Hey CT, i tried the rep scheme u showed me, the 3x6 3x3 and 3x10. I really like that and now i have to change my ‘‘program’’ do you have something nice like that that you can suggest me ?
Thanks you
[quote]bigmax wrote:
Hey CT, i tried the rep scheme u showed me, the 3x6 3x3 and 3x10. I really like that and now i have to change my ‘‘program’’ do you have something nice like that that you can suggest me ?
Thanks you [/quote]
Why do you “have to” change your program?
I need to bring something new to my body to kill the nervous system and get better gain no ? And i like to try everything so i dont like to be 3 months on the same program.
[quote]bigmax wrote:
kill the nervous system and get better gain [/quote]
I think you’ve got it the wrong way around. Killing the nervous system = killing your gains. You want to stimulate the nervous system without putting it in a state where it can’t keep up with recovery over a long period of time.
BigMax you don’t understand how to train. You should want to stay with the same “thing” as long as possible. Program hopping = doom gains.
By the way best nervous system killing program ever: sleep as little as possible…like 3 hrs per night. Make sure you train every day with deadlifts to a single rm.
There you have it nervous system = toast.
See how that doesn’t make sense?
[quote]Jamesliftsheavy wrote:
BigMax you don’t understand how to train. You should want to stay with the same “thing” as long as possible. Program hopping = doom gains. [/quote]
Excellent way to put it… the longest you can stick to an approach and get gains the more overall gains you’ll get in your career. I myself sometimes shortchange my progression by trying out new training approaches, but a big part of my job is to find methods and approaches that work. So in my case, changing things up more often is a good thing for my job, but that is not necessarily the best way to train for maximum gains.
[quote]bigmax wrote:
I need to bring something new to my body to kill the nervous system and get better gain no ? And i like to try everything so i dont like to be 3 months on the same program.[/quote]
Killing your nervous system is one of the dumbbest thing you can do. If anything you want to reduce nervous system strain while increasing performance. There is nothing worse for gaining than a fatigued nervous system… it leads to loss of motivation, reduced motor unit activation, lower strength levels, lower metabolic rate, etc.
Here’s something I wrote on the subject…
Overhauling your program completely every 4 weeks is actually one of the greatest illusion in training. Here’s how it goes:¦
The first week you perform a new program with new exercises your performance is pretty low simply because some of the exercises might feel uncomfortable or your timing might be off. Thatâ??s normal because you are doing patterns that the body is not used to doing.
To give you an example, just for fun I went to train with a friend recently and to get a mental relief I decided to just do what he did. His main pressing exercise was an incline bench press. I hadn’t done a true incline bench press in something like 6 years. Getting 6 reps with 225lbs was hard: and I can bench press over 405lbs!
So that first week your numbers are not really good. By the second week you are already more used the movements and it feels a bit more in the groove. As a result the weights go up.
The third time around your nervous system is more efficient: it can better synchronize the muscle fibers involved in the movement and recruit more fast-twitch fibers. So your numbers make a fairly big jump on that third week. These are neural adaptation, they occur without even a slight gain in muscle mass.
During the fourth week the rapid neural adaptations are pretty much done. So progress slows down a lot. In fact most peoples numbers will not progress on that 4th week.
So the trainer changes the program. What happens? New exercises and new methodsâ?¦ the first week numbers are low because everything feels uncomfortable again, you need to get used to the exercises.
And so the cycle continues: week 2: gains because you are finding your groove, week 3: rapid gains because of neural adaptation, week 4: gains slow down or stop because neural adaptation stops, week 5: trainer sells you a new program because “your body has adapted which is why you stopped progressing”.
And the following goes on and on until you are tired of your body not changing or you run out of money.
The thing is that during all that time, you never really added much muscle mass. Why? Because most of the adaptations will be neural.
See, when doing intense lifting the body is under stress and it will adapt in such a way that if the same stress is faced, the body will be better prepared to handle it.
In doing so the body will look for the most economical solution. Improving the neural efficiency is much more economic than building new muscle because it doesn’t require much actual tissue construction. Building muscle is very energy-costly (it costs about 10 000 calories to fuel the processes involved in building one pound of muscle tissue) and is also very demanding on the body. Not to mention that adding muscle tissue also increases the energy demand of the body. In simple terms the body will absolutely want to avoid building muscle unless it really has to.
So if it has a choice between building new tissue and improving the efficiency of something that already exists, it will for with the later 10 out of 10 times.
