must be like being high for a drug user, you just want to stay there, in the zone where you feel your engine at its top performance and going as fast and hard as you can, like a race car…and I want to make this one fine tuned-up and tricked-out machine of a body.

44

[quote]louisluthor wrote:
Go heavy fool wrote:
louisluthor wrote:
Go heavy fool wrote:

Mr Heavy: How fast has each rep got to be? and how many times per week should I train with this routine? Two times, or three times?

Are the sets are within the 45-60 seconds of time under tension per set guideline you mentioned once for hypertrophy?

How much should I rest between sets?

Now for specific answers. The tempo is different every rep, but generally fast-explosive and controlled. doing body part exercises will only need 1-2 times per week with a few sets each.

Doing fullbodys will only need 2-3 times per week with a few sets of the bullbody type exercises. The time under tension is roughly around the minute range and close to a second per rep… maybe a tad longer. The rests intervals are as long as you need to perform the next set of reps… try to go as quick as you can and it will still be close to the 3 to 1 rest to TUT ratio.

After the first set you may need 7 seconds rest, but it only took you 2 seconds to perform the lift. After the 8th set you mya only need 5 seconds rest and it took you 10 seconds to perfrom the reps. Generally the time to change the weights is all you need.

If you need a few extra breaths, then take them… take as much rest needed to get thru the set by maxing on the prescribed rep, not by doing it with ease. And don’t do it so fast you pass out. Know your limits and push them.

Ok…I got this at 6:45 A.M. of my time…I worked out on the gym today, fresh from being 2 days at home because of the bad weather, and I am still smashed now, at 5:10 P.M…it feels like somebody used my chest and back as a stage for a session of tap dancing with cement shoes, and injected my muscles with acid and red-hot lead pellets. It feel damn good!!!

No kidding, it’s one of the first times after some months that I actualy feel my muscles worked to their real capacity. It feels good to know you did something at the gym rather than just work up a sweat.

After some thought, and accoridng to a reasonable recovery ability standard, I have solved the frequency issue. I have decided to use a split routine: Chest, Triceps, Forearm and Shoulders on day 1 and day 4 (Monday and Thursday), and Back, Biceps and Legs on days 2 and 5 (Tuesdays and Fridays) resting on days 3, 6 and 7 (Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays).

I have also decided to use no less than 2 and no more than 4 sets per bodypart, and also use no less than 2 exercises per bodypart, in the main 2 angles of resistance: vertical (dips, chins) and horizontal (bench pressing, seated rows). The rest periods will be kept around 1 to 2 minutes between sets…such was the idea I had for this day, as a test day, for my chest, triceps shoulders and forearms routine…

I admit to have only used 1 exercise for the shoulders and triceps, whereas I did use 2 for the chest, flat and decline bench pressing, for I was a little weak today, and I was doing some sparring at home yesterday, so I had to count the tiredness factor for these muscle groups.

I also added some accessory work, I felt like adding 2-3 sets of max reps (15-20 reps per set) would be good for the chest, in flyies and pullovers, and for the shoulders and triceps, on pressdowns and windmill raises.

Surely mr Go heavy, it felt great. If I do recover as well as I think I can, then I’d plan to give mr. Vandal’s idea a try on saturday or friday if I can be strong by then, because as deeply stimulating on the muscle fibers and as high as the recruitment of motor units was on these sets, truly hardening and pumping on my targeted muscles, I still want to know how to stay in the sweet zone a lot longer, it’s must be like being high for a drug user, you just want to stay there, in the zone where you feel your engine at its top performance and going as fast and hard as you can, like a race car…and I want to make this one fine tuned-up and tricked-out machine of a body.[/quote]

Sounds good Lou… zone it in. You’ll get the feel the more you experiment. I can only throw different ideas at you. you can possibly try some of them out and see what works for you. Looks like you have enough info from me and Vandal to become that machine. just remember its all about “doing it”, everything is good in theory… but in practice is where it counts and makes the difference.

I’m glad you were interested in some off the wall shit and some real pain… you will only benefit from this pain, remember that.

“The more the body is destroyed, the more beautiful it becomes” - GHF

By the way, I just started my old calf blaster routine 2 days ago… it’s about time for me to reap some pain from my own advice. I’ve been doing alot of strength training lately, not alot of pain in that. I have to mix in my pain exercises here and there. I have about another week of these single lifts that I’m doing, then its all hypertrophy and pain for the next month.

no pain, no gain… I’m old school brother

45

Good post by go heavy, you should listen to the man?s advise, Lou, I am going to try the 1-10 method myself tomorrow, so I can get a good workout for my back…

I have heard of the 1-10 method before, just a couple times and didn?t really look into it, for I have my own idea about working an interval of reps as successive drops and rest pauses, which I will explain later in this reply, but for now, allow me to give you a method I have see here.

I know of an old-school method of wave-pattern sets here which we don?t have a real name for, but most often like to call them pendulum sets. I have never used them myself, but I have seen some guys make pretty good progress by using them, although as I said, they don?t seem like anything worth doing for my training seems like a better version of them.

Basically, you do 5 sets per workout, and the trick is, they are really 5 sets of 10+8+6+8+10 as follows: Load the bar with your 12RM, lift the weight hard and then lower under control, but slow, around 2 seconds or close, to squeeze the eccentric phase for gains and all that crap.

Rack the load after your tenth rep, rest 10-15 seconds and then do about 8 reps, which shall be pretty much all you can do in this same tempo and fashion, still staying 2 reps shy of failure by staying at 8 reps (typical rest-pause style, your strength fades). Rack the load again and then after another 10-15 seconds, try for 6 reps.

