[quote]Undermost wrote:
hi jack: where bouts in Scotland you from?[/quote]
Not sure about Jack but I’m from just below the Highlands in Moray 
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
iwong wrote:
8-12 sets to failure is probably why you haven’t progressed in however long.
Which is also likely one of the (if not THE) main reason why his strength seems to “stall” so quickly. Not everyone can be Bauer.[/quote]
Thankyou, this has become very clear to me now and makes much sense.
[quote]CPerfringens wrote:
its_just_me wrote:
If you weigh under 220lbs (unless you’re a midget), please watch and learn lol.
[/quote]
Trust me, if I could delete that bit I would.
The main reason why I put that bit in there was because I didn’t want 150lbs “bodybuilders” giving me advice on how to get huge…that’s it…nothing personal (there was a bit of exageration there, i.e. the 220lbs, but that was to be taken with a pinch of salt/humour).
If you had come from websites where the first 2 or 3 pages were FULL of “skinny” teens giving you bulking advice you would have said something similar in your first proper question on here.
I didn’t have a clue how knowledgable people on here were until I “tested the waters”…and 4 pages later I’ve gained some great advice (after I’ve sifted through all the misconceptions that people had of me lol).
[quote]jiujitsumania wrote:
-
ramping changed my life
-
I’ve found that if I hit a wall sometimes I need to back the weight down for a few workouts and then progressively increase it again. For example, if I hit a wall on squats at 350x5 I might try backing down to 325x5 and increasing the weight by 5lbs each workout. By the time I get back to 350 I’m able to push through.
-
Ignore the jackasses… they’re rampant[/quote]
Good post.
Hope I qualify since I weigh 228 
I used to train very similar as you are (Mentzer HIT) but had horrible results. That type of training is just not optimal. Sure it might work for a little while, but do what has worked for many years. Ramping is your friend.
I see now that there’s another point that almost undoubtely is holding you back.
And while I think there is one person on this forum who will bitch that I am making things more complicated here, actually what I am doing is cutting through the bullshit. So please view it in that way.
Sometimes bullshit or a fog of confusion results from very poor use of words. Even if that use of words is common. If the person saying a given thing means it in a completely different way than you understand it, then what is happening is miscommunication. And it would help a lot if it were straightened out.
“Failure” is one of the worst words in bodybuilding with regard to anything remotely approaching accurate communication.
We could have four different guys and between them they mean 4 different things when they say they train to failure:
– Quitting the set and racking the weight as soon as getting another rep is doubted, even though the last was not anything like excruciatingly hard and most certainly was successfully completed.
– Quitting the set when the last rep is excruciatingly hard but successfully completed.
– Quitting the set when a substantial reduction in speed is observed though the last rep is successfully completed and in fact several more could have been gotten, just not with speed.
– Quitting the set when it seems like some cheating would be needed, or in fact was used. to finish the rep, which is in fact completed.
In each of these cases the persons succeeded in completing every rep they attempted, but somehow in their minds trained “to failure.”
There are yet more variants:
– Continuing the set without assistance until it gets tough enough that, instead of putting in life-and-death effort, the spotter is relied on to help out to finish the rep.
I would say this is failure of will, yes, but not muscular failure. But the person doing it may well call it training to failure.
Finally we have:
– Continuing the set until come hell or high water, the damn bar will NOT move up another fraction of an inch for love or money or at threat of gunshot. Smoke is coming out of the ears and neurotransmitters are being gone through at an enormous rate. The rep cannot be completed and is not.
Huh… the guy using this meaning actually does train to the point where his muscles fail him in completing a rep. This also gets called “training to failure.” The exact same expression.
But the first 5 guys don’t have anything like that in mind. If the last guy tries following their programs which were conceived with their no-failure concepts of training to failure, he may well find their volume undoable.
Now I have no idea of what you mean by “training to failure” – whether it is on the utterly lame end of the scale, or the circuits-burning-out end of the scale. No one on this board can have any idea of what you mean, as you haven’t specified. And almost every post or article you’ve read, you don’t know what the author meant either.
