Beginner - Need Help (Advice)

Bigger Stronger Leaner Beginners
21

[quote]IronWarrior24 wrote:

  1. What mechanism? Are you just plain stupid? Anybody who knows anything about lifting or muscles will tell you that if you can’t or don’t lift hard you can’t achieve optimal hypertrophy. The fact that you are squatting 3 days a week is going to decrease the intensity of each subsequent squatting session.

Also, I’m sure you know that muscles that are used in the squat are also used in other lifts too. Doing this amount of squatting is going to kill your deadlifts, for example. How you say? If you go hard in the squat you know how your legs feel after a hard squat workout. They are often sore for days after. Deadlifting is the best overall mass builder for your back and is a huge mass builder overall. But it also uses a lot of legs too.

So by squatting this much your deadlifts are going to go all to hell. So you’re going to be left with overtrained legs and a shitty back because you can’t muster up enough strength to hit it hard.

  1. The workouts you perform do not make your muscles grow larger. The workouts tear the muscle fibers down and rest and proper nutrition is what causes them to build back up.

  2. The increased growth hormone released from squatting would help the body overall, but in this case the amount of muscle breakdown is too much. Regardless of the increase in output of growth hormone by doing squats, your muscles still need time to rest before they can grow. The presence of growth hormone does not alter this basic principle.[/quote]

  3. But seems like you don’t know. The significant hypertrophy is over after 48 hours and there’s some other interesting things going on too:
    “Training frequency has been discussed among athletes for quite some time. Research shows that while everyday training actually increases anti-hypertrophy factors and increase in myostatin levels, 48 hours in between sessions provides a steady anabolic environment. Serum testosterone levels, the free androgen index, Androgen receptor mRNA and protein were significantly increased. No negative factors were found to be increased in this study. With more than 48 hours between exercise sessions these levels begin to decline fast. This study used 3 sets of the exercise, and took data after 3 sessions each 48 hours apart.”

http://www.fortified-iron.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=34157

No, they’re not going to decrease the intensity of the subsequent sessions in this program because of the reasons mentioned earlier.
No, squatting won’t affect your deadlifting in this program because of the reasons mentioned earlier.

  1. That is not what I asked. I asked what causes hypertrophy if not adaptation to a new kind of stress. Food will be only a source to make it happen, not the cause of it. I repeat the question:
    What causes hypertrophy if not the body’s ability to adapt to new kind of stress?

  2. And rest they get, enough to recover from the workouts. Growth hormone makes it faster to build muscle mass, how can it not help you? That’s exactly what it does.

Have you actually ever trained with this kind of routine?

22

[quote]DoubleSidedTape wrote:
How can this make sense to you? It says right there in the paragraph that overtraining is caused by an inability to adapt to the stress level provided. Now, think about it, an athlete who trains regularly is going to more easily adapt to stress than a non trained individual whose muscles have never had to adapt to any high stress level.

Read it again:

“Rank novices are not strong enough to tax themselves beyond their ability to recover, and can be trained to the limit of their ability nearly every time they train.”

It says that a novice is unable to cause enough stress to himself to overtrain, because he is not strong enough to fatigue himself to the degree that an experienced lifter is. [/quote]

I read what it said. Repeatedly quoting passages from the book is not going to magically make me agree with what it says. I totally disagree with what is written and I thought that I had made that clear.

[quote]It may have appeared to have worked, but anything is better than nothing. I’m sure beginners have had some results with the program, but we’re talking about eliciting the highest amount of hypertrophy possible, and I’m sure this program could not achieve that.

You are sure? What experience or sources give you that idea?[/quote]

The experience of seeing an endless number of beginners not getting enough rest to induce the highest possible amount of hypertrophy.

[quote]I am sure that most of the posters on T-Nation are either extremely grateful that they started training with this program, or wish they had known about it when they started lifting, because they could have made much better gains with Rippetoe’s method than the body-part split you are likely to propose.