This is the end of the slow tempo bullshit. After you finish the sixth rep, you rest for 10-15 seconds again and try to shoot for 8 reps moving a little faster, about a 1-second eccentric or close to it, then rack the weight and move for a finishing 10 reps which should take you to the pain threshold, and almost within failure.

The time under tension given by the reps is between 50-60 seconds per set, and you can train twice a week.

Now, you can train more often and just throw the tempo part away if you try the following idea which comes from my take on this trick: mix a rest-pause set with a drop set.

For this, instead of using a 2-seconds or close-to type of eccentric, just try to get the damn rep done, and rest for the same 10-15 seconds and by the time you finish the third segment, where you use the 6 reps, you drop off some weight and try to shoot for 8 reps, then drop off some weight and shoot for the final 10 reps.

The total time under tension is about 50-60 seconds too, but trust me, you?ll be feeling it way better than the traditional style I explained as the standard use of this method.

46

Ok…I tried mr Vandal’s method…his standard “stay int he zone” one…and…WHOA !!!

Ok, Mr Go Heavy, you method is amazing, every rep from 1 to 10 feels amazing…I can’t think of a better method for intense muscle building pain and work.

Now, mr Vandal: Your emthod is intense on the final reps, but the way i feel, like the engine of a race car on the final lap, is amazing. My best rep range is 8 reps at 85 kilograms with a speed around 10X0 and it feels great!!!

I have to rate both programs with a 10 in the 1-10 scale…Mr Heavy aces in what refers to Intensity and Mr Vandal to Volume…

My question is…after 2-4 sets of the 1-10 method, if I have any strength left, should I see what my “zone” is? It surely won’t be 8 reps for 85 kilos at 10X0 tempo, the reps will go down, or up and the weight will do the same, but is it ok to train Intensity and then Volume, like, do as many 1-10 sets I can on a session and then doing as many “zone” sets as I can and come back when I have recovered enough to feel liek giving it another try?

47

[quote]louisluthor wrote:
Ok…I tried mr Vandal’s method…his standard “stay int he zone” one…and…WHOA !!!

Ok, Mr Go Heavy, you method is amazing, every rep from 1 to 10 feels amazing…I can’t think of a better method for intense muscle building pain and work.

Now, mr Vandal: Your emthod is intense on the final reps, but the way i feel, like the engine of a race car on the final lap, is amazing. My best rep range is 8 reps at 85 kilograms with a speed around 10X0 and it feels great!!!

I have to rate both programs with a 10 in the 1-10 scale…Mr Heavy aces in what refers to Intensity and Mr Vandal to Volume…

My question is…after 2-4 sets of the 1-10 method, if I have any strength left, should I see what my “zone” is? It surely won’t be 8 reps for 85 kilos at 10X0 tempo, the reps will go down, or up and the weight will do the same, but is it ok to train Intensity and then Volume, like, do as many 1-10 sets I can on a session and then doing as many “zone” sets as I can and come back when I have recovered enough to feel liek giving it another try?[/quote]

Yeah Lou… something I forgot to mention, duration and periodization. The program itself is so intense you can only do it for so long before your CNS will shut down on you and just try to kick your own ass. I recommend using this for your weak areas and such and rotate it accordingly. If your looking for a fullbody workout, just do a few basics and hang in as long as you can… you will get run down on this after a point though because the intensity level is through the roof. It’s similiar to CT’s HSS 100, but this is like that on steroids.

I’m doing single lifts right now for 4 sets of 7 singles with about 5-10 seconds rest pause re-rack with my 3 RM weight ; I’m building strength, and its a cakewalk compared to the “breaking the law” & “the speed limit” Don’t use it everyday for every muscle group, every week. Use it as the failsafe. When you can’t get results doing something easier… use this because frankly there is nothing better. I can only handle so much of it myself.

The routine is too brutal to use constantly and for everything. Use it on periodization and it will payoff when you actually do something easier and now recieve tremendous benefits after going thru hell and back on my routines. Oh yeah don’t attempt the “breaking the law” routine unless your crazy like me. That is only a 1 set all out nightmare. I wouldn’t suggest doing it until you have become accustomed to the 1-10 system. The 1-10-1 is just fucking crazy… but it works!

As far as Vandal’s routine… I have no idea, you’ll have to ask him. I didn’t really look into it. I think he was trying to zone in your most bang for your buck reps and what kind of genetics you have to lift certain rep ranges. My rep ranges are different for every muscle. I know what all mine are. But, his idea is a good way to find out with alot less trial and error.

48

I agree w/you 100%. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Practice working the muscle and not the weight. So simple. Ego lifts feed nothing but temptation. The is a very self disiplined sport and if we aren’t willing to focus on what matter, we won’t get anywhere.

49

Ive been reading along here and am wondering if anyone here is familiar with Charles Staley’s EDT?

I have to admit I became quite taken with this method, and it seems to mirror the basic principle of strip setting, or the 1-10 method mentioned above. The big difference of course being that with EDT one doesnt work down from the 1RM.

Still, it is one hell of a workout if you do it right. It has all the intensity I hear described in this thread. Has anyone tried it or know of its principles and wish to comment? Are its principles as effecient for building strength/hypertrophy as say 1-10?

50

[quote]Scotacus wrote:
Ive been reading along here and am wondering if anyone here is familiar with Charles Staley’s EDT?

I have to admit I became quite taken with this method, and it seems to mirror the basic principle of strip setting, or the 1-10 method mentioned above. The big difference of course being that with EDT one doesnt work down from the 1RM.

