[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]Professor X wrote:
…and please tell me you aren’t crazy enough to believe anyone here means never take a day off.[/quote]
Of course not. Forgive the hyperbole. However, what I’m getting from what you’re saying is that it’s not just a matter of eating more, that it is in fact as much a matter of genetics.
I feel the need to clarify that when I say it’s not that simple, I mean it seems preposterous that all the research, all the analysis, all the charts and relayed experience of professional coaches concerning macronutrient percentages, food choices, micronutrition, insulin sensitivity, etc. etc. etc. can be thrown under the headline “eat more.”
I understand that more volume of training requires more calories. Simple. However there has to be a point of diminishing returns. [/quote]
All of those things would be an extremely useful tool for advanced athletes who know their body and how they react to different stimuli.
However, for most gym goers, this isn’t the case.
They’d be much better suited to eating a large amount of good foods and lifting as heavy and hard as they can safely.
After someone can do that, then it would be appropriate to start thinking about micronutrition, insulin sensitivity, and microbiology, etc.
But focusing on these things before a significant base of strength and size are built would be focusing on minutia.
If you are an advanced lifter/athlete, then the answers you seek can only be found through personal trial and error.
Anecdotally speaking, the past few years, I never scheduled a day off from training and only took days off as I was forced to because of “life” and I made great gains in strength and size going sometime more than 2 weeks without a day off.
Past 3-4 months I’ve been forced to take many days off because of work travel, etc, and even a week here and there (ie. more “rest/recovery” than ever), and I’ve leveled off, or at least plateaued. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
When I can train every day, I typically can also get in enough food and rest that goes along with the training to make it work.
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Anecdotally speaking, the past few years, I never scheduled a day off from training and only took days off as I was forced to because of “life” and I made great gains in strength and size going sometime more than 2 weeks without a day off.
Past 3-4 months I’ve been forced to take many days off because of work travel, etc, and even a week here and there (ie. more “rest/recovery” than ever), and I’ve leveled off, or at least plateaued. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
When I can train every day, I typically can also get in enough food and rest that goes along with the training to make it work.[/quote]
If you had to estimate, how many cals/lb bodyweight were you eating?
[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Anecdotally speaking, the past few years, I never scheduled a day off from training and only took days off as I was forced to because of “life” and I made great gains in strength and size going sometime more than 2 weeks without a day off.
Past 3-4 months I’ve been forced to take many days off because of work travel, etc, and even a week here and there (ie. more “rest/recovery” than ever), and I’ve leveled off, or at least plateaued. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
When I can train every day, I typically can also get in enough food and rest that goes along with the training to make it work.[/quote]
If you had to estimate, how many cals/lb bodyweight were you eating?[/quote]
That question right there shows what everyone else was speaking of. It doesn’t matter how much HE was eating. I have taken in more than 8,000cals a day before when gaining (no specific number since I wasn’t counting…and I am sure I have eaten even more than that at times). That doesn’t mean YOU can get away with that without becoming obese.
For those that take limited days off what kind of programs are you following? Any specifics?
One body part a day with triceps mixed with chest. I trained what felt most rested. That was it. I then ate like a mad man. That got me huge. Then I dieted some of the fat off…which leads me to where I am now.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Anecdotally speaking, the past few years, I never scheduled a day off from training and only took days off as I was forced to because of “life” and I made great gains in strength and size going sometime more than 2 weeks without a day off.
Past 3-4 months I’ve been forced to take many days off because of work travel, etc, and even a week here and there (ie. more “rest/recovery” than ever), and I’ve leveled off, or at least plateaued. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
When I can train every day, I typically can also get in enough food and rest that goes along with the training to make it work.[/quote]
If you had to estimate, how many cals/lb bodyweight were you eating?[/quote]
That question right there shows what everyone else was speaking of. It doesn’t matter how much HE was eating. I have taken in more than 8,000cals a day before when gaining (no specific number since I wasn’t counting…and I am sure I have eaten even more than that at times). That doesn’t mean YOU can get away with that without becoming obese.[/quote]
I’m not looking for an exact number. I know I’m not going to get nutritional gospel from anybody in here. I just want a frame of reference. I have a pretty good idea of what I can eat and how long I need to recover on the training regimen I use at the moment.
I suppose the more appropriate quesion would look something like this: What kind of difference were you looking at in calories consumed on this high-frequency training schedule versus what you consumed on a more moderate training schedule?