Mark Rippetoe wrote:
A program of this nature tends to produce the correct bodyweight in athletes. That is, if a trainee needs to get bigger, he will grow, and if he needs to lose bodyfat, that happens too. It is possible , and quite likely, that skinny kids on this program will gain 10-15 lbs of non fat bodyweight in the first 2 weeks of a good barbell training program, provided they eat well. “Well” means 4 or so meals per day, based on meat and egg protein sources, with lots of fruit and vegetables, and lots of milk. Lots. Most sources within the heavy training community agree that a good starting place is one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, with the rest of the diet making up 2500-5000 calories, depending on training requirements and body composition. Although these numbers produce much eyebrow raising and cautionary statement-issuing from the registered dietetics people, it is a fact that these numbers work well for the vast majority of trainees, and have done so for decades.

Starting Strength Pages 204-205
[/quote]

Again, you are not going to change my mind about this issue by posting sections of text from a book that I do not agree with in the first place. You cannot pick and choose parts of a book to believe. If one part of the book is wrong, the whole book loses credibility in my opinion.

23

[quote]HKDOOM wrote:
IronWarrior24 wrote:

  1. What mechanism? Are you just plain stupid? Anybody who knows anything about lifting or muscles will tell you that if you can’t or don’t lift hard you can’t achieve optimal hypertrophy. The fact that you are squatting 3 days a week is going to decrease the intensity of each subsequent squatting session.

Also, I’m sure you know that muscles that are used in the squat are also used in other lifts too. Doing this amount of squatting is going to kill your deadlifts, for example. How you say? If you go hard in the squat you know how your legs feel after a hard squat workout. They are often sore for days after. Deadlifting is the best overall mass builder for your back and is a huge mass builder overall. But it also uses a lot of legs too.

So by squatting this much your deadlifts are going to go all to hell. So you’re going to be left with overtrained legs and a shitty back because you can’t muster up enough strength to hit it hard.

  1. The workouts you perform do not make your muscles grow larger. The workouts tear the muscle fibers down and rest and proper nutrition is what causes them to build back up.

  2. The increased growth hormone released from squatting would help the body overall, but in this case the amount of muscle breakdown is too much. Regardless of the increase in output of growth hormone by doing squats, your muscles still need time to rest before they can grow. The presence of growth hormone does not alter this basic principle.

  3. But seems like you don’t know. The significant hypertrophy is over after 48 hours and there’s some other interesting things going on too:
    “Training frequency has been discussed among athletes for quite some time. Research shows that while everyday training actually increases anti-hypertrophy factors and increase in myostatin levels, 48 hours in between sessions provides a steady anabolic environment. Serum testosterone levels, the free androgen index, Androgen receptor mRNA and protein were significantly increased. No negative factors were found to be increased in this study. With more than 48 hours between exercise sessions these levels begin to decline fast. This study used 3 sets of the exercise, and took data after 3 sessions each 48 hours apart.”

http://www.fortified-iron.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=34157

No, they’re not going to decrease the intensity of the subsequent sessions in this program because of the reasons mentioned earlier.
No, squatting won’t affect your deadlifting in this program because of the reasons mentioned earlier.[/quote]

How could you possibly say that? You don’t need to see any top-notch studies to know that if your muscles are sore you are not going to be able to lift with the intensity that you could lift with if your muscles are fresh.

[quote]2. That is not what I asked. I asked what causes hypertrophy if not adaptation to a new kind of stress. Food will be only a source to make it happen, not the cause of it. I repeat the question:
What causes hypertrophy if not the body’s ability to adapt to new kind of stress?[/quote]

Adapting to new stress does cause hypertrophy, however, you cannot expect the body to adapt to new kinds of stress without adequate rest and proper nutrition.

They may get rest, but definitely not enough to recover fully between each session. And again, growth hormone does make it easier to build muscle mass, but it isn’t some magic fountain of muscle. Rest is still needed despite its presence.

Actually I have. I believe nearly everyone starting out has done this kind of program. I did not get near the results that I feel I could have gotten had I had proper rest.

24

Just because you have a different opinion doesn’t warrant the comments you said earlier. I agree that the post by Doublesidedtape was simplistic and he should have provided a reference so the OP could read the theory and details of “Starting Strength” but your argument was essentially that the program was useless. In fact it is the most productive beginner program so far.