Still, it is one hell of a workout if you do it right. It has all the intensity I hear described in this thread. Has anyone tried it or know of its principles and wish to comment? Are its principles as effecient for building strength/hypertrophy as say 1-10?
[/quote]

Yeah. I have. I’ve experimented with all kinds of variations of that routine and made similiar ones up myself. That is the basic principle of Vince Gironda really “more work in less time”. Except that routine is based on time. I think it was 15 or 20 minutes or something like that.

Any time you try to increase the intensity of your workout parameters, it really doesn’t matter what protocall you’re using. All these routines follow the basic concept of progressive overload if you just pay attention to them and adjust them accordingly. There’s a good Weider concept “progressive overload”.

I think anytime you try increase the intensity a little, it will work no matter what you’re specificly doing, as long as you make the body work harder. That’s pretty much my philosophy. I really don’t care for the whole science of it… means nothing! Especially when your body doesn’t notice a difference and its easy. Usually when something is hard, then it requires work or exercise. If you’re doing something that is easy or not pushing your body, you’re not really exercising… I don’t care how long you spend in the gym or what tempo you’re using. If you’re sweating and breathing hard and your hearts racing and your body just aches, then you’ve actually done some “exercise” and you weren’t just going thru the motions. This is what actually causes the body to change. Arnold’s “pain barrier” that he always talks about, illustrates this very well. People that push themselves thru the pain and past the pain barriers and do things the body isn’t comfortable doing are the ones that get results. Doing it more often will only give you more results. Not, just going thru pain one day, then back to lala land. So, there are your two keys to success right there… Intensity & Commitment. Do that and the results will be there. Do it not, and you may as well just keep trying to find that secret routine that magicly gives you muscles for free.

51

I really love it that somebody mentioned EDT.

Basically, I don’t see why there is any confusion. It’s like the debate about the glass being half empty or half full.

EDT tells you to do more work in less time. The Gironda method also practices this same advice. Hss100 follows on the same and GVt too…you just don’t know where to stand to see it, I know.

Let’s break down all of these programs. They all use a lot of overload on the muscle, based on sheer volume accumulation to create a type of intensity, seen it in tems of work and force output and metabolic-end hypertrophy. Same goes for my program, or Go Heavy’s or any other program there is, because muscles grow as an adaptation to tiredness.

Someone mentioned how repetitive motion jobs give you big muscle developments, like car mechanics with big forearms and lumberjacks with big muscles and such.

Yet I don’t see lumberjacks trying to chop down as many trees as he can by putting all of his strength on the axe to get them all down in one blow, or you don’t see him try to give the tree a million girly-man axe blows to get them down. I see them going at the pace that works the best for them.

The marathoner vs the 100-meters sprinter analogy is a great one, but also very misunderstood. A marathoner doesn’t run as fast as he can for the whole marathon, he keeps a medium pace, it’s the length of time what causes him to be so skinny.

The sprinter puts out his best effort, gives 100% on the track, and he gets tired and also BIG from the sheer effort that it means to put all of his power in each step.

Now, let’s face some facts: marathoners may jog 10 miles each day to prepare for a marathon, but sprinters also run 10 miles a day…they just do it differently.

I see sprinters each day at the campus. They run exactly the same 50 laps around the track (400 meters per lap) than marathoners do. The difference is marathoners do them all at once, while sprinters run a full lap or a half-lap and then rest.

It takes them longer than it does to the marathonist to end their session, they even split it in a twice-per-day method of 25 laps each session, mornign and afternoon, but ionstead of busting ass and burning out, they go in waves, sprint, rest, sprint, rest.

Rest-pausing is a good example of that.
We have all hear that heavy sets of strength-and-size gains are betwen 6 and 8 reps, and also 4-6 are strength-specific sets. We all hear that 15-20 reps per set are for cutting up and getting slim. It’s like the set-rep bible you learn to pray with since you start liting.

But a rest-pause set is a set of a total 15-20 reps, where you start in 8 reps, then go down to 6 and then go down to 4…you might even end up hitting a triple or double at the end, and starting with 7 reps or less.

The thing is, you used a heavy load, you took small reps and reduced the reps according to how your strength dropped and balanced it out and accumulated a whole lot of reps with that, so you worked a lot during that set.

Therefore, you grow more out of a single rest-pause set than you can grow out of straight sets, being these 2-3 sets of 6-8 reps or 3-4 sets of 4-6 reps, let alone a set of 15-20, or just 15-17 rep sets with your best load for them.

I just guess that it is all about knowing how to stay in that zone. I tried 1-10 yesterday and I admit it was challenging, it felt good at the first set, painful, yes, and also very good for the second, but after the fourth set, I just couldn’t do more and grew tired, yet managed to load the bar with 90 kilograms and hit 6-8 reps with them instead of my usual 10, but managed to squeeze out 6 sets.

I know what works for me and that is the same that works for people which may be in my same corner in the room of the genetics department. EDT works for people who are built for it, and HSS100 for guys who are good at it too.

52

[quote]Vandal__Savage wrote:
I really love it that somebody mentioned EDT.

Basically, I don’t see why there is any confusion. It’s like the debate about the glass being half empty or half full.

EDT tells you to do more work in less time. The Gironda method also practices this same advice. Hss100 follows on the same and GVt too…you just don’t know where to stand to see it, I know.

Let’s break down all of these programs. They all use a lot of overload on the muscle, based on sheer volume accumulation to create a type of intensity, seen it in tems of work and force output and metabolic-end hypertrophy. Same goes for my program, or Go Heavy’s or any other program there is, because muscles grow as an adaptation to tiredness.

Someone mentioned how repetitive motion jobs give you big muscle developments, like car mechanics with big forearms and lumberjacks with big muscles and such.

