A theoretical question I’ve often thought about is “how would someone train if they had NO knowledge of anyone elses training and just walked into a gym?”
I wonder how many people would intuitively train everything or just train a single body park, or train upper/lower, etc…
I think you’d like Dr Schoenfeld’s thoughts on this in Paul’s podcast. Read the whole study, apply it to your training as a guide, and adjust to fit your needs/body. It’s not black and white.
Would they also be by themselves with no one in sight to influence them?
For the purpose of this hypothetical, yeah. Lets assume they walk into a fully loaded dream gym and just have to go at it with no influences or prior info and they train alone.
I basically did the real-life version of this at about 18. I never participated in athletics beyond 7th grade, and other than a bunch of benching, some P90x and a couple of workout mags I didn’t follow and i churned out what I thought could work.
Squats for multiple sets of 8 one day, adding 5lbs each time I went in. Dips the next, adding 5lbs to my dip belt for sets of 8 every session. A/B split repeated 4-6x/week for months on end. Pro hormones were legal and I chugged weight gainers like crazy. Hands down, the most dense gains time I’ve ever had in my life! Went from 155 to about 190.
Bro that’s a $30 ebook program right there
700 pushups, 10 sets of dips and pull-ups 5-6 times a week apparently builds mass too.
Think I found the answer. Mike doesn’t want people at MRV, he wants them training at max adaptable volume, MAV.
MAV is a floating number that changes though so if you start a mesocycle at MAV, you will start to violate the overload principle because you won’t be able to progressively overload for very long before you hit MRV and need to deload again.
Instead of starting at the best gains, start at very easy minimum gains (3-4 RIR and low volume is his opinion, I think) and progressively overload until you hit MRV. So if you think of a bell curve of optimal gains training, you start at the low end and work your way up then down rather than start in the middle and work your way down.
This is from a 2017 podcast and I know he’s changed his opinion on a lot of things so don’t know if he still believes this.
I think most people intuitively would base it on how many days they are going to the gym. I think if you were going every few days I think most people would use a full body. If you were going everyday, I think most people would do an upper/lower because if they tried FB everyday they’d realize quickly it would be tough lol
You guys are crazy, it’d be Bench and Curls, all day, erry day.
You’d better not tell PC. He’d burst a vein in his head.
Shadow boxing, preacher curls and the elliptical machine.
Lol - well it’s possible this individual used to train much differently,…
… but if you look at all the guys who are incarcerated, and spend hours every day training and getting pretty jacked in the process, it goes right along with the examples of athletes already offered in disproving some people’s “this is the only way” theory.
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I think what turned off me and apparently others with PC’s attitude is that he believes he has found this special blend of science and know-how to build muscle, and those that don’t listen with wide-eyed awe and wonder to his current thinking are trolls. Personally, I don’t tend to follow his stuff because I prefer performance-oriented training rather than aesthetic-oriented training, but I couldn’t help but read through much of his recent thread.
I really like reading Dan John stuff, although I realize he is a performance and strength coach rather than a bodybuilding/physique guy. He says that getting strong and building muscle is more of an art than a science, and I believe this to be true.
I read this as jestful and chuckle and smirk somewhat, perhaps happy to some extent that I know the reference and that means I have some sense of belonging to this internet community that I frequent which is nice in a certain way (and sad in another).
But, I was a long-time lurker before that, and readers that haven’t been around so long could quite easily juxtaposé these two threads and see the beginnings of a toxic community so I’m going to go off on a meta-community tangent which isn’t strictly directed at you @antiquity but it is something that I found worth typing out.
Not all members on these forums participate equally. The authors, even those that are truly quite genuine in their interactions with us other members, are still held in relation to their writing. But, for their articles to be digestible at all they - and the subsequent discussions that ensues, are sometimes necessarily framed from an absolutist stance as that is the only way to keep the copy at a reasonable length and have the article be digestible in its lonesome.
