i’m not against any kind of training methods. what i focus on is “gaining 18 pounds of muscles in 2 weeks”. can it be true? in reality, the most gifted bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman (i believe he also use a lot of “supplements” too), he gain 40 pounds of muscles in 1 year. he go from 247 pounds to 287 pounds in contest condition. if that guy can gain 1/2 of what ronnie gain in 2 weeks, i think ronnie will get to him immediately to learn how to do that.
some of the supplements ads claim that their creatine product can help you gain “10 pounds in 7 days”, but they didn’t said all that 10 pounds is purely muscles.
It was a regain of muscle and a supercompensation from extreme overtraining. Remember you grow when you REST! HIT is good for low carb training phases where to wuch training in a carb depleted state makes you lose muscle.
Chris needs to interview Dr William Kramer and some older strength coaches like Charles Poliquin BEFORE Ellington Darden. Then He will get a good picture of the real deal.
[quote]willkorver wrote:
It was a regain of muscle and a supercompensation from extreme overtraining. Remember you grow when you REST! HIT is good for low carb training phases where to wuch training in a carb depleted state makes you lose muscle.
Chris needs to interview Dr William Kramer and some older strength coaches like Charles Poliquin BEFORE Ellington Darden. Then He will get a good picture of the real deal. [/quote]
I’ve only finished reading the book and haven’t applied any of it yet to gauge actual results per myself, and as of right now I’m still not sure of how well it’s going to work for me individually but I’ll definitely try it.
But tell me this, if it’s all regain of muscle, then how come some of the people in the book are getting bigger and stronger than they ever have been? The one guy Darden trained had never been that muscular before, so it can’t all be “regain”. Have you even read it? Seen the pics? Honestly, you should at least do that before you call foul. Most of the criticisms in this thread were answered in the book too. At least read it before you start flinging mud.
I remember first reading ABBH by Waturbury and automactically deciding it wasn’t for me as it was so different than what I was used to, but after hearing responses I tried it and by far acheived the best results from any program and made a note to myself never to make the same mistake again.
Nobody was criticizing the book itself, it was THE ADVERTIZING on it. Again NOT THE BOOK. Let’s face it, 18lbs of muscle is not what the average trainee gains on this program in those weeks. And obviously it’s not what even 40% or 30% will gain. So why not just agree that even if the book has some great insight and really works, the claim of 18lbs in a couple of weeks is false advertising. Matthew’s first post stated pretty clearly that he is not bashing the system without reading about it, but JUST THE MARKETING. No need to get so aggravated people, relax.
If it’s true or not depends on how you read that line. To me it says that with that system I will gain anywhere between 0 and 18 lbs in two weeks. Darden has never stated that you will gain 18 lbs, only that someone has done it. That someone is obviously not average.
David
[quote]DavidS wrote:
If it’s true or not depends on how you read that line. To me it says that with that system I will gain anywhere between 0 and 18 lbs in two weeks. Darden has never stated that you will gain 18 lbs, only that someone has done it. That someone is obviously not average.
David[/quote]
ok, let’s see something “true” in real world, the most gifted bodybuilder, Ronnie Coleman, (i think he use a lot of “supplements” too)he gain “40 pounds” of “pure muscles” in “one year”. remember, it is one year. he goes from 247 pounds to 287 pounds.
but that line saids you can gain 18 pounds of muscles in 2 weeks. can it be real??
Well I too would have a hard time believe the 18lbs in 2 weeks claim. But objectively it CAN be done if a certain set of factors are in place…
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If an individual was severely overtraining his body with WAAAAYYYY too much volume and training too frequently thus depleting his glycogen stores and wasting away muscle…
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If said individual was also on a restricted calories diet by fear of gaining fat, depleting his glycogen stores even more and wasting away even more muscle…
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Now our individual has a drastic change of heart. Dramatically reduce training volume and frequency …
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He also accept the fact that to gain a lot of muscle you must eat a lot of good food, so he drastically increase his caloric intake.
In that case he goes from a completely depleted state to an extremely surcompensated state. You can store something like 600-700g of glycogen in your muscles. Each gram also brings 3g of water with it. So simply by going from a depleted state to a surcompensated state you can increase “lean body mass” (increased glycogen and water storage is included in the lean body mass category, wrongfully believed to be limited to the muscles and bones) by as much as 3kg (around 7lbs).
