@danteism outside of widowmakers DC really does not emphasize pump-work if I’m not mistaken? Any thoughts on why RP is “enough” to him, while Meadows and Dr. Stevenson do seem to embrace both modalities?
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I may have to read it again, I think I’ve got it saved somewhere. Regarding the differences in exercise order and possible pairing, Meadows’ programs are much more convenient, as you said.
At my current gym doing something like squat - leg extension - squat - leg curl zigzag would be extremely hard and selfish, as the stations are rather far away from each other and there are only two of each machine (and of all of those, kone are really good). Of course you could do, say, sissy squats and hanging leg curls without leaving your squat rack.
Meadows has talked about how people count volume differently, as in what is one set for Yates may be four sets for someone else. Some people count everything over RPE6 as work sets and other only count sets to failure. But you’re right in regards to Meadows’ programming. I feel that other than sometimes missing frequency and feeling a bit “pumpy” (yeah, they aren’t exactly strength-focused, I know) they are pretty much spot on.
On IM boards there is a post called “three years minimum” by SuperD which has been stickied for the last decade (for some reason it wasn’t when I checked just now, may have missed it. The post still exists). It states that you should have done three, preferably five years of consistent, hard training before starting DC. It’s also a common to see people being recommendes to gain more experience before starting DC on their boards
I don’t know what the recommendation is for the other stuff. But generally, the more nuanced a training program is, the more experience you need to be able to follow and tweak it right
Yeah, no. Wouldn’t really call widowmakers “pump-work” either. (depends on the definition of course). In DC you move heavy slag iron and add weight to the bar because in Dante’s mind that’s the fastest way to grow. He’s made statements such as “everybpdy does lateral raises and nobody has big delts”
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I know you have other things going on. You don’t have to, just to indulge me.
I think it’s amusing when certain programs are written out in excruciating detail and do not include alternatives to swap depending on logistics. Hopefully, the reader can find a reasonable alternative themselves but, as certain coaching forums on here betrays that may be asking a lot of a person. If I were to author something, I’d include options just to save myself the sea of questions reigning in from people with regards to exercise substitutes.
It’s funny, because leg-wise, doing that at one of my gyms would work really well. Those machines are just immediately behind our racks. So FT is actually logistically feasible. However, doing anything requiring more than two barbells will land you a lot of unexpressed hatred. At the other gym, it is the opposite. It’s fine to take three-four barbells, but if you want to zig-zag you’d have to run there to not get super long rest-periods and when you get back someone else will be using your equipment.
Meadows personally seem to have settled on 7.
I agree, from a physiological stand-point I gobble up the logic behind hitting a group at least twice. I also think it makes sense to explore multiple types of stimulus (Meadows/FT), at least on paper.
I just checked it out, I think I saw DT himself write these exact words (that SuperD wrote) in one of his posts but I cannot be arsed to verify,
During this time I would expect even the average trainee to have put on at least 20-25lbs of muscle over and above their starting bodyweight.
I’ve seen that sentence elsewhere at least. Maybe in an interview…?
Not sure what you mean with “other stuff”. Meadows/FT? If so, I’ve not seen any recommendations as to who is/isn’t ready for FT and Meadows have written some recommendations for strength levels with regards to being ready for band/chains but not sure if he’s written anything with regards to if one is ready for his programs or not.
Yeah, pump work is… wrong. Metabolic stress? 
It’s been pretty funny reading on the forums actually. He has the same no-nonsense attitude that I enjoy from Wendler but the text isn’t exactly “formatted” so it takes a while to dig through.
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Another logistics remark, doing DC seems like it’d marry a person to the Smith rack unless they have a training partner. I would not want to rest pause an incline bench alone or without a smith.
I’m by no means strong, and not to long ago I was going to incline and I looked around and I didn’t feel as if anyone there could have spotted me. And that is disheartening. It would have been another thing if I was going to incline 405 but that’s not where I am at.