Yet I don’t see lumberjacks trying to chop down as many trees as he can by putting all of his strength on the axe to get them all down in one blow, or you don’t see him try to give the tree a million girly-man axe blows to get them down. I see them going at the pace that works the best for them.

The marathoner vs the 100-meters sprinter analogy is a great one, but also very misunderstood. A marathoner doesn’t run as fast as he can for the whole marathon, he keeps a medium pace, it’s the length of time what causes him to be so skinny.

The sprinter puts out his best effort, gives 100% on the track, and he gets tired and also BIG from the sheer effort that it means to put all of his power in each step.

Now, let’s face some facts: marathoners may jog 10 miles each day to prepare for a marathon, but sprinters also run 10 miles a day…they just do it differently.

I see sprinters each day at the campus. They run exactly the same 50 laps around the track (400 meters per lap) than marathoners do. The difference is marathoners do them all at once, while sprinters run a full lap or a half-lap and then rest.

It takes them longer than it does to the marathonist to end their session, they even split it in a twice-per-day method of 25 laps each session, mornign and afternoon, but ionstead of busting ass and burning out, they go in waves, sprint, rest, sprint, rest.

Rest-pausing is a good example of that.
We have all hear that heavy sets of strength-and-size gains are betwen 6 and 8 reps, and also 4-6 are strength-specific sets. We all hear that 15-20 reps per set are for cutting up and getting slim. It’s like the set-rep bible you learn to pray with since you start liting.

But a rest-pause set is a set of a total 15-20 reps, where you start in 8 reps, then go down to 6 and then go down to 4…you might even end up hitting a triple or double at the end, and starting with 7 reps or less.

The thing is, you used a heavy load, you took small reps and reduced the reps according to how your strength dropped and balanced it out and accumulated a whole lot of reps with that, so you worked a lot during that set.

Therefore, you grow more out of a single rest-pause set than you can grow out of straight sets, being these 2-3 sets of 6-8 reps or 3-4 sets of 4-6 reps, let alone a set of 15-20, or just 15-17 rep sets with your best load for them.

I just guess that it is all about knowing how to stay in that zone. I tried 1-10 yesterday and I admit it was challenging, it felt good at the first set, painful, yes, and also very good for the second, but after the fourth set, I just couldn’t do more and grew tired, yet managed to load the bar with 90 kilograms and hit 6-8 reps with them instead of my usual 10, but managed to squeeze out 6 sets.

I know what works for me and that is the same that works for people which may be in my same corner in the room of the genetics department. EDT works for people who are built for it, and HSS100 for guys who are good at it too.
[/quote]

You must be my long lost twin brother Vandal. I could have written all your posts and you could have wriiten all of mine, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I think we are on the exact same wavelegnth. My mom swears her stomache was big enough to have two babies, but she became unconscience giving birth to me so she thinks I have a twin somewhere… you could be it. lol

All your posts have been fantastic, not because I agree with all of them, but they are accurate and very helpful. I hate to think we just spilled everything that will be a breakthrough for most inexperienced guys, but its out there now. Theres probably more useful advice in this thread than should be allowed.

I have a bunch of technique tricks, but I left them out because I think the basic concepts are much more important. I use the volume theory alot myself. Or the frequency theory, or the Waterbury type mindset why people that do something alot end up very well developed out of that movement.

I could probably sum it up though.

1- Frequency (total volume)…adapting to the stimulus

2- Overload {super, drops, stripper, giant, staggered}…more work in less time

3- Intensity (pushing thru the pain barrier) …Progressive Overload

4- Commitment (consistancy) reducing atrophy and maximizing hypertrophy

5- Basics (Diet & basic exercises & rest) … basic compound movements, protein/carb/fat supply for building and fueling, rest and recuperation

6- Vision (exercising and concentration) …enjoy the ride not the destination, vision the lift and the muscles working instead of the ego moving alot of weight

7- Goals (realization & determination) …set them as stepping stones and make it fun

That’ll bout cover it.

53

Well, I would love to have had a twin brother, think of all the chicks I could have done and the classes I could have skipped to enjoy life more…not to say that the girlfriend couldn’t really finger me for doing something or seeing me somewhere, plausible deniability…LOL

I have a smaller list of things that make any program work:

1-motivation: we want to get big, look good and get laid,because we do it for the ladies just as much as we do it for ourselves, it is good to feel like the alpha male, not to mention be strong and tough enough to kick some ass if we need to, so yes, we want to feel good with our bodies. I want to see a big strong and ripped man, that could scare any lesser man shitless when I look in the mirror. So do you, let’s face it.

2- Drive: It doesn’t just work if you are motivated by the prize if you ain’t ready to take a beating and bleed a little to get it. Pain is a constant in life, and you need to work hard and bust your hump to get things done and get results.

Except for a daddy’s boy, no real self-made businessman evades hartd work, you can’t get a million dollars out of a buck if you don’t play the lottery, and life isn’t like that.n Work hard, and you’ll get the rewards, you just need to know where to get your buck to give you the most bang.

3-Adaptability: Charlie darwin said that the FITTEST survives, not the STRONGEST. I can lift a truck and be stupid enough to train with the worst routine that won’t get me to look half as good as I could.

I need to be flexible, to adapt and learn to learn from my mistakes and from other people’s advise,a nd above all, pay attention to the lesons life allows you to learn by your own experience.

You need to be humble to know you weren’t born a wise man and you need to learn a lot to get close to that, so yes, you must be ready to accept that even you can screw up, I can screw up, we can all screw up and we will only save our asses from the crash and burn if we help each other, and listen to each other.

