When you say you do 3-4 sets for an exercise, do you feel that all of the sets are important, or are you just warming up for 1 hard set, or 2 hard sets. I mean, if you can do 5 plates on a side for chest, and you start with 2 plates, I’d guess you could get 50 reps if you really wanted to, but I suspect you don’t. Are the light sets just there to “set you up” for the one good set at the end, AND do you go to failure, or just to a certain feeling usually.
Your training sounds very similar to what Dorian Yates describes in blood and guts. Just wondering if you read that?
[quote]GriffinC wrote:
Like he said before, certain things work for him that don’t work for others. I guess he finds that these things produce better results. He has the results to show for, so I guess it’s just personal preference.[/quote]
What in the FUCK are you doing answering for ProfX?
I’m sure he needs an 18 year old punk kid that is fond of swallowing Tube Steaks going to bat for him. Especially an ‘athlete’ like you.
[quote]Thad wrote:
Have you found from your experience that HS machines are better for hypertrophy than free exercises like Bench, deads and squats or is this something you?re just doing right now?
Thanks, Thad[/quote]
No, they aren’t better…just like high school isn’t “better” than junior high…other than the girls have bigger breasts and you can drive…and sneak out of the house and get drunk…and have a better chance of having sex. OK, so high school is better, but that isn’t the point.
It was simply a progression. I gained a lot of size using free weights, dumbbells and some machines. I stopped using some of the free weight movements once the weight I was using surpassed the safety and effectiveness of doing the exercise considering the alternatives.
[quote]NateN wrote:
This has been an interesting read, but I think the more useful question would be:
How did you train while you were building yourself up the fastest?[/quote]
I’ve trained a lot of ways. My first real routine was from a box of Cybergenics. This current “try to find the one true way to workout” fad is a fallacy. There is no one true way to train that produces the best results because your body is adaptive. That means, what works for you right now, may not work the best for you when you gain another 10lbs of muscle. The one thing that has worked is balancing strength with form. I train to get stronger. Due to that and my diet, I also get bigger. Because you can’t simply get stronger forever, there have to be periods where your focus is more on form. One of the best ways to do this is to move up to a weight that you can only get maybe 3 times at the most. Continue working on form until you can get that same weight up for about 8 times and then move up again. There is nothing wrong with some cheating.
Some of the best advice you will ever get is to train with someone much stronger and more developed than you. Even if they aren’t the most educated, you can learn something from anyone with more experience than you…PhD or not.
[quote]ConorM wrote:
Prof X why do you like to split the body up so much and use so many isolation exercises? I know you train for aesthetics not performance but I have read so much about the advantage of total body training and compound movements. Do you find you induce more hypertrophy this way? Just wondering.[/quote]
You have to be careful about getting all of your information from only one source. While testosterone is a great resource, they don’t own the patent on training knowledge, they simply have some very good thinkers on site who are good at what they do. That doesn’t mean everyone else is a dumbass.
I think compound movements are great for beginners who need to build a base of strength. I think you are doing yourself a disservice by ONLY doing compound movements forever. If your goal is to be a powerlifter, compound the shit out of youself and have fun doing it. If your goal is full body development and bench pressing 2 plates a side isn’t still considered a “lofty fantasy” to you, why avoid biceps curls?
[quote]rainjack wrote:
GriffinC wrote:
Like he said before, certain things work for him that don’t work for others. I guess he finds that these things produce better results. He has the results to show for, so I guess it’s just personal preference.
What in the FUCK are you doing answering for ProfX?
I’m sure he needs an 18 year old punk kid that is fond of swallowing Tube Steaks going to bat for him. Especially an ‘athlete’ like you.[/quote]
Ahahahahhaha, I was just pointing out something he already stated. Cry me a river.
When you say you do 3-4 sets for an exercise, do you feel that all of the sets are important, or are you just warming up for 1 hard set, or 2 hard sets. I mean, if you can do 5 plates on a side for chest, and you start with 2 plates, I’d guess you could get 50 reps if you really wanted to, but I suspect you don’t. Are the light sets just there to “set you up” for the one good set at the end, AND do you go to failure, or just to a certain feeling usually.
Your training sounds very similar to what Dorian Yates describes in blood and guts. Just wondering if you read that?
Thanks [/quote]
All of the sets are important in that they get me ready for that last all out set of my max weight for reps. I would pull something, or simply rip something out if I walked into the gym and immediately laid on the HS flat bench and tried to hit 5 plates a side. Not only that, but there has to be a balance between fatigue and failure. They are both important to a degree. My last set is generally all I can do until I get ready to drop the weight. I usually stop one half rep short of simply dropping everything…so that I don’t simply drop everything and rip something off.
As far as me getting 50 reps with 2 plates a side, that has much to do with fiber distribution. I know I have a majority of fast twitch muscle fibers. I know this because I can generate a lot of power but I don’t have great endurance. I can push you car real great and look good…for about 40 feet. Then I look like I just ran a marathon. I don’t train for endurance at this point. My goal up to this point has been size and strength with a strong focus on fast twitch muscle fibers. I will eventually work on increasing endurance, but only after I feel I have maximized my growth potential.
Back to what you started with though, yes, most of those first sets (while they aren’t easy because they are progressive) are mostly to get me ready for my last set…which all does the comprehensive job of fatiguing the first wave of muscle fibers to fire allowing me to create a better environment for growth.
[quote]GriffinC wrote:
rainjack wrote:
GriffinC wrote:
Like he said before, certain things work for him that don’t work for others. I guess he finds that these things produce better results. He has the results to show for, so I guess it’s just personal preference.
What in the FUCK are you doing answering for ProfX?
I’m sure he needs an 18 year old punk kid that is fond of swallowing Tube Steaks going to bat for him. Especially an ‘athlete’ like you.
Ahahahahhaha, I was just pointing out something he already stated. Cry me a river.[/quote]
aren’t you the same kid who was arguing with the Prof about his training not that long ago?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
mertdawg wrote:
Proff X:
When you say you do 3-4 sets for an exercise, do you feel that all of the sets are important, or are you just warming up for 1 hard set, or 2 hard sets. I mean, if you can do 5 plates on a side for chest, and you start with 2 plates, I’d guess you could get 50 reps if you really wanted to, but I suspect you don’t. Are the light sets just there to “set you up” for the one good set at the end, AND do you go to failure, or just to a certain feeling usually.
Your training sounds very similar to what Dorian Yates describes in blood and guts. Just wondering if you read that?
Thanks
All of the sets are important in that they get me ready for that last all out set of my max weight for reps. I would pull something, or simply rip something out if I walked into the gym and immediately laid on the HS flat bench and tried to hit 5 plates a side. Not only that, but there has to be a balance between fatigue and failure. They are both important to a degree. My last set is generally all I can do until I get ready to drop the weight. I usually stop one half rep short of simply dropping everything…so that I don’t simply drop everything and rip something off.
As far as me getting 50 reps with 2 plates a side, that has much to do with fiber distribution. I know I have a majority of fast twitch muscle fibers. I know this because I can generate a lot of power but I don’t have great endurance. I can push you car real great and look good…for about 40 feet. Then I look like I just ran a marathon. I don’t train for endurance at this point. My goal up to this point has been size and strength with a strong focus on fast twitch muscle fibers. I will eventually work on increasing endurance, but only after I feel I have maximized my growth potential.
Back to what you started with though, yes, most of those first sets (while they aren’t easy because they are progressive) are mostly to get me ready for my last set…which all does the comprehensive job of fatiguing the first wave of muscle fibers to fire allowing me to create a better environment for growth.[/quote]
So, how much % of your 1RM do you work up to? Is this like a 5RM thing? You build up sets of 5-6 untill you hit your 5RM, or something similar?
Hey Prof X how much do they pay you at T-mag to give all this great advice?
On another note every damn thread I open now, it seems like there is always a stupid ass argument going on with some 19 year olds or however old they are.
Grow up guys and stop screwing up the quality threads.
What kind of progress would be needed before starting to train like you? That is, I would likely shortchange myself if I were to try and put your methods into use tomorrow; so when are you advanced enough? At least, one way to answer this is to tell us your training age and stats when you arrived at your current methods.
Let me also say that whether or not your methods work for the rest of us, you have a hell of a physique.
[quote]DON D1ESEL wrote:
What kind of progress would be needed before starting to train like you? That is, I would likely shortchange myself if I were to try and put your methods into use tomorrow; so when are you advanced enough? At least, one way to answer this is to tell us your training age and stats when you arrived at your current methods.
[/quote]
I have been training like this for a while. I have grouped body parts like chest and triceps or back and shoulders a couple of times, but maybe 4-5 years ago, I just felt as if the weight I was using made it too taxing to try to do several body parts in one session. I was training like this during the time that pic of me at 210lbs was taken. Even currently, I go relatively heavy. I couldn’t imagine trying to do my back the way I train it now and then having enough energy to train biceps well enough to feel as if I hit them right.
If I wanted to half ass my way through the training of a second body part, then yes, I could train that way. But why do that when I can train one body part, get out of the gym in about 35min and make more progress than the guys I see spending up to and over 2 hours at a time in the gym? As a beginner, I needed to train more than one body part a session. I wasn’t using weights anywhere near what I use now so the overall intensity of training wass less.
You also have to realize that I wanted to become a personal trainer so that I could have more knowledge as far as how to train myself (by way of training others and seeing how their bodies responded). It was the same reason I had a deep interest in biology, anatomy and physiology. I just wanted to know how the body worked inside and out. It isn’t like I just decided one day to do this. I know how I felt after training and I also gauged my progress. If I hadn’t grown from this, I would have quit training like that years ago.
So, I guess to answer you question, I started training like this when the weight I was using, along with the exercises I was doing, put enough stress on my body as a whole to allow only focusing on one body part while at the same time leaving the gym feeling like I kicked the shit out of myself. For me, that was within 4 years of training seriously.
profX- I train very similar to you. I also find that the level of intensity I work out at makes it hard to effectively hit another bodypart in the same workout. I started out with the traditional compund movements and different programs, but found this way to be very effective.
My question for you is, how much emphasis do you put on your pump at the end and during your workout? I lift very heavy but have found that adding a 4th or 5th set of light weight, say 12-15 reps really enhances it. what are your thoughts on this?
thanks
[quote]matsm21 wrote:
profX- I train very similar to you. I also find that the level of intensity I work out at makes it hard to effectively hit another bodypart in the same workout. I started out with the traditional compund movements and different programs, but found this way to be very effective.
My question for you is, how much emphasis do you put on your pump at the end and during your workout? I lift very heavy but have found that adding a 4th or 5th set of light weight, say 12-15 reps really enhances it. what are your thoughts on this?
thanks[/quote]
I do the same thing. At least two to three exercises are all out as heavy as possible for the last set. The last exercise is however many sets or reps that will pump more blood into the area and basically fatigue the muscle. For chest, the last exercise is generally the pec deck. Once I feel like I can barely bring my arms together, it is time to stop. For legs, I have started doing the machine leg press as the last exercise. Once I fell exhausted, it’s time to leave.
[quote]xMeat_Headx wrote:
Prof, do you do any direct tricep work? Also, I never saw your old pic, any chance you could repost it or post a new one?[/quote]
For triceps, I suually do triceps pressdowns, dips using the HS machine, kickbacks, and single arm pressdowns with the cable. That Cybex machine is good as well if you workout at a gym that has one. I will pm my pic to you.
Very insightful information, thank you.
Can you please elaborate on your approach to pre-during-post nutrition?
Do you tend to follow what is recommended here or did you find something different that works for you?
Also, I would appreciate if you could PM your progression pics.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
It kind of reminds me of Ronnie Coleman’s gym, only they actually sweep the floors here and you can’t write on the walls.
[/quote]
Do you yell “Yeah buddyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” before every set?