Really High Frequency Training

I just read some pieces about HFT, for strengthening tendons and joints, and just building strength.

The most elaborated pieces was one of Waterbury’s quiver: pick a upper body pull, push and a lower body move, start with a small amount of reps each day, and increase 1 rep every day for every excercise. This all next to the already used program.

How do you stand on it?

  • what would be a good excercies? The original program tells to leave the chosen movement out of the main program. I.e. Maybe dips since that is something hard to load for a strength movement.
    -Would so much exposure desense the body very fast?
    -Is it maybe more adviceable to work up to 60 reps, then drop back to 10 and add 5/10 lbs. Wouldn’t this built more strength in the long run, and decrease the time involved.
    -Would so much strength-skill (that’s basically what it is I guess, extreme strength skill) go down the crapper real fast when the grease isn’t grooved every day? Or would it stick pretty long and can be further developed.

[quote]Panopticum wrote:
I just read some pieces about HFT, for strengthening tendons and joints, and just building strength.
The most elaborated pieces was one of Waterbury’s quiver: pick a upper body pull, push and a lower body move, start with a small amount of reps each day, and increase 1 rep every day for every excercise. This all next to the already used program.

How do you stand on it?

  • what would be a good excercies? The original program tells to leave the chosen movement out of the main program. I.e. Maybe dips since that is something hard to load for a strength movement.
    -Would so much exposure desense the body very fast?
    -Is it maybe more adviceable to work up to 60 reps, then drop back to 10 and add 5/10 lbs. Wouldn’t this built more strength in the long run, and decrease the time involved.
    -Would so much strength-skill (that’s basically what it is I guess, extreme strength skill) go down the crapper real fast when the grease isn’t grooved every day? Or would it stick pretty long and can be further developed.[/quote]

It is my policy never to comment on the programs of other authors. I personally do not see working up to 60 reps as “strength”. Above 10 reps the strength element decreases very fast and the best zone to train strength is in the 3-6 reps range with an adequate load.

Totally understand your policy. It can set bad blood very fast.
I didn’t really intend to ask you specifically about the program, just about your opinion on building up reps so high for especially soft tissiue/cartilage.

I guess I shouldn’t referred to Chad’s program therefore. I just thought, wrongly, that a set template would make anwsering the question easier.

If you feel like it, I would still like to know how you stand on high reps for strengthening non-muscular tissue, unrelated to the given programme.

If you feel giving any opinion on this issue might not fit in your given policy, I will fully respect that.

[quote]Panopticum wrote:
Totally understand your policy. It can set bad blood very fast.
I didn’t really intend to ask you specifically about the program, just about your opinion on building up reps so high for especially soft tissiue/cartilage.

I guess I shouldn’t referred to Chad’s program therefore. I just thought, wrongly, that a set template would make anwsering the question easier.

If you feel like it, I would still like to know how you stand on high reps for strengthening non-muscular tissue, unrelated to the given programme.

If you feel giving any opinion on this issue might not fit in your given policy, I will fully respect that.[/quote]

Yes, high rep work has been shown to strengthen tendons. BUT it cannot really build muscle strength. So I wouldn’t use that as a main training method. I would simply add a set of 50-100 reps at the end of the session on a movement that isn’t neurologically demanding. You CAN build up the reps over time, that’s fine. But it should not be your main training method.

Thank you very much. Of course I will run a ‘conventional’ template, but stengthening soft tissue is a very smart thing to do to built more of an stable structure for strength.