[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
PB Andy wrote:
CC, great posts all-around. The more I read from you, the more my own training evolves and makes sense. Due to your advice on your 5/3/1 template I’ve made my best gains yet, strength+size wise.
On your CT ramps post, how did you determine the rep-ranges for the various muscles groups (i.e. chest & tri’s CT ramp in 8s, delts CT ramp in 5s)? Is this based on your own experiences for the best rep-ranges for certain muscles groups?
And where does this leave RP techniques for you? Just another tool in the toolbox, like CT ramps?
DC rest-pause causes more general fatigue/“nervous system fatigue” than most other methods. It works well with many off-days or a lower frequency, but since I often train 5-6 days a week on a 3-way with multiple exercises per muscle-group, it just doesn’t fit in at the moment (I would end up having to take time off way too often). It can be done on some exercises anyway, but right now I just enjoy feeling great and ready to train all day, every day 
Ramping preps your nervous system/revvs it up/gets you in the zone… RP is something you do after that and which “drains” you again.
As for number of reps… Depends on the exercise mostly.
ramping in threes works best for me on exercises I’ve pretty much mastered technique and setup-wise and which feel natural to me… And which have a low injury potential.
Powerlifting Close-Grip Bench comes to mind.
Fives work well in general imo, but they’re pretty much at the upper end of the truly effective range for narrow-weight-jump ramping (if you use it as your main way to gain strength and revv the system up). Eights are done (in my case) on exercises where very heavy poundages just don’t feel safe or productive (PJR’s due to the stretch in the long head etc) and where I want to get a bit more of a pump, perhaps. I might do fives on Dead Stop Extensions (bar coming down behind head, not a regular skullcrusher with a dead stop on the pins or some such) though once I go back to doing those.
Right now my philosophy is fairly simple, for most muscle-groups I get an exercise to get me into the zone and push heavy weight, ramped in fives or so, and then one ramped in eights or with a regular top-set approach as I’ve used for many years to get a bit of more traditional hypertrophy work in (still trying to get stronger as much as I can on those exercises, of course).
I think I’ll reconfigure my chest+tri+quad day though… I just hate benching for the chest, and I just got 2 nice plate-loaded pec machines from EFS (sort of like the HS lying-flat and incline bench machines, but with an addition that let’s you adjust at which height the handles start… No more need to put plates under the lever arms if the ROM is too great for your shoulders at the beginning)…
So I’m going to do CGP as my main movement for tris maybe, then do either one or both of those pec machines, then EZ PJR’s and ditch the filler (i.e. kickbacks).
Well, I’ll have to do the tricep portion of the workout at the gym, and the chest stuff at home… The pec machines are in my garage after all
Hopefully I’ll have a nice and complete home-gym setup by the end of the year or so…
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Thanks CC. What do you think of using RP on 4x a week lifting, i.e. upper/lower like I’m doing with 5/3/1? I wouldn’t want to burn out during you know, week 2 or something, but I was considering trying RP for things like pull-ups (and possibly an iso-hold/long negative portion, like in Dr. Clay Hyght’s rest-pause article), bicep work, in-humans, and possibly chest work. Basically I wouldn’t do RP on every exercise, maybe 1 out of 4, the rest being the 5/3/1 main lift or a CT-style ramp.
Best of luck on your gym, I was following your posts about that in TCA was it? Let’s see some pics when it’s set-up!
