Isn‘t that why, at least with test enanthate, it’s advised to pin twice a week in order to keep the levels stable?!
No. there’s really not. I didn’t get on gear and change my training. And as I said (for the millionth time) I know tons of guys who cannot train high volume, while on gear, because they can’t recover.
It’s like you guys don’t want to believe that the whole “you recover so much faster on gear!” shit is a total myth.
As far as MPS being elevated, yes it most certainly is. Is it maximally elevated all the time? No. there’s nothing to show that it is. And as noted by Chris, all androgens have a half life or stimulate the receptor for a limited amount of time.
There’s also the factor of receptor saturation, where more of the dose has no effect on the body. Since we know that to be true, then you should probably also assume that the degree of MPS is going to be limited, even on gear, and be highly individualistic.
Ah… anyone remember the days when people didn’t know this stuff but still got jacked?
Anyone know any IFBB or WNBF pros or even high level NPC competitors who can even explain this stuff? 
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I’ve seen this first hand. My older brother taught me my first bro split when I was 17. We trained together six days a week. I saw him grow from week to week while it took me all summer. He was on gear; I was not. We did the same workouts with the same intensity.
There you go. Real world experience. No lab rats.
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Amazing. And the truth is, very little of this knowledge is going to actually help you get super jacked. No matter how much the evidence based crowd wants to pretend it will. It’s really all mental masturbation. It really is.
I was 250+ pounds totally natty, and squatting 500 for reps. No one was telling me there were differences in training natty or sauced up. I didn’t even care. Now people all over the net spout off this bullshit about how natty’s and enhanced need to train totally different. It’s complete and utter bullshit.
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Ok ok, I get your point!
I am allowed to point out: all over the net includes T-Nation- 
I get that. And it’s something I don’t agree with him on at all.
Great post!
Just some food for thought, even though it might sound a little bone-headed. I vividly remember a quote from an interview with Casey Victor, who was doing this before most of us on this board were born: “None of us know what the f— we’re doing!” And he was amazing!
That says something!
I was thinking about this, it kind of looks like maybe they are trying to come up with an alternate way of training from hypertrophy just to stay (or become) relevant. People figured out a long time ago that you can build muscle by doing a moderate number of hard sets once or maybe twice a week for each muscle group. Now the story is that you shouldn’t push so hard because it’s bad for this and that, but you should also do more sets and train more often and buy all their books and templates and go to 20 different seminars.
Last night I read Lyle Mcdonald’s review of the recent sarcoplasmic hypertrophy study. I don’t really follow Lyle, but maybe I will start. See this:
For reasons that are abundantly clear to me, the findings of this study are not being happily accepted by at least one member of a certain guru brain trust that I’ve been going on and on about (his name rhymes with Tad Broenfeld). Among his general mis-understanding (he’s under the impression that myofibrillar proteins did go down in absolute terms), he’s fallen back on the classic “Well it’s just one study.” Probably because if the results of this paper are correct, it has implications for ALL HIGH VOLUME studies (ahem, 45 sets/week) to date in terms of what is happening in terms of “growth” (i.e. it’s just a bunch of sarcoplasmic growth).
And the “It’s just one study” is a convenient dismissal. Except it’s not just this one study. Rather, at least 4 other studies, some using admittedly older technology, have identified this same type of response to training: an increase in sarcoplasmic hypertrophy over that of myofibrillar.
I think a lot d the confusion stems from the fact that it’s so counter intuitive that doing less can lead to more results.
Generally speaking meatheads love to train and be jacked as fuck, and have NO problem doing 10 sets of this, that, and the other exercise. And with most things in life, more = more.
So to hear people say “no actually if you do less you will get better results” runs contrary to everything inside our brain and experience for almost every other endeavor.
On top of that it provides an easy out for why ones results might not be as good as they want… “well if I had all day I train and could do 50 sets I’d be jacked too!”
It just seems so weird that 25-50 reps is “enough” (and 50 might even be “too much” depending on how things look overall).
Good discussion all around here.
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So I talked to Scott about the whole MPS being elevated all the time on androgens.
There’s no data that says this.
Here you guys go…
“As far as an “all the time” long-term measurement technique, that would have to be done with Deuterium oxide-based measures of MPS. Which is pretty damn new. That kind of statement is pretty specific and requires some context for a good answer.”