25

[quote]stuward wrote:
Just because you have a different opinion doesn’t warrant the comments you said earlier. I agree that the post by Doublesidedtape was simplistic and he should have provided a reference so the OP could read the theory and details of “Starting Strength” but your argument was essentially that the program was useless. In fact it is the most productive beginner program so far.[/quote]

Which comments are you referring to? I just feel that there are better ways for a beginner to gain muscle that don’t include squatting 3 times a week.

26

You said: “What the hell is this? Why would you recommend doing only these lifts? … Telling someone new to lifting who doesn’t know any better to do this is just plain asinine.”

The OP, a first time poster, was given good advice which you shot down and he has not posted since. I think that’s irresponsible.

27

[quote]stuward wrote:
You said: “What the hell is this? Why would you recommend doing only these lifts? … Telling someone new to lifting who doesn’t know any better to do this is just plain asinine.”

The OP, a first time poster, was given good advice which you shot down and he has not posted since. I think that’s irresponsible.
[/quote]

Ok, just wanted to know which comments you were talking about. It is your opinion that he was given good advice. I would have to say that it wasn’t good advice. Oh, and being as how I never directed any of these comments towards the OP I don’t see why any of my posts would prevent him from posting again.

I in no way meant to offend the OP if that is what happened. But, I don’t see how he could take it that way as I was never referring to him or his program in any comment I posted. What is irresponsible is telling him to do something that is not best for him.

28

Ironwarrior, out of curiousity, besides famous coaches like Rippetoe & pals, do you think authors of T-Nation who recommend total body workouts (or low splits) are wrong, too?

"I’ll throw out some theoretical numbers here. Probably around 80-90% of the population, 80-90% of the time, will respond best to total body workouts.

And I’d say that maybe 90-95% of the population, 90-95% of the time, will respond best to either total body or an upper and lower split." - Alwyn Cosgrove

"Does the person want to gain more than ten pounds of muscle across his entire body? If so, I’d go with total body workouts because he’ll stimulate more muscle fibers per session with a total body workout compared to a body part split. That point can’t be debated. […]

Speaking of points that can’t be debated, it’s probably no surprise to people that I believe the frequency of training is one of the most important factors for developing more muscle mass. If you organize a plan that allows for more training sessions throughout the week, you’ll build more muscle if you manage fatigue. There’s absolutely no way in our mathematical universe that someone on a body part split can train with the same frequency as a person who’s on a total body plan, with total weekly workouts being the same." - Chad Waterbury

" […] But I think the take-home message is that when an individual has little in terms of muscle mass, then he should focus on big compound movements trained relatively often: either a whole body or an upper/lower body split." - Christian Thibaudeau

29

[quote]HKDOOM wrote:
Ironwarrior, out of curiousity, besides famous coaches like Rippetoe & pals, do you think authors of T-Nation who recommend total body workouts (or low splits) are wrong, too?

"I’ll throw out some theoretical numbers here. Probably around 80-90% of the population, 80-90% of the time, will respond best to total body workouts.

And I’d say that maybe 90-95% of the population, 90-95% of the time, will respond best to either total body or an upper and lower split." - Alwyn Cosgrove

"Does the person want to gain more than ten pounds of muscle across his entire body? If so, I’d go with total body workouts because he’ll stimulate more muscle fibers per session with a total body workout compared to a body part split. That point can’t be debated. […]

Speaking of points that can’t be debated, it’s probably no surprise to people that I believe the frequency of training is one of the most important factors for developing more muscle mass. If you organize a plan that allows for more training sessions throughout the week, you’ll build more muscle if you manage fatigue. There’s absolutely no way in our mathematical universe that someone on a body part split can train with the same frequency as a person who’s on a total body plan, with total weekly workouts being the same." - Chad Waterbury

" […] But I think the take-home message is that when an individual has little in terms of muscle mass, then he should focus on big compound movements trained relatively often: either a whole body or an upper/lower body split." - Christian Thibaudeau

[/quote]

HkDoom, I believe you have misunderstood me. I am not totally against total body workouts. I am only against ones that have you squatting 3 times a week or similar practices. I agree that total body workouts have their place along with any other good training method. It is just this particular routine that I disagree with.