My church did omething odd this sunday. We have a Colombian priest, he is very nice, and he love God in a way that refreshes your faith like finding an oasis in the desert. I won’t lie and say we don’t have transexuals, gays lesbians and such in brazil, junkies, whores and all. He acepts them all and tries his best to get them to love God and follow his good words, even if they keep being gay tranny, lesbo or crap.

He put a mirror in the doorway of the church and wrote the legend “? What did you do today to get a better world tomorrow ?”. I believe that my 2-cents worth is my own small contribution to people, to just share what I know and see others improve, I think than that’s something.

You must be humble, do the best you can for yourself, not be afraid to ask advice or give it to a fellow lfiter, colleague, neighbor or a friend. You must be able to recognize your mistakes, learn from them and make amends for what you might have done to others, and apologize and rcognize your own flaws and errors.

By the way Go Heavy, I did try the 1-10 method today for the second time and I think I got it right this time, it feels amazing.

To louis luthor: in the 1-10 program, let’s assume your 1rm is 90, your 2rm is 85 and you are dropping off 5 kilos from rep 1 to rep 10, so you end with 45 kilos. That’s a big weight variation, and if you multiply and sum the weight by the times you move it from repo 1 to rep 10, as a simple math exercise: 1 x 90 + 2 x 85 + 3 x 80 …you will end up with over 3000 kilos lifted per set.

If you ackowledge the simple fact that ina given set, let’s say a set of 10 reps, you only feel the weight difficult to move in the final 3 reps or so, you must consider the level of intensity of the 1-10 method the best there is.

I got to acknowledge that most of my training has been some heavy drop setting and “zone” sets, getting the most weight lifted on a set, doing as many as I can with as little rest needed between them, to enhance workout density…that comes from training kickboxing and boxing 30 minutes before my weightn lifting session and 1 hour after it…so you might find it best to devote all of your energy into lifting, a I am about to do now in the off-season, and stick to a 1-10 workout type of intensity for big and fast gains.

You want to combine my program with the 1-10 method? I believe in keeping a program pure, not mixing them up, for you won’t do anything good at one of them, just waste time and get tired, overtrained.

Try Go heavy’s program for 3 weeks, rest for 1 week, try mine for 1 week or 2 and go back to Go heavy’s program. That’s my plan now for the off-season, and that will allow me to focus on mass gains, and get even bigger.

54

I though I’d share something with the group with my own wisdom on the lifting.

I try to be the biggest guy in my gym, and I don’t mean being the biggest ball of lard-covered muscles. I want to be huge and ripped, like someone had brought the increidble Hulk into life, not the pig-headed drawing of the comics, but Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk frame of the tv series, without the crappy clothes, the shity hairdo or the green tan.

To do so, I knew I had to be BIg as well as STRONG, but strength doesn’t show itself off by just standing there, size and lean mass does.

I use a version of drop sets or rest-pausing called “Extended 5’s” which is easy: do your best and heaviest 5 reps, rest 10 seconds, try again with the same laod to do your best reps, you might get 4 or 3, and then rest 10 seconds to prepare for a final effort of 3 or 2 reps…you end up getting 10-12 reps, and the trick is, you use a form which is the best for you.

My take on lifting weights is that you should feel the rep, just like it has been stated here over and over, but I know that you must worry about the speed of lifting to know how much work is put into a muscle when not working directly for strength.

Strenght and size are different animals, although they are related for one goes with the other, they are not just directly related, more like cousins rather than brothers.

I like a 2-seconds eccentric. It’s the slowest you can go for size, and it is a good way to use heavy loads to train for it, so it’s good for sets between 3 and 7 reps. I also believe that 1 second is the fastest, reserved for high reps, from 10 to 15.

Why the difference? Simple, if uou lower a big weight for less than 2 seconds, you ain’t using the heavy load for size, you are using it for strength, and if you lower a moderate weight for a 2 seconds concentric on a 10-rep set or a 15-rep set, the sheer exposure to time under tension will fry you in a small number of sets or make you use loads which will be felt only in the alst couple reps, wasting away the other reps that preceeded them.

My training: Use 6-8 sets of extended 5’s for 2 or 3 times a week. I train for 3 weeks, rest for 1 week, and then do 2 weeks of pre-exhaustion or post-exhaustion: do a 12-15 or 16-20 reps set of an isolation exercise previous or following a heavy set of 3-5 or 6-8 repsof a compound one. Then rest 1 week before going back to the first program.

My reasoning is: why going on fancy routines, when it’s as simple as in karate Kid: " wax, shine, wax, shine" ? You don’t need to try every fucking program there is out there, just see what works for you in one end of the spectrum and find what works as well on the other side…it is a pendulum thing, and even if you want to say pendulums are also capable of drawing not only a bi-dimensional arc but also a conical motion (Focault’s pendulum), you still give me the reason.

In short, nobody needs more than 4 seasons, 4 programs to cycle between them in a certain order, and no less than 2, just like tropical countries and seasonal countries: You get only sunny and rainy seasons there, but 2 is about enough for them.

55

[quote]Pump_Daddy wrote:
I though I’d share something with the group with my own wisdom on the lifting.

I try to be the biggest guy in my gym, and I don’t mean being the biggest ball of lard-covered muscles. I want to be huge and ripped, like someone had brought the increidble Hulk into life, not the pig-headed drawing of the comics, but Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk frame of the tv series, without the crappy clothes, the shity hairdo or the green tan.

To do so, I knew I had to be BIg as well as STRONG, but strength doesn’t show itself off by just standing there, size and lean mass does.

