Natty on Pennies

Training Training Logs
1944

I find it kind of odd if an author doesn’t make the intended intensity clear with RPE/RIR or any other method. If you want me to leave reps in the tank, say it!

Does this work like the rep goal system (setting a target number of reps and how many sets you have to get there)?

Can’t argue with that

Really good. It’s an easy way of gauging how much work you can do for a given time. Can get a bit boring at times though

Dante has a way with the words. This stuff never fails to get me

The training doesn’t really change wether you’re natural or not, it’s the diet that does

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1945

Similar. Just less guided. Let’s say you have 20 reps, with your first set being your heaviest 5 and 1:00 rest. So that might play out as,

5
4
3
3
3
2

The progression is kind of natural, as your first working set will be the heaviest you can muster in a range (5-6, 6-8, 9-12) and the higher the range the higher the number of target reps (20, 40, 50). Next time if they use the same weight and hit more reps than the top end of the range they increment the weight next time. So it waves in intensity

Some authors say it, just not with the article. It’s implied that you’re supposed to be familiar with their stuff.

I’ve missed that. Knowing what I know about diet my guess would have been less protein, and more carbs (IGF-1) but DC seems adamant about 2g/lb. Lowest I’ve seen 1.4g/lb. And with the draining of fat I cannot forsee him having a (old-school) Meadows view of having +0.5g fat/lb either.

So what changes?

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1946

Oh, I see. Haven’t tried that ever

Yeah, I don’t like that approach. Seems kind of lazy to me and in some cases it even seems like an escape route. “Oh, the progeam didn’t work? You didn’t do it correctly”

With DC diet you only count grams of protein and calories. Guys who use gear may go even higher than 2g/lb whereas for natural guys it’s rather rare. Also the total amount of calories is generally higher for people who use gear (partly because they have more mass, and partly because they just can handle it better)

Oh, there is one training difference. For guys on gear, cardio is not juts something Dante suggests. It has to be done. For natural guys it’s both a way to control the amount of fat they put on, but it is also used as a way of stimulating appetite if gaining weight is a problem. Shows how a training tool can be used in multiple ways

1947

Now you have something to explore at some point. I got it from Waterbury I think.

It’s either narcisistic or outright lazy.

I appreciate the detailed reply.

It’s fun to read about, there is just so much in the mechanics behind all of the choices he’s made. Really elegant. How heavier exercises, such as the incline press (11-15RP) compares to something that demands finer motor skills such as the seated DB press (15-30RP) and those ranges tell a story about the strength increase potential on the exercise and also relays back to the muscle group and it’s disposition to respond to different ranges.

Can you just verify something for me please? Ut’s written out over and over again that for 11-15 RP your starting weight is something you can do for 7-10 reps meanwhile I can only assume that for 15-20 or 15-30 RP that the starting weight would be something you can do 11-14 reps (applying the same logic). Maybe, 10-14 reps. Is this a correct assumption?

For “fun” I did this today, while the intent was to do squats my hip had an extra shoddy day, so I saw an opportunity,

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7 reps in, I started thinking I was making a mistake. By 12 I was thinking, maybe I’ll just make this a Widowmaker set. By 20 I was thinking, well I’ve gotten this far and I saw Dante do 30 with an infinite amount of plates so fuck it I’m at least doing 30. And then I got to 30 (by this time my eccentric was more an effort to not have the machine slam me rather than a crisp 6-10s).

So I’m at 30, and by this time I’d forgotten all the rules about breathing. All I remember at this point is not locking out my knees and not placing my hands on my legs. I’m just sucking in enough air to get more reps and brace. So I’m at 30, and I think: I can’t make claims about training with intensity and then not deliver on this. That’s just not me.

I make it to 42 (nice number). Almost done. I’m shaking between reps. I’m glad I have headphones on because I know I’m screaming and grunting and making an ass of myself and have been on the machine for a while. And I finish it. Rack it. Stand up. Think. Why didn’t I go for 69 if I had the mental acuity to think that 42 was a nice number.

Then stretched the shit out of my quads (or tried to. I’m really limber. If I’m warm I can do this stretch without sensation in my quads)

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Just stod at my locker shaking for 10 minutes before I managed to get dressed and leave.

However, reading it now I note knees to armpits. So I guess I have to do it all again. With the same load.

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1948

Haven’t read a lot of his stuff, I’ll look into it sometime

Yeah. A coach should never assume their client cares enough to dig up their other stuff

Yeah, I really like Dante’s reasoning and the way he can articulate his thought process behind stuff.

Testing it is the bast way to find out. Generally I find that people get about 50-60% of the reps they did in the first set in the second one and then 50-60% of the reps in the second set in the third one.

So it could look like 8-4-2 for a total of 14 rest-paused reps. That being said, I’ve also seen people who can do over 70% of the reps in both of the follow-up sets, and people who can only do 20% or so.

Also, this can change between rep ranges. Someone may be poor at recovering from short sets in the time given but great at recovering from longer sets.

But if we go with a regular fellow then yes, I’d think that’s accurate. Say 12-7-4 for a total of 23 reps.

I’d say start with 10-14 and adjust from there

I like this mentality. You got close but not quite there. Did you get the tempo from Dante’s writings before that, and are you aware that he has started that the tempo is not actually set in stone, he just said a really high number to make people stop flailing around with the weight?

Now that sounds appropriate. Tells you that you did, infact excert yourself to quite a degree.

I remember this one time a dude came up to me at the gym asking if I was done with the Hack squat machine. Told him I had one set left and proceeded to do three hard reps in a row, followed by 54 rep with a lot of breaths in between. The set ended up taking 15 minutes. (and the guy apparently left during it, so I just lied there for some time)

I’m kind of amused and I also kind of feel bad for you. Do it, push yourself to the absolute limit. And man, when you get to 50, go for one more.

1949

He has some nice ideas. Some of his stuff I haven’t tried, but on paper it just seems like he went for symmetry. Like, alternating between 3x10 and 10x3.

Ain’t that the truth.

So for the challenge I just presumed that the same eccentric applied.

I haven’t read that exact sentiment but I’ve garnered from reading between the lines and looking at his Instagram.

For instances, in the Cycling on Pennies thread people will say something akin to “you’re my hero for doing rack deadlifts with that slow eccentric” and his reply relays that on squats, BB rows, deadlifts it’s more like 3-5s.

The best description I found of the intended tempo was that you should be able to reverse the weight at any time.

I did measure with a timer a few things, so if I count a thousand and one (in my own language) every count takes me exactly one second. And I also timed my deep breaths (glad that I did). His intent is resting somewhere between 24-30s but my idea of a deep breath is something that takes me 5s per breath.

Hahah! I had that thought when I was going to ask someone for their DBs but realised I can’t say “one set” and then rest pause it. This person would never understand that I’m not done yet.

The important thing is that’ll be progressive. It’s more than I did this time and that’s what matters.

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1950

Or I’ll do it again when I’m stronger. I don’t do a lot of leg pressing. That’s even more mental. Add more plates first and go through it again. Yes. I like that.

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1951

That’s pretty much it. If you look at this (DC approved) training movie, you’ll see that they are using controlled, but not overly slow eccentrics.

That tends to happen, especially when you’re not used to it and as you get more and more exhausted. (You’ll subconciously try to make the rest longer)

Yeah. At times it’s just faster to wait for them to finish than it is to try and explain what you’re going to do

Spot on

This is also a good idea. Doing a super hard set on a new exercise is one way ticket to meeting god

1952

Thanks for sharing this. Is the not bottoming out in the incline customary? Is the idea akin to FT, keep constant tension on the working muscle?

See here for an example,

This was not the reality I was trying to convey. I’ll acknowledge that maybe that would happen, but what I mean is that a deep breath for me is semantically equivalent to a long breath. I’ve done a lot of yoga these last few months so I can sustain an inhale for a really long time.

Therefore, if I hadn’t reality-checked out of curiosity how many breaths I needed to end up in between 20-25s/25-30s and just gone with the number (12-15 deep breaths) I would have been resting a butt-load of time.

Side-bar: are you religious? I understand if that’s too personal to answer.

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1953

Actually I’m not quite sure. I know Dusty Hanshaw does this as well, and he has been on the DC train for a long time. Could be. Meadows does that as well.

Interesting, personally I feel that it’s easier to get a deep breath in if you do it rather fast (not hyperventilating fast though)

Good thing you checked. Resting for like a minute and a half would kind of go against the idea of rest-pause

Not really, how so?

1954

I remember CT saying that if you want to military press and your primary concern is growth he’d never go deeper than to the trachea. I can kind of see the same logic applying here. If those extra few inches means that a lot of weight has to come off the bar, just cheat a bit on the ROM.

I think it was in the cycling on pennies thread where DC wrote about lat pull-downs and I think he did them to chin-level. Not sure if he justified it, but I’d imagine it translates to far bigger weights and that the target muscle isn’t significantly more contracted at the bottom position thereby making the added ROM “worth” it in relation to how much the muscle is stressed by the absolute load.

Back to the incline, I can see this again where if you go all the way down to the chest you will lose out significantly on the load but that final bit of range of motion is mostly putting yourself at a disadvantageous position. From a muscle building standpoint, allowing 1/6th of the ROM to dictate and limit your load seems counter-intuitive. Better to stress the shit out of it for 5/6ths of the movement instead?

Thoughts?

Meadows doesn’t care about being strong though, as he has expressed in at least one video. He apparently comes at it from the other way, not that progressive overload will drive muscle growth but that to continue growing sometimes you just have to go heavier. It’s just a consequence of trying to get bigger.

I think it’s a language thing. If the prescription was 10-12 belly breaths I’d probably get the right rest period out of the gate. It’s just that word “deep” that has a different meaning for me.

You wrote god. Most atheists I know (am one myself) tend to skirt the word. Might be a Swedish thing.

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1955

David Henry was doing this as well while on DC. I’ve tried it, feels pretty good and does give you a chance to use more weight

Dusty justified it by saying that the bottom end of the range doesn’t give you more chest tension, but rather the delts come into play.

Personally I can use more weight with full ROM compared to stopping the bar a tad off the chest. Granted, I haven’t trained nearly as much with the latter method.

But if you can use more (or even the same) weight and achieved greater tension I could see it working for muscle building. Reversing the motion of the bar before touching the chest also eliminates all bouncing and use of momentum as well, so I’d speculate it gives you more stress on the muscle. You could try it for a few months and see where it goes

Another guy with great perspectives on this is Brian Minor. He runs a blog called myojournal (or something like that) and has been on a couple of podcasts. He talks a lot about how we want to achieved progressive tension overload ie. stressin the muscle more over time, which doesn’t necessarily require upping the loads

I’m inclined to think so too. Do you think it’s a difference between our native languages or rather a difference between how you’ve done yoga and such where you focus on breathing a lot and it is done differently, and I haven’t?

I haven’t noticed that kind of behaviour here, although I don’t know too much about my social circle’s beliefs. As long as the things I say aren’t intentionally hurtful or disrespectful, I don’t really think about it too much. (maybe I should)

1956

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Sounds like a skill thing, conceivably using some bounce?

I like to imagine there being paint on the bar. I want to leave a mark on my shirt, but I don’t want to feel the bar touching me. So I’m really controlled, specifically above the chest. Keeps my shoulders happier than not doing this.

Never heard of him. Something to check out. Thank you.

When we do long-duration breathing, the word for that, in Swedish, is the word that translates to “deep”. In actuality, it’s expressed as “a long deep breath” but most native speakers would omit the word “long”, that is just inferred. That’s colloquial to the point of being the case even outside yoga-practicioners. I.e., if I tell my mom to take a deep breath, she’ll take a long deep breath. Breathing to calm yourself rather than to oxygenate.

