I’m with you on that. If anything, 10 hard work sets sounds like it might be too much for a lot of people, that’s about the max I would even try for lower body days.
Do you do one hard workout and one easy one? I do some lighter squats before deadlifting (I’m training for powerlifting too) usually something like 6 doubles with 65%, more for technique work than anything. I used to have two hard squat days a week but I’m recovering better and making progress at least at the same rate now. As for bench, I see no reason why I can’t have two hard bench days a week, my upper body recovers faster.
One squat day is dynamic with 60-80% usually for 6-10 doubles with bands or chains, often with a box, wider than normal and may use safety or cambered bar. The other is a regular squat day with a 5-3-1 rotation, but I may cycle use of a belt, or high bar position. I also rarely do AMRAP on these. It’s not necessary and may even halt my strength gains.
I bench heavy twice a week but one is a board press and the other uses bands. The boards cycle down from 4 to 3 to 2 boards over three weeks but the bands get bigger over three weeks. Usually I work up to target weight for 2, 3 or 5 reps, but I may ramp up to a 1-5 rep max every 3-5 workouts. I use a grip a little closer than competition for my bench pressing, and a 2 board press with that grip will usually be right on my max. I pause the board presses fully at the bottom. The band presses are done touch and go and I want them to be a little ballistic.
This^ is the core of my training but assistance, auxiliary, prehab etc changes every 2-3 weeks, sometimes disappearing altogether and sometimes getting a lot of emphasis.
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I have a question to add to this discussion. How much does excercise selection matter for muscle growth? I have read several articles and training books that suggest big barbell lifts drive muscle growth, and act as the “linchpin” excercise for a workout. However, it seems like pushing to failure and beyond would be easier to accomplish on machines. Personally, I use mostly free weights simply because I workout at home. But I was wondering, how important is it to squat and utilize other big barbell lifts to drive muscle growth?
I don’t see a study. I see you linking a review. That’s not a study.
Yes it’s well established that the immune system is highly involved with DOMS, but to say “I was congested with lymphatic fluids” would imply that you have some kind of immune system disorder.
Were you tested to see if you were elevated in a particular enzyme?
When you look at one of the main mechanisms for growth, which is mechanical tension, the big movements offer up the potential for a high degree of tension across multiple joints. This means there is usually a high degree of output for those muscle involved as well.
With single joint movements there can often be less stability involved (like say, a leg extension for example), which means output isn’t going to be very high (this is what I refer to as a low neural output movement). So the overall degree of mechanical tension is low in comparison to multi joint movements.
With that said, the fastest way to growth is to have a high degree of muscular output and stimulation, with a low degree of neural taxation. You also want to provide tension at different lengths in a muscle as well. This is why using single joint movements with a high failure point (meaning you go to true failure) is a great option because there’s little systemic taxation. Then you use compound movements with a lower failure point (form failure) with less volume to avoid the system taxation that is the real issue behind not being able to recover.
This one that I linked too: Muscular exercise can cause highly pathological liver function tests in healthy men - PMC Why do you call it a review? It describes itself as “a study” or “this study” 21 times examples:
“What this study adds”
“The primary objective of the present study”
" Study design"
“This was an open study”
“we conducted a study to clarify the effects of weightlifting on liver function tests.” etc.
I was involved in research exercise physiology and biochemistry and I am not sure why you would call it a “review” and not a “study”.
Your first link is a review. Not a study. You called it a study later. It’s a review.
This one.
Anyway, did you get tested to see if you had a particular enzyme elevation?
Does that mean that if growth is the goal, then it is better to place the isolation movements first in the workout, utlizing a mix of both compound and isolation movements?
Everyone should be mixing in compounds and isolation movements if muscle growth is the goal. That’s really the only way to truly stress the muscle at different lengths, which is ideal if you want more complete development. Where you put them in is up to you, but ideally you want to set appropriate failure points for movements based on their degree of neural taxation. So isolation movements tend to have low neural output, and most big barbell movements have a high degree of it, with a high degree of muscular output. Again, which is just another reason why you don’t need a lot of volume with them either. They do a great job of stimulating the growth response with less volume given that the effort is high.
If someone has a higher degree of stress in their lives from physical work, sports or whatever would they likely be better off front loading the isolation movements in the workout to mitigate the neural impact of the big lifts to some degree?
You could definitely do that. That’s how I work my training now. Isolation movements first most of the time, to create fatigue. That way the loading for the big movements doesn’t have to be as much yet still provide the same degree of muscular output and stimulation (without the systemic taxation).
Awesome. I find that work interferes with my performance on the big lifts, and the big lifts carry fatigue into my workday. I am going to give it a go with a PPL split 3 days a week with one big lift preceded by a couple isolation movements.
I didn’t say “I was congested with lymphatic fluids” as you wrote. I wrote that my muscles were congested with lymphatic fluid which I would say is an accurate explanation for what happens during the acute inflammatory response following resistance training. First, lymphatic vessels get congested with lymphatic fluid which can take days to drain (in fact muscle tears.pulls have been known to cause swollen lymph nodes lasting weeks). There have been plenty of articles on this site about how icing and NSAIDs “back-up” lymphatic drainage after training which can short circuit hypertrophy. Also, inflammation can reduce blood supply to a muscle for several days after training by occluding micro-vessels. I am pretty sure that John Rusin wrote an article explaining how massage and light training could speed up recovery by actively facilitating lymphatic drainage while immobilization, ice and NSAIDS could prolong lymphatic “back up.” I’ll look for the article. In research I was involved in, we found that resistance trained individuals had increased diameter lymphatic vessels for 3-8 days after a training session but that light training decreased the diameter and also decreased soreness and improved follow-up performance at one week. I was only involved in Ex phys research in the lab for two years so I don’t know where it went, but it was 23-24 years ago.