All the above is to show you that this is, for the most part, a bullshit expression. Only if the author adds specific explanation of what he means can you have any means of knowing it, and if your idea of “failure” is different than his then his ideas may not work for you well at all.
So I am NOT going to use that phrase in explaining your situation, other than pointing out that if you are using it to reason with or plan by, that opens the door to some vast miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Instead, think of it on a scale of mental drive. The “neural intensity” that you have to put out to complete the set.
There can be benefit in having reps where you push this to a very high level, but there is cost as well, particularly as you drive it to the extreme.
Getting one more rep that is an absolute grinding near-death experience, for example, will cost you in the amount of further work you can do in that workout session. It may also cost you in how soon you can train again. In general, frequently going for the extreme with regard to a last grinding rep costs too much in other ways to be worth it. You will not see those who have been the most successful in bb’ing or powerlifting routinely (every exercise, every workout) finishing out with reps that take them say 4 seconds and utterly killing themselves to complete the lift, or have stall-outs and redoublings of effort.
Doing that routinely and frequently burns out the nervous system more than what the benefit is worth.
Better to put the drive into forcefully completing reps successfully that do get hard enough that, on the last set, you couldn’t get another rep other than possibly a life-or-death utterly grinding one that ordinarily you don’t intentionally go for.
The fact that you cannot (at least not properly) attach to yourself the badge of “failure” is not something you should worry about.
Your volume very possibly has been limited by CNS burnout caused by taking “failure” too seriously and interpreting it differently than the people you are learning from ever meant it – which, weirdly enough, may well not have included ever failing at all.
Bill, you’re making everything way too complicated.
Wow. Great post Mr. Roberts.
[quote]TheDudeAbides wrote:
Wow. Great post Mr. Roberts.[/quote]
Pah, over-analyzer!
Wow, this is the first time I have ever seemed to have gotten anywhere with that!
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I
And while I think there is one person on this forum who will bitch that I am making things more complicated here, actually what I am doing is cutting through the bullshit. So please view it in that way.
[/quote]
I suppose this means me. For the record, even though your posts are long, they have always been informative and have an actual point. Your posts are always worth the read and think anybody who’s been on these forums for any length of time know what they are getting when they see your posts.
Re-read the post by Antares that talks about physical standards. Would you say that the post was at all helpful in solving his issue or was actually any real advice at all? This is where I was coming from with that statement.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Wow, this is the first time I have ever seemed to have gotten anywhere with that! :)[/quote]
You got lucky, 's all
[quote]cueball wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
And while I think there is one person on this forum who will bitch that I am making things more complicated here, actually what I am doing is cutting through the bullshit. So please view it in that way.
I suppose this means me. For the record, even though your posts are long, they have always been informative and have an actual point. Your posts are always worth the read and think anybody who’s been on these forums for any length of time know what they are getting when they see your posts.
Re-read the post by Antares that talks about physical standards. Would you say that the post was at all helpful in solving his issue or was actually any real advice at all? This is where I was coming from with that statement.[/quote]
No, I didn’t mean you.
And thank you for the kind words!
I don’t at the moment know what post you meant, but I’ll try to find it. At the moment I am guessing it was something regarding Butt’s equation.
It is true that I have posts that go into a particular detail that may not answer the original question but are relevant to things other persons brought up in the thread. Perhaps that is one of them. I’ll look.
EDIT: I couldn’t find it. Doing a search for all of Antares’ posts brough up only this thread, the Stupid Arguments thread, and the Reverse Grip Overhead Press thread, none of which would seem to be what you mean.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I see now that there’s another point that almost undoubtely is holding you back.
And while I think there is one person on this forum who will bitch that I am making things more complicated here, actually what I am doing is cutting through the bullshit. So please view it in that way.