In other words, saying that MPS is “elevated all the time, 24/7” can’t be proven and hasn’t been looked at in humans on androgens yet.
I’m not sure where Thibs is getting that from, but if it’s from animal models it can more or less be dismissed as far as I’m concerned because there’s lots of stuff we see in animal models that never translate over into human studies.
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Uhuh!
Oh, did anyone stop to remember that Dorian Yates did seven or eight sets PER SESSION, regardless of how many body parts trained?!
Examples: chest and biceps workout:
Chest: 4 work sets
Biceps: 3 work sets
Legs:
Quads: 3
Hams: 3
Calves: 2
Frequency per muscle: once every 6 to 7 days.
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Just a quick testimony here - I am (was?) a volume junkie. @Frank_C probably knows that more than anyone. I started highlighting the sets where I really went all-out after reading through some of this thread, and it turned out my 20 sets were more like 8-10 real work sets, only my work sets were being eaten away at by all the junk I was doing. I started treating warmups like actual warmups, and planning 2-3 serious, intense, work sets to failure with occasional drop sets and supersets, and the weirdest thing happened - by cutting my work sets almost in half, my workouts have been HARDER. I don’t have it in my mind that “this is set 1 of 5, so I have to conserve energy or weight”, I can go balls to the wall with those 2-3 sets. Every one of my 8-10 work sets is now at 100% effort, and there’s not even an option to throw in a bunch of junk anymore. This is just me, and could be partly placebo effect, so I’m not making any sweeping statements here, but for these past few workouts, I’ve broken through to a new level of effort, and it took me doing more with less. Just a thought to people perusing this thread who can’t get the volume bug out of their head - try it out.
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This really makes me question Thib’s methods. I wonder if the whole neurotype training is bs as well.
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I agree with the discussion here and I still have to fight myself in the gym on back days. I’ll do four exercises with at least 4 sets to failure (total, not on each) and find myself thinking “I still need to hit this muscle.”
I can feel and isolate certain muscles on certain movements and some days I feel like I’m slacking if I didn’t feel every muscle work independently. Luckily, I’m winning the battle now and not adding sets to my sessions. But it’s still a battle.
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His neurotyping stuff, forgetting any of the neurotransmitter talk, basically boils down to “train how you LIKE, not how XYZ says you should” - AKA just train in a way you find enjoyable and you’ll probably get the best results that way, even if it isn’t a world record holders program. The neurotransmitter stuff is the icing on the cake as to WHY you might like to train that way (I take that all with a grain of salt)
His “best damn natural workout” is based on the idea that effort and frequency trump volume, and is basically 3 hard sets of 4 exercises per workout, done in a push/pull layout, and there’s a 4 day a week option which would be 6 hard sets per body part per week, which would be right in line with this threads “findings”
His current recommendations are really right in line with what we are all talking about in here.
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Lol what a loser, dude was barely activating muscle protein synthesis!! He was sitting around and not growing for days at a time! Imagine if he tripled his frequency what he could have done. It would have been Brutal.
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How does Serge Nubret fit into this?
Monday + Thursday: Quads (20 sets), Chest (32 sets)
Tuesday + Friday: Back (26 sets), Hamstrings (16 sets)
Wednesday + Saturday: Shoulders (24 sets), Arms (2 x 8 supersets), Calves (16 sets)
Sunday: Rest or abs training
No one is saying that high volume training doesnt or cant work, just that for every day joe’s its probably not the optimal way to go about building muscle, and is probably not the most efficient way.
Given that Serge wasnt 500 pounds of muscle we can safely assume his results are similar to what you would get out of many other forms of training… so knowing that, Would you rather do 32 sets for chest, or 6 and get the same results?
Take into account also this was very “pump based” training, meaning he chose to focus on the volume (and to an extent the frequency) end of the training triangle (volume, frequency, intensity) so it isnt like he was gutting out 30 HARD sets of chest… If you watch him train the dude looks like he is doing warm up set after warm up set after warm up set… many people would get boooorrrred of that too, and motivation cant be understated.
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Here we go again:
If pump training CAN work, what is it’s driver?
Why do so many enhanced guys advocate this type of training?