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Yep. This is exactly why when I write programs for new clients/to be sold online I includes very throughout instructions (we are taking 20 Page PDFs) on how to follow, lodifyand use the program, in addition to clients being able to contact me any time.
You train at some pretty good gyms. I’ve never been to place where I could do either of those things
Could be, I feel like I’ve seen that before too.
FT and OT mainly
I feel that everybody is ready for band and chains, weight is weight and it’s really not that big of a deal. Does that mean everybody should use them, will benefit from them or that I recommend them for beginners? Not at all. In general bands and chains are just a way to needlessly overly complicate things for a lot of people.
That feels closer to truth
Oh yeah. It’s actually one of my favourite things about the forum. It’s not some polished garbage, it’s stuff straight from the heart.
That, or machine movements if you don’t have safety pins. Dumbbells are fine too, but they are a pain to get to position.
There are four people I’ve ever trusted with spotting me, all of them having substansial spotting and training experience. A bad spotter can easily mess up your set
You’re a good coach!
One is somewhat known nationally, and for others to compete they have to be good. There are some shoddy ones around but they tailor to people that want to spend minimal amounts of money.
Wise words. It just looks stupid when there isn’t a respectable amount of plates to go with it.
Why aren’t you DC training anymore? And also,
4 days weekly on the ABA/BAB-split? No recovery issues?
True, tend to forget that those exist. I rarely used them out of sheer dogedness (as in, I will not fail this lift).
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Thanks man!
That explains, I’ve always just trained at the cheapest serious place (so you won’t see me at a 24 hour fitness type of deal). Usually these gyms are pretty small and only have the barebones stuff. Makes you creative as a bonus
That’s true, plus bands can be a pain if you don’t own a pair dedicated to that (so they don’t loosen unevenly) and chains are rare to see
I wanted to fool around with powerlifting for a while, and while I do really like DC I also like coming up with and testing my own programming
Yeah, I had no issues. You’ll have to keep in mind that I had minimal stress and was eating 6000-7000 calories per day at the time
I do that too. If I plan to use the pins they must be set before I begin warming up, so I don’t have to set them before my main sets and think “if I fail it’s okay”. Usually I do have a spotter though.
Oh, and once I failed during incline bench and manage to push the bar onto my face, it wasn’t fun at all.
How did you lay it out? Did you go every other day,
Monday: A
Tuesday: off/cardio
Wednesday: B
Thursday: off/cardio
Friday: A:
Saturday: off/cardio
Sunday: B
Monday: off/cardio
Tuesday: A
Wednesday: off/cardio
Thursday: B
Friday: off/cardio
Saturday: A
Sunday: off/cardio
or did you have two consecutive days?
Just because you are more well read up on this than I am I’m going to post this inconsistency: most of the time with DC stretching I only see it prescribed after the RP sets but I have once read it to be preceded by a pump set. I’m presuming it’s the former that applies? For reference, here’s the remark with creating a pump beforehand
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I had a
A
Off
B
Off
A
B
Off
Style of setup, so two days in a row there
Yeah, the latter is probably somebody misunderstanding that if you do two exercises for a muscle group (so back or if you have widowmakers on the three way split) you’d stretch after the second one
That’s an odd article, as in Dante hasn’t ever advocated drop sets and pump work to my knowledge.
Also, the current understanding (in short) about muscle memory is that the nuclei of the muscle cells don’t disappear during times of no training and they allow you to gain back lost mass fast. DC type of stretching, on the other hand has been hypothesized to have some satelite cell activating properties. But that is probably a pretty old post
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Yeah it was odd. Found it as an outgoing link on elitefts by Dave Tate.
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@danteism as I continue my hobby of deconstructing systems… in DC, with RP, is it customary to attempt a rep even if you “know” you will fail it? I.e., seek true failure. When CT has written about RP-training, he has people stop when they know they won’t get the next rep as the other alternative has a higher CNS load.