Sometimes bullshit or a fog of confusion results from very poor use of words. Even if that use of words is common. If the person saying a given thing means it in a completely different way than you understand it, then what is happening is miscommunication. And it would help a lot if it were straightened out.
“Failure” is one of the worst words in bodybuilding with regard to anything remotely approaching accurate communication.
We could have four different guys and between them they mean 4 different things when they say they train to failure:
– Quitting the set and racking the weight as soon as getting another rep is doubted, even though the last was not anything like excruciatingly hard and most certainly was successfully completed.
– Quitting the set when the last rep is excruciatingly hard but successfully completed.
– Quitting the set when a substantial reduction in speed is observed though the last rep is successfully completed and in fact several more could have been gotten, just not with speed.
– Quitting the set whit it seems like some cheating would be needed, or in fact was used. to finish the rep, which is in fact completed.
In each of these cases the persons succeeded in completing every rep they attempted, but somehow in their minds trained “to failure.”
There are yet more variants:
– Continuing the set without assistance until it gets tough enough that, instead of putting in life-and-death effort, the spotter is relied on to help out to finish the rep.
I would say this is failure of will, yes, but not muscular failure. But the person doing it may well call it training to failure.
Finally we have:
– Continuing the set until come hell or high water, the damn bar will NOT move up another fraction of an inch for love or money or at threat of gunshot. Smoke is coming out of the ears and neurotransmitters are being gone through at an enormous rate. The rep cannot be completed and is not.
Huh… the guy using this meaning actually does train to the point where his muscles fail him in completing a rep. This also gets called “training to failure.” The exact same expression.
But the first 5 guys don’t have anything like that in mind. If the last guy tries following their programs which were conceived with their no-failure concepts of training to failure, he may well find their volume undoable.
Now I have no idea of what you mean by “training to failure” – whether it is on the utterly lame end of the scale, or the circuits-burning-out end of the scale. No one on this board can have any idea of what you mean, as you haven’t specified. And almost every post or article you’ve read, you don’t know what the author meant either.
All the above is to show you that this is, for the most part, a bullshit expression. Only if the author adds specific explanation of what he means can you have any means of knowing it, and if your idea of “failure” is different than his then his ideas may not work for you well at all.
So I am NOT going to use that phrase in explaining your situation, other than pointing out that if you are using it to reason with or plan by, that opens the door to some vast miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Instead, think of it on a scale of mental drive. The “neural intensity” that you have to put out to complete the set.
There can be benefit in having reps where you push this to a very high level, but there is cost as well, particularly as you drive it to the extreme.
Getting one more rep that is an absolute grinding near-death experience, for example, will cost you in the amount of further work you can do in that workout session. It may also cost you in how soon you can train again. In general, frequently going for the extreme with regard to a last grinding rep costs too much in other ways to be worth it. You will not see those who have been the most successful in bb’ing or powerlifting routinely (every exercise, every workout) finishing out with reps that take them say 4 seconds and utterly killing themselves to complete the lift, or have stall-outs and redoublings of effort.
Doing that routinely and frequently burns out the nervous system more than what the benefit is worth.
Better to put the drive into forcefully completing reps successfully that do get hard enough that, on the last set, you couldn’t get another rep other than possibly a life-or-death utterly grinding one that ordinarily you don’t intentionally go for.
The fact that you cannot (at least not properly) attach to yourself the badge of “failure” is not something you should worry about.
Your volume very possibly has been limited by CNS burnout caused by taking “failure” too seriously and interpreting it differently than the people you are learning from ever meant it – which, weirdly enough, may well not have included ever failing at all.
[/quote]
Thankyou! This is something that I was coming to terms with on my own really…you know, the next time I went into my cycle again (i.e. training cycle…don’t want any more miscommunication now do we?) after a “burn out”, I would do it gently, not going to “shouting down the gym failure” (as I’ll call it)…but rather, just the type of failure where a another rep wouldn’t be possible (that to me, is doing it easy lol).