I use a version of drop sets or rest-pausing called “Extended 5’s” which is easy: do your best and heaviest 5 reps, rest 10 seconds, try again with the same laod to do your best reps, you might get 4 or 3, and then rest 10 seconds to prepare for a final effort of 3 or 2 reps…you end up getting 10-12 reps, and the trick is, you use a form which is the best for you.

My take on lifting weights is that you should feel the rep, just like it has been stated here over and over, but I know that you must worry about the speed of lifting to know how much work is put into a muscle when not working directly for strength.

Strenght and size are different animals, although they are related for one goes with the other, they are not just directly related, more like cousins rather than brothers.

I like a 2-seconds eccentric. It’s the slowest you can go for size, and it is a good way to use heavy loads to train for it, so it’s good for sets between 3 and 7 reps. I also believe that 1 second is the fastest, reserved for high reps, from 10 to 15.

Why the difference? Simple, if uou lower a big weight for less than 2 seconds, you ain’t using the heavy load for size, you are using it for strength, and if you lower a moderate weight for a 2 seconds concentric on a 10-rep set or a 15-rep set, the sheer exposure to time under tension will fry you in a small number of sets or make you use loads which will be felt only in the alst couple reps, wasting away the other reps that preceeded them.

My training: Use 6-8 sets of extended 5’s for 2 or 3 times a week. I train for 3 weeks, rest for 1 week, and then do 2 weeks of pre-exhaustion or post-exhaustion: do a 12-15 or 16-20 reps set of an isolation exercise previous or following a heavy set of 3-5 or 6-8 repsof a compound one. Then rest 1 week before going back to the first program.

My reasoning is: why going on fancy routines, when it’s as simple as in karate Kid: " wax, shine, wax, shine" ? You don’t need to try every fucking program there is out there, just see what works for you in one end of the spectrum and find what works as well on the other side…it is a pendulum thing, and even if you want to say pendulums are also capable of drawing not only a bi-dimensional arc but also a conical motion (Focault’s pendulum), you still give me the reason.

In short, nobody needs more than 4 seasons, 4 programs to cycle between them in a certain order, and no less than 2, just like tropical countries and seasonal countries: You get only sunny and rainy seasons there, but 2 is about enough for them.[/quote]

good stuff

Join the club, feel free to chime in at anytime. I agree with everything you just typed. You ain’t new to this game. Good stuff bro. I love to listen to guys that actually know what they’re talking about. Good recipes there. I’ve experimented with all kinds of drops, strippers, supers, giants… its pretty much in all of my routines. I’m all for the rest-pauses and drops. Anytime a more intense set is better than a regular set… I’m like “I’m in!”. I’m all for non cookie cutter shit.

I would shoot my self in the foot if I had to do 5x5’s and 3 x 10’s all the time. Triple drops or triple rest-pauses are some of my favorites.

good stuff!

56

I just like to lift, man, I just enjoy lifting. It relaxes me to vent out in the weight room and punch the sandbag they hand in the center of it for fun.

I have known people that do grow big with slow-controlled lifting speeds: lift in 2 seconds and lower in 2 seconds (and that’s approximately, not exactly 2 seconds on either phase, nobody’s built with an internal muscle stopwatch) and lift 2 times a week with the typical 3-4 sets of 3-4 exercises (10-12 sets per session, no more than that) and such pussy-ass routine comes from Men’s Health magazines…yet, it still works and the funny thing is, I didn’t know bodybuilding mags and shit, or this site, and it worked for me.

I believe in three simple things:the Love that comes from God, the joy of doing the Right thing and help others and the age-old axiom “You reap what you saw”, and like Vandal said, nobody gets a lot out of a little, so i don’t see nobody getting rich and putting up an Apple Juice factory because they planted one simple apple tree and sat down to watch it grow. Nobody’s that stupid or that optimist to expect such luck. Work Hard, Earn Big, that’s simple enough for me to live by it.

I remember using that pussy-ass routine and getting a big cramp at the end of each session not because of the load, but because of the fact i was strict in form…i admit that my 2-second count may have been a little more than a second, and that I only got something out of the final 2 or 3 reps as it has been already posted here, but those final 2 or 3 reps were honest and hard enough to get me big at first, so why not get anyone else big? I feel that Lou and Quad are beginners, aren’t you guys? I only thought of it that way when i was beginning.

There’s an invisible line that sepparates beginners from intermediates, and it’s one hell of a big grey area. I lifted for nearly 1 year before i realized i needed to change my routine a little more than cycling aroudn the 2 or 3 workouts I got from Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness and American Health and Fitness.

I got to the point where normal routines didn’t feel right, no matter how hard I tried to make them by counting tempo or loading up the bar more, I just didn’t feel the pump like I did before I even knew there were other lifting tempos or even a serious study for it. I started losing interest and all when i got advice from a fellow reader here, who turned me into this site.

You know you are in the intermediate range when the basic routines don’t work but the advanced routines kill your muscles and send you home limping away (and not in the good way) after a simple CHEST workout…so you must re-evaluate your lifting program.

My advise to Lou and Quad who seem to be in this same plateau: Look at the lifts and methods that still feel good, and just increase the work by unit of time by using them in rest-pause or superset styles. In my case, i had to see that the 4-6 sets were good for me, and the use of Extended %'s or drop settings with small rep ranges of 4-6 helped me.

Also combining a serious 4-6 set of a heavy compound before or after an isolations et which was taken shy of failure, in pre or post exhaustion.

What is the difference between an intermediate level technique or workout and an advanced one, and when to make the jump? Simple. An advanced program will consist of the same drop sets, rest-pause sets and pre or post exhaution supersets, only they will also include super slow, isometrics, and tempo contrasts, not to mention some of the freakiest variation of normal exercises.