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Depends on the context. People who are on a high level and train with spotters (such as Dusty Hanshaw) will go for a negative at the end of each mini-set and have their spotters help it up.
People who train alone and use safety pins are better off with going until they know they can’t, so getting the bar back into the rack doesn’t fatigue you and both prolong the rest and take away from the mini-sets to come. Here the final mini-set should still be taken to failure, possibly with a static hold at the end. (Statics are a part of DC, but you aren’t supposed to get too hang up on them. The sets and stretches are your bread and butter.)
If you were to train with a spotters I’d think of it this way: if I do every mini-set to failure, how much, if any will it take away from the total amount of work I can do in the set? Does the fatigue make my reps drop substantially? If it does, I’d still try going to failure on every set for a month or so to get accustomed to it and see if that helps. It usually does. If it doesn’t, check your diet and sleep. If bone of those don’t work, you could think about going just until you know that next one won’t come up.
Usually CT’s programs have a higher weekly volume than DC, so it makes sense to leave some in the tank. With DC your weekly volume is low and thus you can push individual sets absurdly hard
Seems to me that this could work on Smith and DB movements while it’d be smart to go to the final rep on an incline with pins.
Seems like something DC only likes for advances people, yes?
I like the way you think.
Indeed. Two different clienteles too. I can find the article if you’d be curious though.
I’ve been thinking about M-W-F and your stint of M-W-F-S and noted in one post by DC he said he was doing two on/one off for a while and I wonder if that is with the same principles. Otherwise, conceivably, an intermediate with good recovery might be able to do run it two on/one off since one of the arguments for the three weekly sessions is that by the time you are in that slinging really heavy slag iron that takes longer to recover from. Thus, as a corollary, if you aren’t moving as much weight you should be able to do it more often and then just taper down from there.
Two on/one off → 240 sessions
Four times weekly → 208
M-W-F → 156
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Kind of. When you’re first starting, the main thing is to get you on the right track with r/p and such. Statics come into play when you’re familiar with the program and can push yourself really to the end.
Yep. If you have the article on hand, feel free to post it and I’ll read through it
The two on/one off is a pretty old way of doing DC. You can read about that in more detail in the original cycles for pennies discussion (which you can find for free on an app called scribd). I’m not quite sure if that approach had the exact same layout split and method wise as the current one, so I’d check it out. Eventually DC abandoned that style because his clients were having recovery issues and he noticed that dropping to three sessions weekly made them progress faster
We’ll have to remember that your recovery ability increases with training age as well (not as fast as your strength and ability to excert yourself) and, again, we have to ask ourself how much is actually necessary and how much can we realistucally recovery from. If you can go 2 on 1 off there is no stopping you.
I’ve done full body sessions 7 days a week, while maxing out everyday on squats and/or deads and having considerable amount of volume in there and I was fine. I’ve also trained 6 days a week and has 72 weekly sets at over 85% Intensity, with over 100 total weekly sets. (all of that at over RPE 8)
So really it boils down to what you can recover from and what you need: if three days and 30 or so sets per week is too little, bump it up. If it’s too much, first see if you can recover better, if not, bring it down.
This is true, but we’ll also have to figure out how much of that is quality work. Is, say 100 good and 140 bad sessions per year better than 150 good and 58 bad sessions? What does the next year look like, how well do you adapt? Really there is no way of knowing what is optimal, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is progressing
Ah, so that is the distinction he’s making? Interesting.
It’s the first “rule” in this one,
Cheers, I’ll see if I can find it!
I totally get that. These are just details that pique my interest because I know that there are a lot of evolutionary pressures on a “published” program/methodology. And so while there could conceivably be variants of DC (or any other method) that are “superior” with regards to results over a given timeframe those variants only are better when correctly applied by the trainee. Since a lot of people are idiots and always try to “get away” with more, it makes sense to build in a margin of error.