Your more likely to see better gains by having one full rest day or active rest day and use the 6th day to bring up a lagging body part so it could change on a weekly/monthly basis dependent on what you think your worst body part is. Its not just recovery techniques and diet that effect your lifting progress and gains! you train volume every day youll be neuromuscularly fried!!!
What training frequency per week would you recommend for a guy who trains twice day? (currently 4 times a week)
[quote]Professor X wrote:
One body part a day with triceps mixed with chest. I trained what felt most rested. That was it. I then ate like a mad man. That got me huge. Then I dieted some of the fat off…which leads me to where I am now.[/quote]
Just curious, but what did the volume for the triceps/chest look like when mixed in with the other body part?
1 or 2 sets? etc?
Edit: Nevermind, I found the post I had in mind where you already answered this question!
[quote] Professor X wrote:
I have been working on bringing up triceps. I train triceps with at least cable press downs almost every training session in between sets for other body parts. They are responding. I remember doing the same for my back a long time ago where we would start nearly every training session doing about 3 sets of pull ups no matter what we trained that day.[/quote]
[quote]Professor X wrote:
My chest is resting while I am training biceps. My legs are resting while I am training chest. Where did the muscles come from if we have it all wrong? I trained many weeks with no days off when I was in the military. My workouts were short and I usually only trained one body part a day. The problem with what you are writing is that it ignores THAT THIS WORKED for some people.
You can’t make blanket statements about everyone’s recovery and the belief that no human can do that without steroids is pure ignorant comedy.
In fact, in my opinion I would say those who do recover faster are most likely to reach truly extreme levels of development. I would not expect the same of the guy who thinks he needs to add more rest days when he is already only training 3-4 days a week.
[/quote]
I was making a blanket statement as much as you are by dishing out advice that most likely anyone can train without rest days if they do it right. I think splits are a great way to workout the muscles while giving the others rest. I’m not arguing they aren’t however you have to think about how if you are natural and beyond the stage where your hormones are naturally elevated you only have so many hormones your body can produce in a certain amount of time. This amount is individual specific and everyone is different in this respect. If you are past the anabolic stage of your life and into the catabolic stage where your hormones are naturally lowering through the rest of your life (average age 28-32) this is especially important to consider.
I think you can agree that any success in gaining a lot of muscle (or 18" arms as you put it) requires more then a fair share of natural male hormones. You can’t just keep whipping the horse in order to go faster and faster. Eventually its going to slow down and burn out. Hence why I made the comment about teenagers or steroid users. They have a lot of hormones and are less likely to burn out their supply by training every day.
I liked the bit about The CNS burning out and I agree over time you can train it to handle much more then an untrained CNS but I would not agree that you can train every day for months upon months (with a few rest day when you feel like it) as you can with other workout routines that give you rest days. I think it goes without saying you can’t build up your hormones levels to steroid user levels like per say your CNS can continually adapt to more and more volume or lest and lest rest. The body naturally produces a optimum amount of hormones and you can workout and respond within its limits or overdo it.
Weight training stimulus is not a instinctive thing as we have only been lifting weights a small period of time in history and thinking your body will tell you when your overdoing it by lifting everyday and then thinking you can take a few days off and go right back at the same everyday approach seems like a silly philosophy on training if you have the bigger picture in mind.
[quote]ElevenMag wrote:
I was making a blanket statement as much as you are by dishing out advice that most likely anyone can train without rest days if they do it right.[/quote]
I’m sorry, but what? That isn’t written anywhere. In fact, the statement, BODYBUILDING IS NOT FOR EVERYONE should have been enough of a clue about this…but NOOOOO.
You type a lot…but don’t seem to say much.
On the previous page, I wrote: [quote]If you have the genetics to recover at a level that allows this, there is nothing more to it than making sure you fuel the machine[/quote]
Where is the part about “anyone can train without rest days if they do it right”?
I can’t find it.
[quote]krazykoukides wrote:
[quote]Professor X wrote:
One body part a day with triceps mixed with chest. I trained what felt most rested. That was it. I then ate like a mad man. That got me huge. Then I dieted some of the fat off…which leads me to where I am now.[/quote]
Just curious, but what did the volume for the triceps/chest look like when mixed in with the other body part?
1 or 2 sets? etc?
Edit: Nevermind, I found the post I had in mind where you already answered this question!
[quote] Professor X wrote:
I have been working on bringing up triceps. I train triceps with at least cable press downs almost every training session in between sets for other body parts. They are responding. I remember doing the same for my back a long time ago where we would start nearly every training session doing about 3 sets of pull ups no matter what we trained that day.[/quote][/quote]
Back then, I was training chest on two separate days…upper chest and triceps one day and lower chest the next.