Begginers have a hard time when they don’t know who to turn to for advice, and end up trying any single routine they see in Muscle and Fiction, Flex, or shit…it may work for a while, but works little and hurts a lot…

in the end, they would be better off starting CONSERVATIVELY and not thinking that any crazy-ass routine for juiced-up freaks that advertise in MuscleRag, Muscle and Fiction or Flex ( I am tempted to use the joke Shitx for the name of the mag, but Ghost Dog already beat me to it )…just start small…nobody can go wrong by lifting in perfect form, heavy loads and controlled power and effort, combining small rest periods between sets or even some soft rest-pausing and supersetting for pre or post exhaustion.

Just one thing: the difference between an begginer and an advanced trainee lies in a simple thing, the same which creates the grey area that Intermediates dweel in: adaptation. Beginners have little adaptation, advanced have a lot of it, reason why the simple difference is that it gets harder to get the most bang for your buck, and intermediate level is the waiting room for the transition between beginner and advanced, so don’t stay there for more than 6 months, nobody is that bad at lifting.

57

I want to know something, right now that i realize i am an intermediate…what ntensity methods work best for mass?

I mean, if you had to choose between pre-exhaustion, post-exhaustion or drop setting and rest-pausing, which one would you choose?

About supersets of pre and post exhaustion, how should yo do them? I overheard a guy at the gym tell to another about them, and this guy said:

“reach failure with moderate weights on an isolation exercise and then do as many reps as you can on the compound one, like chest flyes and bench presses”

…no hint of rep-ranges or load in the second exercise. No real info on how many reps to expect or use and therefore, how much weight to use to trigger the effect for hypertrophy.

Somebody said that normally you use a moderate weight to reach failure in a 12-15 reps range and that you don’t get more than 6-8 reps on the compound exercise, using a load like 10-12RM for this one. Someone else said that the load on the compound exercise should be moderate so as to get 8-12 reps on it, about 10 being the ideal.

I also want to know why some people like to do heavy sets, like 4-6 reps per set with heavy loads and follow them with 12-15 reps of light load isolation exercises, like a reverse pre-exhaustion, which i know is called post-exhaustion…what is the difference in the effects between flip-flopping the order of the two exercises to be supersetted?

And when you take 5-10 seconds to unload a bar between weight drops, isn’t that a little bit of rest-pausing itself?

Somebody explain this to me…

58

[quote]louisluthor wrote:
I want to know something, right now that i realize i am an intermediate…what ntensity methods work best for mass?

I mean, if you had to choose between pre-exhaustion, post-exhaustion or drop setting and rest-pausing, which one would you choose?

About supersets of pre and post exhaustion, how should yo do them? I overheard a guy at the gym tell to another about them, and this guy said:

“reach failure with moderate weights on an isolation exercise and then do as many reps as you can on the compound one, like chest flyes and bench presses”

…no hint of rep-ranges or load in the second exercise. No real info on how many reps to expect or use and therefore, how much weight to use to trigger the effect for hypertrophy.

Somebody said that normally you use a moderate weight to reach failure in a 12-15 reps range and that you don’t get more than 6-8 reps on the compound exercise, using a load like 10-12RM for this one. Someone else said that the load on the compound exercise should be moderate so as to get 8-12 reps on it, about 10 being the ideal.

I also want to know why some people like to do heavy sets, like 4-6 reps per set with heavy loads and follow them with 12-15 reps of light load isolation exercises, like a reverse pre-exhaustion, which i know is called post-exhaustion…what is the difference in the effects between flip-flopping the order of the two exercises to be supersetted?

And when you take 5-10 seconds to unload a bar between weight drops, isn’t that a little bit of rest-pausing itself?

Somebody explain this to me…[/quote]

Again, the “rep range” or “exercise” isn’t really going to matter in hypertrophy gains. I’ve seen medical tests where they tried to identify which rep ranges were best for hypertrophy… and there wasn’t one. It was the same results with doing lower and higher reps… with the same periodization for each rep range.

Example
Group A did 10x3 for 3 weeks, then 3x10 for 3 weeks

Group B did 3x10 for 3 weeks, then 10x3 for 3 weeks

The muscle hypertrophy was the same on both groups and both groups were gaining mass at the same rate regardless of the rep range being used. Say after the 4th week, the clients were putting on muscle but using different routines.

Again, the hypertrophy factors will be periodizing routines and the overall intensity in those cumulative routines. Meaning, you can go at 110%intensity for 3 weeks and achieve greater hypertrophy in the next periodization routine that is only 80% intensity. Muscle growth is non-linear and is also not really set-rep specific. This is why powerlifters gain tremendous size off of the 1-3 rep range… because they keep lifting at high intensity and the periodization will accumulate strength and hypertrophy as well.

The best formula for hypertrophy would be long enough periods of training with the high intensity periods for the adaptation to take place.

So its an overall thing. Its a collective effort and volume of all your workouts and the consistency of it that creates the change, not the specifics. there are certain specifics like, 3-15 reps for most muscles and such but it is so broad that it will fail in comparison… if you just worked out hard for a month, it wouldn’t matter what range or set up you use, with in reason. curling a 5lb dumbbell for 100 rep sets, dont expectt alot of hypertrophy.

Generally 3-15 reps are considered good hypertrophy ranges. It don’t matter which order or if your doing drops with a 12 rep, then a 3 then an 8. There might be a best formula for combining the ranges but it will generaly be anything in the 3-15 rep range for most muscles. Calves… throw that out the window. They can be trained all the way up to probably 50 or 100 reps and have excellent hypertrophy results due to the high number of slow twitch muscle.