As for me, its a different issue. I was saying that I had elevated AST levels, which could have indicated liver damage, but my ALT was low (normal) and low bilirubin which means that I had elevated AST because I was regularly engaged in resistance training. (The liver releases AST AND ALT but muscle only release AST after weight training due to muscle cell rupture. It’s normal and well established). The study I linked to showed that resistance trained individuals have higher AST 7 days out from a resistance training session high enough to give a false positive for “liver enzymes” but that low ALT is counter-diagnostic to that. I took 1 week off of training and had normal AST levels. My AST levels on my first test were in line with what has been found with resistance trained individuals in general. The point there is that high AST 7 days after training indicates that there is still going to be macrophages being sent to cells a week after resistance training, and turning into lymphatic fluid which gets SLOWLY drained to the heart. My AST test has nothing to do with “lymphatic congestion” but the phenomenon of AST elevation after resistance training supports the proposition that lymphatic drainage after a training session may be on the time-scale of about a week.
By using both active dynamic oscillatory stretching with active static stretching, you speed up the recovery process by increasing lymphatic drainage and the clearance of byproducts and wastes from contractile tissue. 4 Ways to Greatly Accelerate Recovery
While the lymphatic system is pivotal to human function, too much local lymph can limit the recovery process of local tissues and the system as a whole.
From limiting delayed onset muscle soreness to aiding in lymphatic drainage,…Tip: Foam Roll AFTER Training For Fast Recovery
Active muscle pump is essentially the muscles of the lower body contracting over and over in an antagonist and agonist nature. This puts pressure on the vasculature and aids in lymphatic drainage, which is a powerful recovery mechanism. Tip: Make Gains With Active Recovery
Furthermore, movement with traction reduces pain, enhances lymphatic removal of inflammation, improves flexibility, and restores normal joint alignment. Radical Methods of Injury Rehabilitation
Dude you’re splitting hairs here. You wrote…
I believe that the second workout helped the muscles recover because when I trained them 1x/week then they just stayed tight and congested with lymphatic fluid for 7 days between workouts.
Which I then asked you if you were tested for an elevated enzyme which is the only way you could even verify this. And you won’t answer that because you were not tested for any particular elevated enzymes.
Second, I’ve already acknowledged that the immune system is involved with DOMS, but even the review you supplied talked about the fact that the level of t-cell related to muscle damage is not known, and a lot of it is theoretical at this point.
You’ve already covered the NSAID portion and the icing stuff. The point is, you didn’t go from a 225 bench to a 365 bench due to an extra training session that somehow “drained” your lymphatic fluid.
The ONLY way you’d know if you were congested like that, is if you have your enzymes tested. And if that was the case, then you have some type of immune system disorder that has nothing to do with weight training.
I’m aware that things even like contrast showers and contrast therapy have an lymphatic flushing effect. And that it can expedite recovery. But again, unless you were tested for some elevated enzyme related to your lymphatic system then it’s hogwash to say that and can’t be substantiated by you.
And being stuck at a 225 bench for 7 years is not normal at all. That seems almost impossible to me. And I’ve been at this a long time. And I’ve honestly never heard of such. You didn’t add 140 pounds to your bench after a seven year stall by throwing in an active recovery day. You can try to sell that to someone else who doesn’t know any better.
I was going to write “you could have done some steady state cardio and gotten the same restorative effect you’re talking about” but Rusin actually covered that too.
Dude…stop. Just stop.
The problem is, most people just don’t eat enough for muscle growth. We talk about all these factors, yet for most out there, getting in enough CALORIES is such a problem. I would prefer more quality calories if possible, but overall it is just a question of MORE than you are currently eating. Yes, we can show these people the optimal training factors for growth, but without the fuel, they are useless.
Most of the clients I have, many don’t eat breakfast, they have maybe a sandwich for lunch (or nothing if they are busy) and some shitty fast food frozen meal for dinner. The young skinny dudes I have who claim they are hard-gainers, when I ask them what they have eaten in a day, they literally say a couple of sandwiches and maybe a protein shake and claim that is a lot of food.
The reality is, most clients have no idea the effort in terms of getting in your calories it takes to build muscle.
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I looked back at this week training and even though I train 6x a week I actually do around 10 hard sets per body part per week
Just an update here - my high intensity hypertrophy recomp program just ended.
It’s interesting to note that the majority of those that finished, that did the best, were the 3 and 4 day a week groups.
The group that did the worst was the 6 day a week group. Only one guy from the 6 day a week group really crushed it body comp wise, but even he was really run down by the end. And says he will switch over to the 4 day a week split.
The guys who opted for the 3 and 4 times a week splits all crushed personal bests across the board and feel fine.
The only guys that ended up with some injuries were the 6 day a week guys. And again, ALL of them feel burnt now after 9 weeks (the first week is a break in/easy week, and the next two weeks are acclimation weeks as well).
Just some food for through for you guys. I don’t think that training 6 times a week, if you intend on training really hard, is a very good idea.
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