New(est) Training Questions

Training
221

[quote]Mondy wrote:
Thibs,

What are your thoughts on training 1-2 muscle groups a day.

For example chest/bi but doing 6 exercises 3-5 sets for chest, and 2 exercises for 3 sets for biceps.

So something along this line:

A)BB Bench Press ramp up to a max set of 3
B) Incline DB ramp up to a max set of 5
C) Incline smith 3x6-8
D) Dips 3x8-10
E) Incline DB flies 3x10-12
F) Standing cable crossovers 3x12-14

with bicep exercises tossed into between sets of chest. For back there might be even up to 8 exercises.

[/quote]

I personally never do more than 4 total exercises in a session, and 3 is the norm. That is way too much work IMHO.

222

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

I personally never do more than 4 total exercises in a session, and 3 is the norm. That is way too much work IMHO.[/quote]

Let’s say you’re doing a standard Bench press or squat workout, what would be the other 2 exercice to complement it well? Would you follow with partial reps from pins or start a completly new exercice? Should secondary exercices be isolation?

Also, do you use antagonist pairing anymore?

In the other thread (What I am doing right now), you said you were doing your primary exercice for 8x3 (ramped for max force) and then 5x5. Is the 5x5 ramped?

223

Two questions:

  1. What are your thoughts on Dr Clay’s recent article where he said beans/legumes were on the same field as green veggies? He seems to think you can use them for cutting despite their high carb amount. Your thoughts?

  2. I’m stuck. I’ve been dieting since August where I started at 16%, and took a 2 week maintenance break a month ago…but its felt like a 6 week maintenance phase because my weight hasn’t changed, though my body fat has dipped from about 10.5% to just under 10% in those 6 weeks. I feel like I’m really stalling but I’m doing all of your tips: I’m doing MORE than what’s in the War Room Strategies workout plan, and my diet is incredibly on point. I even started doing Anaconda and doing your suggestions for .75g carb/lb body weight you recommended to me earlier. All of that and I still feel like I’m stuck. I’m tempted to take Nick T.'s advice in his recent article and just switch to a bodybuilding workout and drop all of the cardio/complexes. Any suggestions on my stagnation?

224

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

[quote]jrl41090 wrote:
Hey CT,

I’m currently following your intermediate hypertrophy template from your HTH book for my current split (every major muscle group twice a week, typical). I really do like it, but training in a busy gym with so many supersets and 5 exercises per bodypart almost makes me feel as if, in light of your recent articles, I’m overcomplicating things for myself.

Would you suggest I drop this complicated mixture of rep ranges and exercise types you designed a while ago and begin training simple and basic as you have been advocating recently, say 3 exercises per bodypart with ramping at lower rep ranges (as opposed to all the supersetting and 10-12 rep ranges)?

While this may seem basic, your Ockham’s Razor like approach to training recently has me thinking that I am trying to do too much at once.

Thanks coach!
Justin[/quote]

In all honesty, and this is something I said recently, some of my earlier stuff was presented in a way to make my own beliefs (low reps, high acceleration, high number of sets per exercise, low number of exercise) easier to get across. So I would often surround my beliefs by commonly accepted dogma. This was a mistake on my part and I now have the confidence in my system and methods required to take a non-compromising approach.[/quote]

Thanks so much for your honest and forthright answer. I think I am going to finish the month with your split and then cut down some of the “dogma” you spoke about that is included in your HTH programs from your latest book and train a smaller amount of movements with low reps, high acceleration, and high amount of sets.

If I were to keep my Chest/Back, Shoulders/Arms, Legs split, would 3 exercises be adequate for each bodypart? And a little more specifically, how do you feel about using the smith machine for benching (incline, decline, whatever) as per the recent talk about better pec stimulation using this machine (and because I train alone)?

Thanks,
Justin

225

[quote]hotroxmax wrote:
Hey Thibs, (or anyone who knows) in your book Get Jacked are stutter reps Three 1/4 movements and then a full movement for 1 rep? Or is it a single 3/4 Rep and 1 Full rep to equal 1 Rep?
Or does it vary per exercise?
Thanks Again.

[/quote]

A single stutter rep consists of 3 1/4 movements + 1 full movement

I found these deadly with the incline close grip BP… At times only able to use the bar as my Tri’s were burning so bad from it…

Enjoy the program, I loved the Get Jacked book… Lost a pile of bodyfat and had my strength go through the roof at the same time, which is the exact opposite of what normally would happen when I tried cutting bodyfat in the past (I’d loose fat and strength at the same time)…

226

Thib,thanks for taking the time to respond i have a few questions

  1. Is it possible to develop the psoas major or is it mainly genetic, if so what would be your top 4 exercises

  2. What are your thoughts on the speed of the eccentric pahse. Ive seen a few studies showing greater fast-twitch development from fatser eccentrics, but most coaches seem to advocate slower eccentrics.

227

Hey coach,

I am thinking of starting the 5/3/1 template and I know you are a fan of this so was wondering if i could ask you a quick question?

For the assistance exercises, Jim states that rep ranges etc don’t really matter and things like 5 sets of 10 are fine as it is there to simply work the muscle. I was just wondering if you were to go about it, would you still keep under 6 reps for assistance exercises? As you stated recently you rarely go above this.

Thanks!
J

228

[quote]King Eric wrote:
Hey coach,

I am thinking of starting the 5/3/1 template and I know you are a fan of this so was wondering if i could ask you a quick question?

For the assistance exercises, Jim states that rep ranges etc don’t really matter and things like 5 sets of 10 are fine as it is there to simply work the muscle. I was just wondering if you were to go about it, would you still keep under 6 reps for assistance exercises? As you stated recently you rarely go above this.

Thanks!
J[/quote]

  1. I’m not a ‘fan’ of any training system. Don’t use that word please. I like the 5-3-1 system because it fits well with a lot of my own methodologies.

  2. Yes I would stay under 6 reps.

229

[quote]CPerfringens wrote:

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

I personally never do more than 4 total exercises in a session, and 3 is the norm. That is way too much work IMHO.[/quote]

Let’s say you’re doing a standard Bench press or squat workout, what would be the other 2 exercice to complement it well? Would you follow with partial reps from pins or start a completly new exercice? Should secondary exercices be isolation?

Also, do you use antagonist pairing anymore?

In the other thread (What I am doing right now), you said you were doing your primary exercice for 8x3 (ramped for max force) and then 5x5. Is the 5x5 ramped? [/quote]

  1. I am of the school of thought of using less movement pattern variation within a workout, but do more work for that pattern. So when I’m working chest (or more aptly pushing muscles) I like to keep the secondary movement (if I do one) the same as the primary one. I will vary intensity volume (e.g. sets of 5 after sets of 3), range of motion (e.g. partials after full lifts, or vice-versa) or training technique.

  2. When I can (I often train in my garage and only have one bar at the moment) I always use antagonistic pairings for the upper body, it’s the most efficient way to train. I say for the upper body, because you can’t really do antagonist pairings for the lower body unless you are only using isolation exercises, simply because every compound lower body exercise works every muscle in the lower body.

I do not go by muscle antagonist pairings though, but rather by antagonist movements… for example horizontal pressing (bench) with horizontal pulling (barbell row), vertical pressing (military press) with vertical pulling (pull-ups), semi-vertical pushing (incline or decline) with semi-vertical pulling (sternum chin-up, pulldown leaning back 45 degrees).

  1. The 5 x 5 could be ramped, or simply done with a percentage of the top you reached for 3 reps. In the last case, I wouldn’t use a precise number of sets but rather stop the exercise when I cannot produce maximum force (dominate the weight) or every one of those 5 reps.
230

[quote]acelement wrote:
Two questions:

  1. What are your thoughts on Dr Clay’s recent article where he said beans/legumes were on the same field as green veggies? He seems to think you can use them for cutting despite their high carb amount. Your thoughts?

  2. I’m stuck. I’ve been dieting since August where I started at 16%, and took a 2 week maintenance break a month ago…but its felt like a 6 week maintenance phase because my weight hasn’t changed, though my body fat has dipped from about 10.5% to just under 10% in those 6 weeks. I feel like I’m really stalling but I’m doing all of your tips: I’m doing MORE than what’s in the War Room Strategies workout plan, and my diet is incredibly on point. I even started doing Anaconda and doing your suggestions for .75g carb/lb body weight you recommended to me earlier. All of that and I still feel like I’m stuck. I’m tempted to take Nick T.'s advice in his recent article and just switch to a bodybuilding workout and drop all of the cardio/complexes. Any suggestions on my stagnation?[/quote]

  1. I don’t fully agree. While they can be used during a fat-loss phase by some (a lot of people are actually intolerent to them which raises cortisol levels) they certainly are not in the same category as gree veggies which can basically be used at will, in any quantity.

  2. You obviously adapted to what you are doing now. So a change is needed. Try changing up your routine or training approach, but I would go more toward a limit strength (powerlifting-like) approach with added power exercises (jump squats, various types of jumps and throws, sprints). For a two weeks period I would drop down carbs as much as you can without hindering performance and then gradually bring them back up.

  3. Going from 16% to a tad under 10% is impressive. I know how you feel… 10% is still not what you want to look like, I understand, heck when I get up to 10% I feel fat! But the truth of the matter is thatfew people are actually sub-10% with a significant amount of muscle mass. So it is certainly not something to sneeze ate.

  4. Going from 20% down to 15% is VERY simple, going from 15% down to 10% is SIMPLE (when you do things right), going from 10% down to 7-8% takes a lot of effort and strategizing and going from 7% down to 5% is hell on earth. As you can see, even if the ‘ground to cover’ gets shorter, the time to go from one end to the other is actually longer and more arduous.

If it took you 3 months to get down to 10% from 16% I would fully except it to take you another 2 months to get down to a real 8%. The body doesn’t want that and it will fight you with all its got.

231

coach,

you recently mentioned that Charles Poliquin agrees with you on almost 99% of the whole subject of training and that he will despite anything still stick to the post-workout shake. shakes aside, i do the the pre-anaconda protocol anyway and it rocks.

does he now also recommend to look more on the “force”-side of the equation or does he still mix force and TUT training techniques ? (for bodybuilding!)

i do an old (guess 1991) three week routine its actuallly the “advanced bb routine” in the Poliquin Principles book, he has a superset of flat db flys and incline db flys, both superlow, 4 0 10 tempo both sw between 4-6 reps… everything ok, but i can’t do it that slow after doing all the force routines since summer, i though do try to go 7 seconds this fits well… and it burns like hell
The question: what fibers are stimulated by doing slow and very controlled concentric movements?

i just want to grasp the whole concept so to better design my own routines for 2010, i don’t want to follow blindly max-force only without making my mind up to other possibilities there, even though i built a lot of mass this semester with this stuff and i’m still greatful to have stumbled upon tmuscle this year.

232

[quote]padrinho wrote:
coach,

you recently mentioned that Charles Poliquin agrees with you on almost 99% of the whole subject of training and that he will despite anything still stick to the post-workout shake. shakes aside, i do the the pre-anaconda protocol anyway and it rocks.

does he now also recommend to look more on the “force”-side of the equation or does he still mix force and TUT training techniques ? (for bodybuilding!)

i do an old (guess 1991) three week routine its actuallly the “advanced bb routine” in the Poliquin Principles book, he has a superset of flat db flys and incline db flys, both superlow, 4 0 10 tempo both sw between 4-6 reps… everything ok, but i can’t do it that slow after doing all the force routines since summer, i though do try to go 7 seconds this fits well… and it burns like hell
The question: what fibers are stimulated by doing slow and very controlled concentric movements?

i just want to grasp the whole concept so to better design my own routines for 2010, i don’t want to follow blindly max-force only without making my mind up to other possibilities there, even though i built a lot of mass this semester with this stuff and i’m still greatful to have stumbled upon tmuscle this year.[/quote]

I’m not with him 365 days a year so I do not really know EXACTLY what he doing all of the time. But at the last conference we gave together he did emphasize lifting the weight with as much force as possible on every rep.

He is also (always been) an advocate of low reps, with the occasional higher reps phase throw in.

He favors doing a lot of sets of a few exercises.

These are all things that we have in common. It is the most important stuff anyway, so any differences in opinion we might have on different subjects don’t really matter.

233

Hi coach…damn its cold today!!!

What do you think about pyramid sets…effectiveness wise
example 1-1-1-2-2-2-3-3-3-4-4-4-5-5-5-4-4-4-3-3-3-2-2-2-1-1-1 taking a weight that i control, and lift as fast as possible…about a 5rm

Thanks again!
Charles

234

[quote]Charles3264 wrote:
Hi coach…damn its cold today!!!