59

Ok, I woke up today and knew I was gonna do my good deed of the year for somebody…thanks for the chance to do so, Lou…

If you do 5 reps of a heavy compound exercise, let’s say, a bench press and you follow it up with a 10-rep set of an isolation exercise, let’s say the chest flyes, with no rest between them, you are working post-exhaustion.

The thing is that you used the heavy reps of the compound exercise to put the muscle through a very intense and demanding effort, buit being it a short one, you use the isolation one to put even more stress on the muscle by taking away the secondary muscle groups as backup and accumulate time under tension. See Christian Thibadeau’s OVT for that, he even says it himself.

They don’t need to be even heavy, they jut need to fatten up the duration of the stimulus long enough for METABOLIC-END hypertrophy to appear, for a set of 5 reps alone only causes, if used in sufficient volume or sets per wpokout for it, NEURAL-END hypertrophy.

Now, let’s say you reach failure with moderate weights on an isolation exercise. Then you will take the muscle worked past it’s own point of failure as you inmediately reach the last rep of the isolation exercise and then perform the compound one so that the secondary muscles help in taking it beyond the isolative failure and make the fibers scream from the work (taslk about the pain barrier). You work heavy, but strength isn’t the point, SIZE is, and this is a method for METABOLIC-END hypertrophy.

You could reach failure at the 15th rep, or even the 20th rep in a set of chest flyes and then do bench presses with a moderate load and only get 5 reps or maybe 8 reps. All in all, you will end up with a total 18-22 reps for the muscle groups, as experience has taught me, something like 20-25 if you can take this well.

The problem is the load and therefore the rep ranges. Go too heavy and you end up hurting yourself, go light and you end up burning out the muscle instead of making it grow. Just like a mojito, the mixture has got to be right to make it worth the while.

I let the load determine the reps, and that’s how you should do it. I call Moderate a load that is like 70% of my 1RM in both exercises.

My take on it is to rep out, not count the reps, but generally speaking, you will discover that you must adapt the load on the second exercise to really allow you to reach a “second failure” point, and perhaps 70% of your 1RM for that exercise won’t be right, probably 60% would, and you’ll still be hard-pressed to get the necessary reps.

Bottom line: choose a weight that allows you to stay in the zone and reap the most out of the secondary exercise, and also the primary one.

Now, drop setting and rest-pausing are different in their loading parameters, but anyone who has traiend alone at the gym knows that if you ain’t got a spotter and you go heavy, you will take from 10 to 20 seconds to unload the bar and go at it again…so a drop set becomes quite close to a rest-pause set in that sense.

I like drop setting more than rest pausing because to me, works like the difference between the variations I explained above about pre and post exhaust.

If i do rest-pausing, I can’t drop off some weight to get more reps and an even tension distribution. I am concentrating on MASTERING a load, so it’s like doing 5 bench press reps with a heavy load to follow up with 10-15 reps of chest flyes: you focus on NEURAL-end hypertrophy, performance and strength, while the drop settings allow me to fatten up the tempo but distribute the tension more evenly, for METABOLIC-end hypertrophy and bigger size gains.

Rest pausing and post-exhaustion are like dirnking a half-botle of tequila at the start of the party and then only drink light beer for the rest of the night. You get drunk, but you miss the fun of the party for you burned out before your budies even had a third round.

Drop setting and pre-exhaustion are to me like starting backwards, starting with some normal beer and moving up to some whiskey before trying the tequila. It keeps getting better and better and the good thing is, you get more out of it than getting smashed from the first round.

I hope this made some sense for you , Lou and for anyone else.

60

I have it for you, louisluthor:

Example 1: Do 3-6 heavy reps in a compound exercise followed by 12-15 isolation ones: you put your energy int he heavy lifting, for deep stimulation and priming, triggering of the fibers, then do the lighter ones to put tension on it.

Post-exhaustion is for Strongmen who want to get BIG,but AFTER they get or keep STRONG on a set. It’s a STRENGTH-TO-HYPERTROPHY progression.

Example 2: reverse the rep ranges; reach failure in 12-15 reps of an isolation exercise and then try to get as many reps of a 10-12 RM loaded bar for a compound exercise, where you may only get like 6-8 reps (althought traditional thinking says you should get 10-12 reps, the high end of the second exercise being the low end of the preceeding exercise, or simple get 2 or 3 reps less than the firt one).

You get BIG, and perhaps also become LEAN, not much for a STRENGTH program, but helps to build ENDURANCE.

Example 3: Drop-setting…it allows you to get the most out of the msucles in compound exercises or isolation ones like biceps curls and such…it makes a muscle work in a constant motion while adapting the loading to meet the muscle’s capacity to work.

The length of the work seen in total reps is the factor for growth, as a means to create INTENSITY based on it’s VOLUME.

Example 4: Rest-pausing is a way to keep using the same load, but the opposite of drop-setting by definition: the load remains the same, the reps diminish. It allows you to get strong,a nd some size comes along, but it is heavy-taxing for the muscle.

Basically it is a form of high INTENSITY trainign based not on the volume of work per set, like drop setting, but on the LOAD used in the set.

And that would be all…if you ask me, I prefer drop setting and pre-exhaustion, and the 1-10 method rather than post-exhaustion, OVT, QD anf perfect 10, along with DoggCrapp…it just ain’t for me.

Reading the start of the thread, I liked Vandal’s idea to do 15 warm-up fyies, and then move to a drop set, it is genius to combine pre-exhaustion with drop-setting,a lthough he also goes over the top and does 18 flyes for it, so it’s a “pre-exhaustion drop-set with post exhaustion” thing that is just too damn hard for me.