And, then, when an author adopts a more well-rounded approach we are far too quick to point out that what they are writing now is in opposition to something they have written in the past and when we do this it tends to be in the sense of “hey, you are contradicting yourself. Boo!” and not “Has your stance changed on this, or is this in relation to a different type of trainee” etcetera. Ironically, I know that at least one article even speaks to this phenomena, read the final section of The High Volume Workout Plan for Natural Bodybuilders - Bigger Stronger Leaner - COMMUNITY - T NATION
In CTs & PCs book, Maximum Muscle Bible, there is a program that is more in-line with this high-intensity stuff that is espoused in the other thread and recent articles but there there is at least a caveat emptor stating specifically that it is not geared towards beginners and intermediates, and that there is a prerequisite rep-quality necessary with regards to a slow eccentric and correctly initiated concentric.
Furthermore, I wonder if people haven’t just started glossing over the fact that in colloquial speech effort and intensity are essentially the same thing - and when we as readers read about training effort then it means different things depending on the reader. For me, my take away from the discussion about effort was that I tried to go heavier on certain exercises and usually to my surprise I could add a lot of weight beyond what I would have normally done. I would have still been “worked”, but now I’m moving more weight just because I listen less to my body telling me “this sucks” and I’m hoping that provides a better growth stimulus. However, I’m not a native english speaker and maybe this is a mistake that only a foreigner would make.
And now, to the topic of volume maybe it would have been beneficial if anyone in the know had during the derailment of the other thread defined - for everyone, what high volume actually is. Maybe, and likely, it is this,
but, I read the PC-thread through and through without having any idea that 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps is high volume. I thought 2 work sets, that is low volume, 4-5 sets, moderate volume, and 8-10 sets (Gironda, GVT) was high volume. But, with this definition then high volume is exactly what PC prescribes for the first 5 years of training.
And then, our own definitions come into play again. What is a work-set? It’s seemingly different for different people. Take, for instance, Charles Staley’s articles that are written from a point of reference where it is conceivable that your first work set ended up being heavier than work set two and three, and that is fine if that ends up with you having moved a larger poundage than you would have just been doing straight sets with the same weight. Or John Rusin, who’ll prescribe 3 work sets but assume you did two ramp-up sets beforehand with a short rest period between the two.
I think this is just plain Darwinist, because an author who doesn’t seem really sure of what they have written would presumably get fewer readers.
For instance, CT a few years ago was very carb-phobic but this has since changed and while I’m not too keen on gathering the data to compare his average prescribed rep ranges over the years I’m pretty certain it on average has moved from relative strength (3-5) towards functional hypertrophy (6-8). Who knows what PC will write two years from now.
I’ve been thinking about building my shoulders using more handstand work and cutting away targeted delt-work to not change the duration of my workouts.
I think the biggest problem with Paul (and maybe even more with CT, as Paul doesnt really go so far) is saying that volume doesn’t work… when it very clearly does.
Now maybe a lower volume, higher frequency approach works better, or had less drawbacks, but there is NO doubt a once a week 12-20 set approach works.
My comment was meant jokingly. Although I don’t agree with the tone and the tunnel vision from PC on his thread, I respectfully refrained from posting anything negative on it. This thread, IMO, allows for expression of different opinions without getting into a personal argument with one of the forum coaches.
Marginal returns. Going from 3 sets to 10 sets a week big difference. Above 10 any benefit is marginal. Do you want to work twice as much for 3% extra?
From its inception this site has been a crucible of sorts, with the idea being to throw the methodology into the fire to see if it can stand the heat. There have been a few that have gotten scorched. It’s not a bad thing.
On the nomenclature, I’d recommend and oldie but goody- Get Buffed by Ian King. It’s a good knowledge foundation type book where he explains the different training variables with exceptional clarity and how to use them in a general sense.
It’s been a while but I don’t think effort was one of them. At the time it was written that variable was pretty much assumed. (tongue in cheek humor in case that little quip doesn’t translate.)