Yeah totally. If someone can do that, power to them, and I respect that DC doesn’t feel the need to say that it is a possibility because if he did then sure as shit that’s where most people would start. Give people a span, and they’ll always go to some extreme rather than start in the middle and try to titrate up/down depending on what we are talking about.
Indeed, this was mostly in reference to his own articulation of growth phases and I just put the numbers in to calculate the potential.
Here’s where I’d say it’s important to not be rigid, and this I guess defies any material being easily ingested.
I’m mostly raising these points in an abstract sense because it’s fun to discuss but since it’s so damn easy to use as an example let’s say we have a John Doe type person making good progress on the M-W-F split. Now, there’s a lot to be said for not fucking with something that works, but if John Doe were so inclined he could try four times per week. If progress continues to be as good as before when measured as a quotient of perceived “good” sessions and lifts keep progressing etc. then that should spark more growth in as much time.
John Doe could be his own coach, absent of DC, and when experiencing recovery issues well then that’s the ceiling to dial back from. Let’s say John Doe did continue to have good recover and goes to two-on/one-off and manages to do that for a year, maybe two, and then starts having recovery issues. Well, now the poundages are greater so that makes sense, then he back-tracks to four times weekly. Eventually, he’ll probably settle in to M-W-F, but that doesn’t mean that he has to lock himself in to that. Sure, if he did he runs the absolute minimal risk of burning out so it’s something that has to be weighed in and considered by the individual. Benefit/cost.
Are you following my train of thought?
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Well, not directly. I believe his words were something along the lines “GUYS PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT STATICS ONLY ADD SOMETHING LIKE 2% TO TGE PROGRAM. SO PLEASE DO NOT GET TOO CAUGHT UP ON THEM.”
To be clear, not a direct quote. But he has started that statics are not really as essential as stretches and RP in his mind
Yeah, I’d probably recommend that for people who train with DC alone
It has a lot of stuff in it, I read it again pretty much every year
Spot on. Programs have to be applied correctly to the individual - what works for me may not work for you. But stuff that is easily customizeable, has sound principles can and probably will work for a lot of people.
Yeah, and even when you say “do this and this only” people will try to get in some extra. IM is full of posts like “I’m 15 and I’ve been training 3 months. Can I do widowmakers on the 2 way split and train 5 days a week”
Sure you can. But it aint DC. Not a bit.
Sure thing. And it will also make his recovery capabilities better, and for a regular guy it could aid in keeping body comp in check (when you train, you don’t eat and you have more structure to your day)
Overall I like your thinking, but here it could also be partly due to life circumstances changing, getting older and such. (I’m not saying that you denied this, just bringing these, possibly more influencial things into the discussion. Also pardon me, my english is kinda rusty so I may have some errors in spelling)
Yeah, and if we have the same amount of weekly volume over, say 5 days vs 3, it probably doesnt make a huge difference. Sure the loads are higher with 5 days, and you don’t have as much recovery time but I’d vager that most people experience worse recovery with a lot of training days just because they aren’t managing their volume correctly.
As an example, say this guy is training M/W/F. 10 sets per session, 30 sets weekly.
now he starts training on tuesday and thursday as well, without managing the volume. He does 10 sets on both of those days as well. Now his weekly volume is up to 50 sets. That’s 67% increase all of a sudden.
Compare that to the same guy just splitting his 30 sets over 5 days. That’s 6 sets per day. From there he can slowly titrate the volume up and see when to stop. Maybe it’s 8 sets per day, or 40 sets per week, which would be an increase of 33% in total volume.
I think so, but feel free to clarify if you think I got something wrong about what you said
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Haha, gotcha.
It makes sense, and then on occassion when you go for a rep and you miss it you might as well milk it by resisting it on the eccentric rather than just “giving up”.
Found it. Brewing a pot of decaf now and then reading time.
Wendler wrote something so poignant on the matter, and it relates to what you wrote that I have to share,
And as far as
goes, I’ve been such a person a lot previously. But after yesterday’s session I actually just felt like coasting today. I didn’t sleep well, so I even skipped climbing, figuring this was the better option for recovery and long-term success. This is relatively new.