30

So you’re essentially saying that you’re against a proven routine on the basis that it has you doing heavy sets with the most important exercise you can perform, three days a week, before a time at which a ‘heavy set’ is actually going to be excessively taxing on the nervous system?

You may not have noticed, but people who’ve just started lifting will generally have to do a hell of a lot more than an experienced trainee in order to reach a state of overtraining. While I think that some further emphasis should be placed on the pulling motions, the routine is by far the best one for the first two or three months of training, on the basis that it has time and again demonstrated optimal mass gains and dialed in proper form on the exercises used, particularly the squat.

Furthermore, while you previously commented something to the effect of ‘we’ve all started out with a bad full-body program’, that is far from the case. Most of us start out with good full-body programs - such as this one, despite what could be taken as an excessive emphasis on one exercise to the detriment of another, though this can easily be compensated later - or extremely bad ones design purely to promote growth in the ‘mirror muscles’. Outside of the use of machines as the primary pieces of lifting equipment, there aren’t really that many full-body routines that are actually ‘bad’ for a beginner.

31

[quote]jonnosferatu wrote:
So you’re essentially saying that you’re against a proven routine on the basis that it has you doing heavy sets with the most important exercise you can perform, three days a week, before a time at which a ‘heavy set’ is actually going to be excessively taxing on the nervous system?[/quote]

I am against the routine, although I don’t know how “proven” it is. Yes, my dislike for the program is on the basis that it calls for lifters to squat 3 times a week. You are right about that. However, I feel that you are wrong in assuming that just because a beginning lifter cannot lift as heavy as experienced lifters he somehow taxes his nervous system and muscles less. It is not the total poundage that decides how taxed the muscles will be. While this does come into play, it is more along the lines of a percentage of the maximum amount of weight a trainee can lift. Example-Let’s say an inexperienced lifter maxes out on the squat at 300 lbs. Now, let’s say that a certain experienced lifter maxes out on the squat at 500 lbs. Assume that they are both going to do 1 set of squats for 5 reps with 80% of the maximum weight they can lift. Although the inexperienced lifter will be lifting significantly less, the level of stress caused by this will be about the same.

I disagree. Their muscle fibers will not be used to having to adapt to new levels of stress and will more easily become overtrained.

[quote]While I think that some further emphasis should be placed on the pulling motions, the routine is by far the best one for the first two or three months of training, on the basis that it has time and again demonstrated optimal mass gains and dialed in proper form on the exercises used, particularly the squat.

Furthermore, while you previously commented something to the effect of ‘we’ve all started out with a bad full-body program’, that is far from the case. Most of us start out with good full-body programs[/quote]

In my experience, most beginning lifters don’t know shit about lifting, and therefore don’t start out with good full body programs.

“Beach muscles” are in fact what most beginners’ programs target.

Aside from ones that call for a beginning lifter to perform an extremely taxing movement 3 times a week.

32

The fact that you don’t know what defines a beginner does not qualify you to be able to say that a routine is bad. Rippetoe and Kilgore are among the most respected exercise specialists in the world for a reason - their routines work.

If you have just started lifting, it is virtually impossible for you to be working heavy enough weights that you will reach excessive levels of overload and exceed capacity for adaptation, even training three days a week in the same relatively heavy lift. Obviously some level of periodization will become apparent in the 3-6 months that this routine will find use, but that periodization will probably appear only at the beginning and at the very end; the beginning as a result of starting the use of the new movements, and the end as a result of the weights you can use reaching a level sufficient to outdo recovery capacity. There is a very good reason that we experience ‘newbie gains’.