So first lean body mass gain = 7lbs of intramuscular water and glycogen.
I use a cyclical diet, completely depleting my muscles from monday to thursday then reloading. The difference between my tursday morning weight and friday morning weight is normally in the 8-10lbs range!!! Did I gain 8-10lbs of muscle in one day? No, but I did gain 8-10lbs of lean body mass.
Then you have a drastic anabolic rebound: you go from a severely depleted state which encourages catabolism to a severely anabolic state from the important flood of nutrient and reduced volume of training. So realistically it’s not rare for someone to gain 2lbs of muscle per week during the first 2-3 weeks at this time.
So lean body mass gains no.2 = 2-3lbs of muscle (for a total of 10lbs of LBM)
Then you can factor in water retention and other things. So basically a 12-14lbs gain in that situation is quite common. Heck after my last competition I gained 27lbs in two weeks (honest to God). Did I gain 27lbs of muscle? Heck no… lot of it (most of it) was water. But once it got off I was still 10lbs heavier. Why? Because training for a bodybuilding show is similar to what our individual did: deplete to incredible levels for 12-16 weeks then allow your body to surcompensate.
Any competitive bodybuilders know that the most anabolic moment in the year is the 2 weeks window after a contest.
So bottom line: Yes a 18lbs gain in lean body mass in 2 weeks is quite possible. But not in pure muscle tissue.
The amount of NEW muscle that someone can gain during this period of ideal anabolic state is ~2 lbs per week for two to three weeks before the gains in NEW muscle start to taper off. So under very ideal circumstances a person can gain ~6 lbs of NEW muscle in three weeks.
Is an 18 lbs gain in LBM (where LBM is defined as water, glycogen, NEW muscle) possible? Sure… I have a training partner that has gained 10 lbs of LBM in one night after a weigh-in. He took lasix the day before weigh-in, lost 10 lbs in LBM and gained it all back with gatorade in one evening.
So is Darden lying when he makes the claim that his trainee gained 18 lbs onto pre-existing muscle in fourteen days? No. Did Darden’s trainee gain 18 lbs of NEW muscle in fourteen days? Not a chance.
[quote]DPH wrote:
So is Darden lying when he makes the claim that his trainee gained 18 lbs onto pre-existing muscle in fourteen days? No. Did Darden’s trainee gain 18 lbs of NEW muscle in fourteen days? Not a chance.
[/quote]
Good way to put it! We should not forget that most before and after evaluations are performed using a bodyfat percentage test with a caliper and a scale.
You cannot evaluate glycogen and water storage from a caliper test.
[quote]w2097 wrote:
Nobody was criticizing the book itself, it was THE ADVERTIZING on it. Again NOT THE BOOK.
[/quote]
Exactly.
Thank you. That’s exactly what i was getting at.
Matthew
To further expand on my lean body mass explanation…
Consider that muscle mass constitute between 30 and 45% of the total weight of the body.
So for someone who is 165lbs, a 18lbs gain in muscle would represent an increase in muscle mass of 24 to 36% in two weeks. In my opinion adding that much muscle in 2 weeks is impossible. Simply put, even under the best possible circumstances the body cannot synthesize proteins fast enough to pile on that much muscle.
However it IS possible to add the 18lbs of lean bodyweight. If 4-5 more pounds of glycogen and water are stored in the muscles they will instantly look much bigger, giving the illusion of a super muscle gain.
[quote]icklemoley wrote:
While Chris is now ventuing on the HIT three day a week system I was wondering what the rest of you T-Nation Men think? (I mean TC, John Berardi, Tim Patterson, and the like). Pretty much everything written on the subject has been negative so I would love to hear you guys comments.
Cheers.
Wayne…
[/quote]
I’ve always believed HIT had its place, but I’ve never committed to it for long periods of time. I’m one of those guys who thinks that pretty much any logical system works for a given time period and the most effective one is the one you’re most excited about.
I’m not a fan of people using logic and case studies to push a training ideology. It’s unscientific, and it has nothing to do with empirical physiological mechanisms across a population.
I can see how people can get so fanatical about it though. The programs are authored in a way as to not encourage open minded thought. Logic centred arguments tend to do that.
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459208
Read this. It sums up HIT