What do you think about pyramid sets…effectiveness wise
example 1-1-1-2-2-2-3-3-3-4-4-4-5-5-5-4-4-4-3-3-3-2-2-2-1-1-1 taking a weight that i control, and lift as fast as possible…about a 5rm

Thanks again!
Charles[/quote]

I like it and I don’t like it.

I personally don’t like to lift the same weight for more than 2-3 sets. There seems to be a neural phenomenon where you get on automatic pilot and downgrade your effort to only what is needed to get the job done.

235

true there is no ramping at all…but i only do this once a week…thanks for the answer coach!

236

I was thinking either 5/3/1 or DC + those dynamics like jumps n sprints. Is that the right direction?

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

[quote]acelement wrote:
Two questions:

  1. What are your thoughts on Dr Clay’s recent article where he said beans/legumes were on the same field as green veggies? He seems to think you can use them for cutting despite their high carb amount. Your thoughts?

  2. I’m stuck. I’ve been dieting since August where I started at 16%, and took a 2 week maintenance break a month ago…but its felt like a 6 week maintenance phase because my weight hasn’t changed, though my body fat has dipped from about 10.5% to just under 10% in those 6 weeks. I feel like I’m really stalling but I’m doing all of your tips: I’m doing MORE than what’s in the War Room Strategies workout plan, and my diet is incredibly on point. I even started doing Anaconda and doing your suggestions for .75g carb/lb body weight you recommended to me earlier. All of that and I still feel like I’m stuck. I’m tempted to take Nick T.'s advice in his recent article and just switch to a bodybuilding workout and drop all of the cardio/complexes. Any suggestions on my stagnation?[/quote]

  1. I don’t fully agree. While they can be used during a fat-loss phase by some (a lot of people are actually intolerent to them which raises cortisol levels) they certainly are not in the same category as gree veggies which can basically be used at will, in any quantity.

  2. You obviously adapted to what you are doing now. So a change is needed. Try changing up your routine or training approach, but I would go more toward a limit strength (powerlifting-like) approach with added power exercises (jump squats, various types of jumps and throws, sprints). For a two weeks period I would drop down carbs as much as you can without hindering performance and then gradually bring them back up.

  3. Going from 16% to a tad under 10% is impressive. I know how you feel… 10% is still not what you want to look like, I understand, heck when I get up to 10% I feel fat! But the truth of the matter is thatfew people are actually sub-10% with a significant amount of muscle mass. So it is certainly not something to sneeze ate.

  4. Going from 20% down to 15% is VERY simple, going from 15% down to 10% is SIMPLE (when you do things right), going from 10% down to 7-8% takes a lot of effort and strategizing and going from 7% down to 5% is hell on earth. As you can see, even if the ‘ground to cover’ gets shorter, the time to go from one end to the other is actually longer and more arduous.

If it took you 3 months to get down to 10% from 16% I would fully except it to take you another 2 months to get down to a real 8%. The body doesn’t want that and it will fight you with all its got. [/quote]

237

Hey Coach, whats your tought about instead of having a focus period on: a body part or a lift. You have a focus period on exampel: static strength, “power”, speed and so on?

238

[quote]Ole J. wrote:
Hey Coach, whats your tought about instead of having a focus period on: a body part or a lift. You have a focus period on exampel: static strength, “power”, speed and so on?

[/quote]

This is called concentrated loading. It works, but the thing is that not all qualities trasnfer to other ones and you could actually be detraining some qualities while you focus on other ones.

So if that approach is used, a maintenance load for the other qualities should be included.

239

Thanks for the quick reply, coach.

240

I have a question that deals with the topic of “trainability” that you have discussed before. My sense is that many training systems that focus on changing up the rep schemes (the “Nothing works forever” crowd) are in fact chasing this phenomenon (for example, while you’re doing heavier/low-rep work, your trainabilty for moderate rep work increases and then you switch, and vice versa). It seems like your thoughts on autoregulation are in direct contradiction with this line of thinking, EXCEPT that you are a proponent of specialization, which inherently allows for an increase in the trainability of the muscles that are just coming out of the maintenance phase.

I guess my question then becomes, does the effectiveness of your lower-rep autoregulation system really ultimately depend on using periods of specialization? Or can the system be just as effective without specialization (or at least more effective than more traditional models of periodization)? If so, how is this quality of trainability increased while keeping the reps low? (maybe through other mechanisms like switching the movements over time, etc.?)