The stress caused by the newbie lifter in your example will not the same as with the experienced lifter, because the experienced lifter’s body has a much slower rate of adaptation to the higher weights, as a result of being closer to maximum potential. The beginner, by definition, is still far enough from such a point in his adaptation phase that he or she can feasibly move heavy weights in the same fashion three times a week and not hit overtraining. When the trainee cannot do so, he or she is, by definition, no longer a beginner, and now requires some level of pre-planned workload periodization, generally on the order of variance over the course of a single week, and eventually over longer periods of time, as would be the case with the more experienced lifter cited in your example.

Your point on the beginning lifter not knowing anything about lifting is completely irrelevant to this argument, as you’re challenging the value of a routine put together by a man who professionally works as a coach for people who frequently are beginners and has been doing so for a very long time. As it happens, however, the book in which the routine is contained also has roughly 64 pages of text and supplemental illustrations providing a fairly detailed analysis of what constitutes proper general squat form and why, with similar emphasis placed on a number of other major lifts (bench, deadlift, etc.).

As far as the comment about the ‘mirror muscles’ goes, programs concentrating on them, especially programs for beginners, are almost invariably ‘bad’ routines - hence why I mentioned them in the note you quoted. If you can’t do anything more than restate something your opponent has said, you may want to consider not saying anything.

As a sidenote, this is not to say that I fully support the program in its original form; I, too, think that the squat is overemphasized, though for very different reasons. However, as a routine for a beginner who will probably only be on it for a few months before (hopefully) switching to one of two or three modifications on it, it is a sound, proven approach to introductory training.

33

This one is for SHEEM.

If you’re there, I want to apologize for the page and a half of internet dick-wrangling that just occured.

Honestly, the program YOU put forth seemed good enough. I’d rather see you get in the gym and lifting than worry about whether your program is correct. As it turns out, there is no ‘correct’ or ‘perfect’ program. Do your program. After 4-8 weeks, when you get bored of it, change it.

Meanwhile, read the stickies at the top of the forum. I realize it’s a lot of information. But you’ve got time.

Good luck. Keep us posted on your results.

34

Are you joking?

The routine he’s got posted is a bodybuilding split. He should be doing a program composed of heavy sets of the core compounds with relatively little accessory work as a beginner, not one resembling those designed for people who are competing in something that all but requires a firm foundation in conventional training and powerlifting.

35

Something’s better than nothing.

36

Yes, and, as you may have noticed, DoubleSidedTapeX posted something.

As it happens, that something is far more suitable for someone who’s only just starting lifting than a bodybuilding split would be.

37

Iron Warrior, apologize to the OP for hijacking his thread.

38

[quote]IronWarrior24 wrote:

I just feel that there are better ways for a beginner to gain muscle that don’t include squatting 3 times a week.[/quote]

And yet, I haven’t seen you take a break from internet-arguing to actually provide some genuinely helpful advice.

If you think you’ve got a better suggestion, by all means post it. Otherwise you’re just another armchair trainer who’s never helped a beginner get results, criticizing the folks actually trying to help the guy.

IronWarrior, what, exactly, would a good beginner’s program look like?

Rippetoe’s plan is great for beginners, and it’s a much better choice than the plan the guy laid out in his first post.

39

[quote]jonnosferatu wrote:
Are you joking?

The routine he’s got posted is a bodybuilding split. He should be doing a program composed of heavy sets of the core compounds with relatively little accessory work as a beginner, not one resembling those designed for people who are competing in something that all but requires a firm foundation in conventional training and powerlifting.[/quote]

I agree. No joke, I totally agree that he should be doing better lifts. The Rippetoe (sp?) program would be a good choice. In my experience though, self-made programs are more enjoyable than using someone elses, and so as long as certain bases are covered (balanced push/pull, squats somewhere in there), I say go for it.

I guess my point is… that it wouldn’t be optimal, but that it’s good enough. And that I’d rather see him doing something and enjoying it than dread walking into the gym.

40

I’m a complete newb (been lifting for 6 weeks now). I was given a total body workout to do full of compound lifts (FS, DL, pull ups, bench, rows, military press). I was also told I could split it into upper/lower body, which I also did. Seems to work pretty well for me so far.

I’m going to be asking for advice pretty soon on changing up my routine and diet. I hope you guys try to remain civil when giving advice :wink: