I’ve repeated this mantra many times over the years… Especially during wrestling and grappling. I’d tell the guys we can train hard or long…not both.
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I find “clean” eaters have an especially difficult time adding lean tissue. Brown rice, plain chicken breasts, egg whites (etf), etc… add very few calories
Maybe just reduce the volume or intensity of the big lifts ?
This thread kind of reminded me about DC training, which I enjoyed once upon a time. I might try that again later this summer.
Paul - thanks for the discussion. I’ve really enjoyed reading this.
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Will you be releasing details on this in afticle or ebook anytime?
Not right now. I will be running another group here in the next two weeks.
I’ve already done those things. I honestly think I need to start rethinking the lifts that I use.
How long were the workouts?
What kind of calorie deficits?
How much improvement in body composition is reasonable in a 9 week period? 2-3%, 4-5%, more?
I’ve typically trained 4-6 days a week but tried to limit my training to <45 minutes starting with my first hard set, but as I’ve gotten older, I seem to benefit more from complete off days, and am working on 3-4x/week programming but wondering whether its beneficial to add exercises and time to make up for fewer training days.
Would you mind sharing the splits at this point?
Was it push/pull, push/pull/lower, or something different?
No because they all paid to have me coach them through the 9 weeks.
The workouts were not long, and the focus was on effort, and progressive overload, but also making sure there was enough movement selection to stress the muscles at different lengths.
Pretty much everyone hit lifetime PR’s in the prescribed rep ranges, while losing fat. The ones that had a high degree of compliance anyway. The dieting part is fairly difficult and puts everyone in a pretty deep hypocaloric state for at least 4 days of the week. Then there’s some fairly high carb loading done once a week and moderate carb loading done twice a week.
Overall, the ones that had a really high degree of compliance lost a good deal of fat while improving all of their selected lifts.
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Fair enough! It sounds like you’re kind of running your own study with these groups.
Is this a work in progress?
If so, I’m guessing we’ll have a chance to hear about it in the future.
hahah well there’s no control group and nothing is blinded, but it is good data collection overall (anecdotally). It turned out a lot like I thought. The guys that are over zealous about training frequency hit walls, and the ones that erred on the side of being slightly conservative made awesome progress. Kinda like the study I just did the last article about. Moderation in terms of frequency and volume tend to pay off big if you’re just putting a lot of effort into the limited work you’re doing.
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Summers coming
Hell its summer here in Cocoa Beach!
Love ago have the program for vacation prep!
Anyone interested can shoot me an email. paul@lift-run-bang.com
@Paul_Carter
I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on rest periods. Some people claim that shorter rest periods are better for hypertrophy, on the other hand Eric Helms said that too short rest is not good because you won’t be able to do as many reps in subsequent sets. He’s still recommending 3-5 minutes though. What about for more fatiguing stuff like hard sets of squats? Of course you don’t want to spend all day in the gym, but what are the pros and cons of short breaks vs. longer breaks?
It really depends on the movements. Does anyone really need 3-5 minuets between say, triceps pushdowns or leg curls? Low neural output movements that also are low muscular output movements probably don’t need more than 90 seconds rest between them.
Where something like squats, or rack pulls, or high rep leg presses with significant loading? I don’t even count the rest time. I just take as long as I need.
In all honesty I consider timing rest periods an utter waste of time in the gym. And I’ve never really done it in 30 years. I go to the next set when I’m “ready”.
Is progressive overload really a driver or growth or does it go hand in hand with progress? Hitting a plateau is where most people fail in this journey. When you get there you can’t progressive overload your away out of it. But you can change frequency, volume and effort. I would include recovery in all this too which is kind of the balance of the other 3, that fits more with the synergistic combination idea.
And you can change all of those factors but the fact is, if you’re not lifting any more weight for more reps in six months, then you’re not going to be any bigger.
Paul which of your programs do you think best represent your current ideas?
I have you SLL book and the LRB split in there has always caught my eye as something to try. Lots of “to a top set” rx which kind of sound similar to what’s in this thread.
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Paul
DC training has been mentioned a few times above. Looking at the overall advice which is to limit workouts to about 10 sets total volme, would you count a rest pause set done DC style to one set or three sets, or would some other parameters apply.
Cheers
Gazz