I hate Mentzer and HIT for what they’ve done to me…lol
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Bill, you’re making everything way too complicated.
[/quote]
Long time no see Cephalic_Carnage!
Don’t know if my PM thingy is working or not…or if you’re just ignoring me (understandable lol)
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
Thankyou! This is something that I was coming to terms with on my own really…you know, the next time I went into my cycle again (i.e. training cycle…don’t want any more miscommunication now do we?) after a “burn out”, I would do it gently, not going to “shouting down the gym failure” (as I’ll call it)…but rather, just the type of failure where a another rep wouldn’t be possible (that to me, is doing it easy lol).
I hate Mentzer and HIT for what they’ve done to me…lol[/quote]
Perhaps the worst bb’ing advice I ever read and took was in an Ellington Darden book, where he quoted the Superslow guy (Ken Hutchins?) as saying that even more important than how one tried to lift the weight when it could still be lifted was how hard one strived against the weight when it could no longer be lifted.
Wow that was bad advice.
Myself, I made the huge error of following HIT the first 3 years of my training.
While I am sure that that considerably compromised what I could otherwise have been able to accomplish in that time frame, it’s not all bad. It does teach how to push truly hard, and to generally not underestimate whether another rep is physically possible at the time or not.
A lot of guys think they are done when in fact they could get another couple of reps out and still without the last one being truly grinding.
Your experience with HIT has probably been beneficial in that you won’t often be making that mistake.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
EDIT: I couldn’t find it. Doing a search for all of Antares’ posts brough up only this thread, the Stupid Arguments thread, and the Reverse Grip Overhead Press thread, none of which would seem to be what you mean.[/quote]
I’m referring to this, posted on page 4 of this thread:
Antares wrote:
You are approaching the ‘Physical Standard’ as my mentor called it for the Dead Lift. (assuming a Conventional DL). That is a double bodyweight DL. This was his ‘Standard’, and from what he said as one nears this (and all) milestone(s), it becomes harder and harder to nail, without adding ‘too much softness.’
I was ‘raised’ on these ‘Physical Standards.’ They are all based on bodyweight vs weight lifted in a certain amount of volume. Your height is not as important as your limb distribution. Your 'body fat %'of which I was already tired of people fussing over in JR (I knew HS/College guys) is not needed at all unless you like numbers or something. What should matter (to you as a body builder type I feel) is how you look and feel (firmness). You have not met these ‘Standards’ and though his/my way is not the only way, it is nearly idiot proof.
I will get on here and try to transfer what is applicable from these ‘Physical Standards,’ to your DL problem if you like.
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
Antares wrote:
You are approaching the ‘Physical Standard’ as my mentor called it for the Dead Lift. (assuming a Conventional DL). That is a double bodyweight DL. This was his ‘Standard’, and from what he said as one nears this (and all) milestone(s), it becomes harder and harder to nail, without adding 'too much softness…
…I will get on here and try to transfer what is applicable from these ‘Physical Standards,’ to your DL problem if you like.
Please elaborate, thank you :)[/quote]
What is applicable from his ‘Physical Standards’ is that you are weak overall because the weight you are lifting in your movements for total reps, is too far off from your body weight.
See I mentioned a double bodyweight DL. That is the DL ‘Standard.’ According to his ( my mentor) ‘school’, everyone should be able to do that, for about 35 total reps ( the number of sets it takes you to do that AT FIRST is not as important as total reps). Some day. That day is closer for you than others, so be glad.
The only personal numbers you have given are for DL. So that is what I am addressing.
With all due respect, you seem to lack knowledge of the basics. To improve at a lift ( however you qualify improvement ) one must train that lift. Sounds nice, huh? Well it should be said more like one must prioritize said lift.
That cueball guy, said, split up the days you Squat and DL. Sound advice. But if DL is your concern, then DL first thing, on your first work day. This ‘prioritizing said lift’ in actual experience ( but you could go farther).
Have two Leg Work Days. ‘DL day’, day one of your weekly rota, and ‘Squat day’, a few days from that.