And, when I need to really work a stretch, I’ll inhale for ~10s, hold the breath, and then exhale for a long time as well which builds up your lung capacity making a long breath… long.

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1957

I try not to bounce the bar, but it’s definitely less controlled than what you describe here:

I’ve done this a couple of times and it is hard. You can really feel the tension with this approach. I know Paul Carter hhas talked about this or something similar, did you get it from him or does thisbstem from somewhere else?

In Finnish, if we want to say take a long deep breath we say, well, take a long deep breath. So we don’t have a singular Word that would mean both long and deep, instead we have a Word for Each one of those. Some people of course may associate then with each other, as you really don’t hear them being used separately too often.

1958

It was an article on here. If it was PC I don’t know.

1959

This one, perhaps?

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1960

That’d seem to be the one but I could’ve sworn Charles Staley has written about it at some point.

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1961

Could be that he also has said something along those lines. I’m not too familiar with his stuff, mainly know him because of EDT

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1962

Training template update-ish

So, I think it was over a month (maybe six weeks? no clue) ago that I had a conversation with @Voxel which made me dig up the old Fortitude Training PDF I have. I started tinkering with zigzag sets, pump stuff and all that. While it was certainly fun, I felt like it lacked purpose for me.

You see, I’m a goal oriented guy. As of now my biggest goals would be to compete in both natural bodybuilding and strongman during the next two years. I also want to bring up my weighted chin-up numbers again. In addition to that, I’m rather busy and the current situation makes so that I don’t want to spend too much time at the gym.

So, I figured that I’d need to program in a time-efficient way. I’d also have to pick movements that serve both of my strength goals and if possible my bodybuilding goal as well, and then I’ll add in hypertrophy work where needed.

So what is a really time-efficient way to program? Something that actually functions kind of like a strongman medley does? Strength circuits. (gotta admit that built for bad gave me some inspiration)

What is a great way to get strong fast? Greasing the groove.

While I would definitely enjoy five days a week of three or so exercises, it’s not really the most fitting thing right now. So, instead it came out like this: (Still under developement, mind you)

Four days of lifting. On three of those days I do my main three lifts or a close variation of them. (Front squat, Overhead press, Chin up). On one of the days I do Deads, Bench and Face pull. (So if we want to divide movement into horizontal push and pull, vertical push and pull, squat and hinge I’m hitting them all). I’m also doing hypertrophy work for abs, arms, side delts, hamstrings and calves twice a week each. Starting next week, I’ll also be doing dips.

For me personally my week goes pretty much like this:

D1: Each movement is by themselves
1 Front squat
2 Overhead press
3 Chin up
4 Dips
Hypertrophy work

On day one I do a rather easy single (around RPE 8) and then a couple of backoff sets (think fives @ RPE 7-9) For hypertrophy work, this day is pretty much just abs and side delts.

A note on RPE: My RPE 10 means that I could’ve not done another passable rep. I don’t care if it slows down or stalls for a bit. I don’t care if I have to rest for 10 seconds at the top. If I can’t get it up or, say, hit depth on squat that’s RPE 10.

D2: “filler” day
1 Deadlift (on it’s own)
2a Bench
2b Face pull
3a Leg curl
3b Calf raise
4a Bicep movement
4b Tricep movement

As you see, this day has a bit more exercises, but everything is done in a rather fast fashion. For deads and bench, I do sets of 5-8 reps, I’m not really pushing these at the moment. A word of warning: deads and bench will feel heavy as hell with the fatigue from the other days and the low frequency

D3: Variations in circuits
1a Front squat variation
1b Overhead press variation
1c Chin up variation
2 Dips
Hypertrophy work

So, this is the variation day. Usually I work up to a heavy triple on each of these, drop the load by 10% or so and do more triples. I like to use 2 second pauses (at the bottom in squat and chins, at nose level with ohp) on this day. Hypertrophy work is side delts and abs again.