Have you noticed that some people are like that always or that it’s something they’ll do when not challenged to their absolute? I.e., they do submax work, so they are not really… tired in the same sense, and as a consequence they cannot take it easy outside of the weightroom.
Of course, everything comes into play and that’s something the trainee should weigh in and make a note of if that’s the kind of person they are. Some are very intuitive, and other’s like me like to refer back to notes. It makes it easier to trace, and also remember rather than just “remember” if you catch my drift.
Hadn’t noticed. But if you write anything important in English ever I highly recommend creating a Grammarly account and installing the browser extension. It’ll keep your writing clean.
Great example. Not sure many people think about it from that perspective. They’ll rather just evaluate the addition/removal of a single/multiple session(s).
Hehe, this is almost a variant of Hepburn’s progression. And that would be a cool idea to explore. Let’s say you are training and you do 40 sets per week, you are recovering, and progressing. You are at some point in your MAV range. Now you add a set to a training day, do that for two weeks, before incrementing again, smearing out work sets across the week as time goes by. At some point, you hit your MRV, and after that you regress. Now you’d have data points so that you could taper back a bit to the MAV stage and when life is treating you great up the ante and go to that MRV “zone”.
MAV = Maximum adaptive volume. This is the proverbial sweet spot for volume: You are able
to maximize progress without accumulating excessive fatigue.
MRV = Maximum recoverable volume. This is the most volume you can do and still recover
from. Increasing volume further would likely lead to a detriment in performance and/or
muscle size.
I feel as if you were on board!
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Reading it now, just eyeing through the cycle stuff. Guy seems to like his glutamine.
And here’s the two-on/one-off-split:
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Yep. That’s what I’d do as well
Great! Hopefully you get something out of it
That’s a good quote
It feels like a character trait. Some people just like to really excert and challenge themselves. While if’s not really a bad thing, sometimes it is better to dial things back a bit to control the amount of stress they accumulate. Usually I like to have a conversation about this and/or program in a way that gives them a way to challenge themselves and controls the fatigue. So something like a top set / back off sets works quite well. (think 6RM and then we take 15% off and do more sets of 6)
Yeah, stuff. You won’t remember everything if you don’t log.
Thanks for the tip! I’ve been using the old “I’ll Google this word to check the spelling” - trick
Do you mean what would’ve been MRV with more life stress, or what is MRV when you got little stress?
That’s what I’ve been exploring for last half a year or so. Ramping up the volume for 2-4 weeks and then saying up there for however long it is sustainable, rinse and repeat
Oh yeah. I’ll forever remember a post on IM about how “Massive G” wakes up at 4 to have a shake with 50g whey and 30g of glutamine. Crazy stuff.
Interestingly the split is the same as the current 2 way
Have a lot to go through still. It’s interesting though. I peruse it on my breaks.
Totes. And I’m thinking I have been picking programs without taking into account the amount of intensity I bring in to it. I’ve “known” that most of the authors that I follow intend for a set of 6-8 to be 1-2 reps left in the tank but when I have the bar in hand/on back that has flied out of the window. Stagnation, injury, burn-out followed. Coupled with too little calories.
Top-sets and back-offs are fun! I’ve also liked setting a max number of reps, say 40, and then your first working set is your first set of 5-6 reps with a prescribed rest that’ll accumulate fatigue.
Haha, yeah that is not as efficient!
The latter, I’d go for the MRV when you can make the most out of it.
Noice. How’s it going?
Hehe, the 100g protein post-workout shake also seems up there. But if you have 500-600gs to get through that hardly makes a dent.
Yup. So, more or less full-body workouts but spread across two days. Looking at it through that lens you get three full-body workouts per week which is known to be somewhat successful.
Also, I found this tidbit to be amusing (when people were saying they thought they’d have recovery issues),
As far as I can tell, he was training naturals at this point and he did not train them any differently.
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