Just about thirty minustes ago I was in my accounting class and a very interesting idea came to me, yeah I don’t pay attention because accounting is boring. First off lets understand that all of us have three types of muscle fibers: type 1, type 2, and type2b. Type 1 are the muscle fibers that give us endurance or light intensity lifting. Type 2 give moderate to heavy intensity. Type 2b give us submaximal intensity. Well what if we trained all three muscle types , but at different time periods. For example, for six weeks, train the type 1 muscle fibers by doing high volume workouts. After that six weeks train the type 2 fibers by doing the moderate volume. After that train the type 2b fibers with low volume. Every six weeks you will be increasing the intensity and hitting different fibers. I think this will work because I experienced something like this before. I trained for eight weeks wih 5x5 for all of my muscles and after that I did high volume training for six weeks then took a week off. Here is the amazing when I was doing 5x5 my strength went up five punds a week for everything except legs, that went up about ten to fifteen punds per week, but at towards the end I started to pleateau and them I stopped getting stronger. My bench, I was using dumbbells the whole time, stopped at 65’s, when I came back form the week off, I had to start using 85’s and 90’s. So that is kind of some proof of that it might work. Maybe I am just starting to go crazy, to much testosterone on the brain. Anyway what are everybody’s thoughts on this?
Later
Drew- Yes this is a decent periodization routine. I used a similar program several years ago, when I was still competing. I used three different rep ranges, of 15, 10, and 5, in that sequence. After the 5 rep series, I would then take my week off. As I kept a log of every workout, my weights also increased through each rep series, throughout the year. For more examples along similar lines, check out Fred Hatfield’s ‘Scientific Bodybuilding’, and Clarence Bass’s ‘Ripped’ series. Nice to see some thinking going on out there. Stay with it, and you’ll definitely see some gains.
if you have figured out a scheme that works for you great!, run w/ it. But the reasoning behind it is so faulty i dont know where to begin. perhaps with “First off lets understand that all of us have three types of muscle fibers: type 1, type 2, and type2b.” that isn’t even right
Dman, how many types of muscle fibers do YOU think we have?
I can understand where you are coming from, but let me add that I wrote this at about ten this morning and was still very tired and I forgot some details, but that is the slim skinny of it. For the sake of argument though, lets say that we have only one type of muscle fiber. If this is the case then would it not be logical to work the muscle fiber in every intensity range to to have complete endurance strength, maximal strength, and everything in between. Maybe it only works for me maybe it can work for everyone. It is kind of like a supplement ad if you think about it though. You here all of this hype but you dont know what to believe so you ask a friend, but you cant really trust him because his/her body is different than yours and reacts differently. So the only way to see if it works or not is to try it. Get your feet wet or just jump in! Anyway, once again I understand your skepticism so check in to it more or don`t.
Very similar to the plans in Tudor Bompa’s book ‘Serious Strength Training’, he even goes further and has micro cycles within those periods and has cutting periods as well. Probably worth checking out for more info.