D4: The day I dread (in circuits)
1a Front squat
1b Overhead press
1c Pull up
2a Leg curl
2b Calf raise
4a Bicep movement
4b Tricep movement

This is the day I dread the most. On this day I usually do sets of seven, up to a hard top set, decrease load, do some backoffs. It’s brutal. I like to use just the regular versions of the movements here but you could use beltless variations or slower tempos if you wanted to.

Now why isn’t every day done in circuits?
Day 1 is not done in circuits because I want to be able to see where I’m going and give myself a way to push each lift individually.

Day 2 is not done in circuits because of the layout of the gym.

Why not give exact sets and reps?
Because people are different and have different goals.

What if you wanted to use different main lifts?
Go ahead, just make it reasonable. If you’re a powerlifter it may look something like this (main lifts only, add hypertrophy stuff where needed). Depends on the person. A lot.

If you want to compete in strongman why don’t you use deads as a main lift or do strongman work?
It’s not gonna happen in the near future really, and my gym doesn’t have strongman equipment. During the summer I’ll probably have access to a gym that does though. Also, deadlifting comes rather naturally to me, so all things considered, I’m more worried about my squat strength and quad size.

D1: single @ 6-8 and backoffs
1 Squat
2 Bench
3 Deadlift

D2: Rep work
1a Overhead press
1b Chin up
1c Row

D3: Heavy rep work
1a Paused squat
1b Pin press
1c Deficit deadlift

D4: Rep work
1a Tempo squat
1b Feet up-bench
1c Romanian deadlift

With an approach like this you’ll need to figure out how much you can tolerate and scale the intensity and volume accordingly. If you wanted to do only the powerlifts on the main lift days you could, but you’ll need to drop the intensity a bit.

Keep in mind that this is merely a concept and it is still being tested. But feel free to try or to borrow something from this. Any questions are welcome as well.

1963

Haha, you are dangerously close to omni-contraction (for a skeleton idea on how that looks refer to this article)

Maybe you could do

D1/D2/D3:
A. Squat
B. Press (I presume you need overhead for strongman? But for bodybuilding, incline might be better than flat?)
C. Deadlift
D. Pull (I’d prefer a chest-supported row to reduce axial loading and not cause too much inward rotation of the shoulder if you choose a horizontal press for B but I know you want to do chins)

D4: Hypertrophy.

And do
ACC: 3x5, 3x4, 4x3 (isometric) multi-pauses, fewer reps on an eccentric/slow tempo day, same on concentric gradually increasing load. Multi-pauses to iron out any would be technical flaws.
INT: longer pause on iso-day, fewer reps. Longer eccentric, singles. Waves for concentric day, gradually more intensive (6/4/2 → 5/3/2 → 5/4/3/2/1)
REA/Peak: Ramp on a heavy day, have two body building days (one upper, one lower), and have an explosive whole body day

To give you a bit of feedback on your design though:

Personally, I’d design the circuits a bit differently. For instance, D4, I totally appreciate that’d drain the life out of you because you come out swinging with your first circuit. Either you’d have to pace yourself (dull) or suck ass after the first circuit. I’d maybe do an EMOM thing there instead, and pair one lower-body with one upper-body thing.

If you really wanted to emphasize the strongman idea maybe it’d be better to include some carries?

So, to recap, you want to pursue

  1. Bodybuilding
  2. Strongman
  3. Increase weighted chins, I respect the urge, and it doesn’t run anathema to either 1 or 2 but it’s a stressor that needs to be weighed against the former two.

I know you like goals/performance (and like “heavy” work).

And then you need time-efficiency. Lots of variables to balance here.

Given your work, do you have leeway to sneak away and do an exercise in a powerrack now and again? I know CT has one of his bobsleigh athletes do sets of 1-2 reps of squats throughout the day (10-12 sets) without warming up, using 70-80% of his max.

I’d maybe trade one front squat day for a trap-bar deadlift. But I say that with my leverages.

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