‘Squat day’, should have a different type of volume to ‘DL day’ also. Fewer sets, more reps. This has helped guys I knew before.
I see no Analogue Leg Movements. That concerns me, but having two Leg Work Days, should allow some Analogue movements to be used. Cueball hinted at this.
You also may need to get softer than you would prefer. So eat more. However, add these calories to ‘DL day’ ( start adding food before + during said work day ) at first, and fiddle with it from there.
I must stress, ‘eat more’ does not mean double cheese burgers before bed. Think the shit out, food gives you energy, when is energy most needed? Before DL and in middle of the work too, for now. Again this is basic stuff…
If you want to know more let me know. I could PM you the ‘Physical Standards.’ However they are quite intimidating. My mentor expected quite a bit from people, it’s not needed to hit all of those ‘Standards’ to look great many, many do so, but it is an eye opener.
[quote]Antares wrote:
What is applicable from his ‘Physical Standards’ is that you are weak overall because the weight you are lifting in your movements for total reps, is too far off from your body weight.[/quote]
So the farther away from your BW your DL gets, the weaker you are? Or that he should be lifting weight CLOSER to his BW for more reps? Could you explain?
So ideally every one should be able to DL 2x BW for 35 total reps, and at some point you should be able to do 1 set of 35 reps? Not sure I’m understanding.
[quote]The only personal numbers you have given are for DL. So that is what I am addressing.
With all due respect, you seem to lack knowledge of the basics. To improve at a lift ( however you qualify improvement ) one must train that lift. Sounds nice, huh? Well it should be said more like one must prioritize said lift.
That cueball guy, said, split up the days you Squat and DL. Sound advice. But if DL is your concern, then DL first thing, on your first work day. This ‘prioritizing said lift’ in actual experience ( but you could go farther).
Have two Leg Work Days. ‘DL day’, day one of your weekly rota, and ‘Squat day’, a few days from that.
‘Squat day’, should have a different type of volume to ‘DL day’ also. Fewer sets, more reps. This has helped guys I knew before.
I see no Analogue Leg Movements. That concerns me, but having two Leg Work Days, should allow some Analogue movements to be used. Cueball hinted at this.
You also may need to get softer than you would prefer. So eat more. However, add these calories to ‘DL day’ ( start adding food before + during said work day ) at first, and fiddle with it from there.
I must stress, ‘eat more’ does not mean double cheese burgers before bed. Think the shit out, food gives you energy, when is energy most needed? Before DL and in middle of the work too, for now. Again this is basic stuff…
If you want to know more let me know. I could PM you the ‘Physical Standards.’ However they are quite intimidating. My mentor expected quite a bit from people, it’s not needed to hit all of those ‘Standards’ to look great many, many do so, but it is an eye opener.[/quote]
I know this was offered to the OP, but, I would be interested in seeing these standards and the requirements for them. And if you don’t mind, post them in the thread. I’m sure others will find them interesting as well.
I have come accross something simular to these standards. Here’s an example of what I’ve seen:
DL/Sqaut/Bench (total)
Bodyweight - 120lbs 150lbs 180lbs 210lbs
Very good 700 850 1025 1200
Terrific 775 950 1150 1325
Outstanding 875 1075 1300 1500
So if I was 210lbs, then I should be lifting about 1200lbs total (300 bench, 400 squat and 500 DL).
Here’s some more of my stats:
DL and squat are about the same - 350lbs
Bench 280lbs,
Military press 210lbs,
Pullup bodyweight (200lbs) plus 80lbs
If you need more, please let me know…I understand that I still have a long way to go.
[quote]Antares wrote:
If you want to know more let me know. I could PM you the ‘Physical Standards.’ However they are quite intimidating. My mentor expected quite a bit from people, it’s not needed to hit all of those ‘Standards’ to look great many, many do so, but it is an eye opener.
[/quote]
Feel free to post on here, if others want to see too?