Upper chest was usually: incline dumbbells, HS incline and smith machine incline.
Yeah, before anyone makes a joke of using a smith machine or HS…that’s why my chest looks like that.
Triceps was usually triceps pressdowns, dips on the hs dip machine, and kickbacks.
[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Anecdotally speaking, the past few years, I never scheduled a day off from training and only took days off as I was forced to because of “life” and I made great gains in strength and size going sometime more than 2 weeks without a day off.
Past 3-4 months I’ve been forced to take many days off because of work travel, etc, and even a week here and there (ie. more “rest/recovery” than ever), and I’ve leveled off, or at least plateaued. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
When I can train every day, I typically can also get in enough food and rest that goes along with the training to make it work.[/quote]
If you had to estimate, how many cals/lb bodyweight were you eating?[/quote]
Honestly I don’t remember. I think I was trying to hit around 3000 at 170 or so. As I started gaining I just ate until the scale moved. At my heaviest at 275 I was around 4000 cals or something, maybe.
That’s not to say I hit that number every day, but just estimating what I was eating like 10 eggs, 2lbs of steak, protein shakes, scoops of pb, etc. There were days when I didn’t hit half that and days I probably doubled it. Not all ‘clean’ either.
I’m not sure how that all correlates to not taking days off except that I seemed to recover and grow OK.
Also…as if it needed to be said, I took days off. They just weren’t planned. I might go two weeks training everyday…but that next day I feel like shit in the gym…so I go the fuck home. This isn’t complicated. If gains weren’t coming from it, then I wouldn’t have been doing it.
what are you doing?
is it working? -------- yes -------------> keep doing it
-------- no -------------> change it
[quote]Professor X wrote:
…but that next day I feel like shit in the gym…so I go the fuck home.[/quote]
I think this is hard for people to learn/accept.
I’ve gone to the gym, started to warmup and just realized that it ain’t happening, so I went home. Maybe I got a set or two in. Maybe I never got past warming up.
I know there have been nights where I’ve started squatting and even with just the bar, knee didn’t feel right or something else, so no squats that night, or maybe nothing at all.
If you’re honest with yourself and you know your body well enough, you’re allowed to show up, then go home. Just show up the next day and do it.
The flip side of course is absolutely being convinced that you don’t want to be there or feeling shitty and end up breaking through a plateau or PR.
I did this recently for about 40 days or thereabouts, but it was strength focused. I would do two or three of the following four - squat, deadlift, bench, overhead and add in whatever assistance I felt like I was up to. It’s in my log if you want to see how it went.
I went all of 2011 with 7 days off, but I haven’t been lifting long enough to know whether or not that was the right decision. I made some good gains on a repeating 5-day split.
[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]Professor X wrote:
[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Anecdotally speaking, the past few years, I never scheduled a day off from training and only took days off as I was forced to because of “life” and I made great gains in strength and size going sometime more than 2 weeks without a day off.
Past 3-4 months I’ve been forced to take many days off because of work travel, etc, and even a week here and there (ie. more “rest/recovery” than ever), and I’ve leveled off, or at least plateaued. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
When I can train every day, I typically can also get in enough food and rest that goes along with the training to make it work.[/quote]
If you had to estimate, how many cals/lb bodyweight were you eating?[/quote]
That question right there shows what everyone else was speaking of. It doesn’t matter how much HE was eating. I have taken in more than 8,000cals a day before when gaining (no specific number since I wasn’t counting…and I am sure I have eaten even more than that at times). That doesn’t mean YOU can get away with that without becoming obese.[/quote]
I’m not looking for an exact number. I know I’m not going to get nutritional gospel from anybody in here. I just want a frame of reference. I have a pretty good idea of what I can eat and how long I need to recover on the training regimen I use at the moment.
I suppose the more appropriate quesion would look something like this: What kind of difference were you looking at in calories consumed on this high-frequency training schedule versus what you consumed on a more moderate training schedule?[/quote]
Read some of the Carb cycling articles in the archives on this site. Use the High carb days and moderate carb days for heavy and moderate workouts. They will give you starting points for protein, carbs and fat per pound of bodyweight based on what your goals are. Then adjust from there based on results. If you get your macronutrients right the total calories will workout. Protein and carbs have 4 cal/gram and fat 9 cal/gram. Keep your Protein high, fat moderately low, and adjust carbs (preferably low GI carbs) to gain or lose.