During the first 2-3 weeks on a new program with new exercises (or ones you haven’t done in a long time) a very larger portion of the adaptation are neural. As such you don’t gain that much muscle mass.
To start adding more muscle mass you will have to “run out” of rapid neural adaptations, and since you keep on putting stress on your body it will be forced to build muscle tissue.
So when you hit your first plateau on a new program, that’s where you will actually start to build muscle the most provided that you keep training hard.
If you look at the program of the biggest and strongest guys, they don’t change exercises very often. They might throw in a few sets of a new move here in there for variation, but the meat of their training keeps revolving around the same movements. Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, Arnoldâ?¦ they stuck with the same movements. When they wanted variation they changed the reps and training methods but they stuck to the same movements. They anecdotally found that “sticking to the basic lifts” worked best.
More recently look at Jim Wendler, Mark Rippetoe and myself. We all have our own fetish lifts that we keep on using year round. They constitute the foundation of our program and they don’t change. We might change sets, reps and training methods but we stick to the same lifts. If we changed too often, we would never build as much muscle.
CT - How do you know when you’ve stopped progressing and it’s time to switch the sets/reps/methods up but not necessarily the main lifts? I’ve struggled to know when to keep pushing and when to switch up, in some cases ending up somewhat burnt out, achy, unmotivated, etc. without even any noticeable muscle increases.
[quote]mstorm wrote:
CT - How do you know when you’ve stopped progressing and it’s time to switch the sets/reps/methods up but not necessarily the main lifts? I’ve struggled to know when to keep pushing and when to switch up, in some cases ending up somewhat burnt out, achy, unmotivated, etc. without even any noticeable muscle increases. [/quote]
Well, when a movement stagnate… as in no progression for more than 3 weeks on a movement it’s time to change the sets/reps or use a different method (e.g. adding chains, changing the tempo of the exercise, doing the movement with a pause, etc.).
When you start to lose “the feel” when doing a movement (it starts to feel less coordinated, like you have a hard time finding your groove or don;t feel it in the muscles it targets) then it might be time to change exercise.
Be careful, if you are eating a caloric deficit (voluntarily because you are trying to lose fat or unvoluntarily because you underestimate how much you need to eat) you will stop progressing on a movement, but that doesn’t mean that the loading schemes/methods aren’t working, just that you aren’t fueling your body enough to progress.
lol im bad in english thats not what i wanted to say ahahah i just want another rep scheme than the 3x6 3x3 3x10 thats it
[quote]bigmax wrote:
lol im bad in english thats not what i wanted to say ahahah i just want another rep scheme than the 3x6 3x3 3x10 thats it[/quote]
3 x 5, 3 x 2 , 3 x 9
Seriously, one that works well is:
1 x 5 , 1 x 4, 1 x 3, 1 x 2, 1 x 1
3 x 5 @ 80% of the 1 rep set, 30-45 seconds between sets
1 x 10@ 70% (of the 1 rep set)
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
[quote]bigmax wrote:
lol im bad in english thats not what i wanted to say ahahah i just want another rep scheme than the 3x6 3x3 3x10 thats it[/quote]
3 x 5, 3 x 2 , 3 x 9
Seriously, one that works well is:
1 x 5 , 1 x 4, 1 x 3, 1 x 2, 1 x 1
3 x 5 @ 80% of the 1 rep set, 30-45 seconds between sets
1 x 10@ 70% (of the 1 rep set)
[/quote]
CT would you use that rep scheme under a hypertrophy cycle generally?
[quote]mstorm wrote:
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
[quote]bigmax wrote:
lol im bad in english thats not what i wanted to say ahahah i just want another rep scheme than the 3x6 3x3 3x10 thats it[/quote]
3 x 5, 3 x 2 , 3 x 9
Seriously, one that works well is:
1 x 5 , 1 x 4, 1 x 3, 1 x 2, 1 x 1
3 x 5 @ 80% of the 1 rep set, 30-45 seconds between sets
1 x 10@ 70% (of the 1 rep set)
[/quote]
CT would you use that rep scheme under a hypertrophy cycle generally?[/quote]
I don’t look at training like that. I’m all about building muscle mass through high performance training.
Yeah I kinda thought of that after asking the question but it was too late 
Just thought I’d share my ring pull-up session today using ramp/density since it’s less mentioned than the big barbell/pressing movements.
I did some skin the cat, straddle front lever, and inverted rows then ramped up on weighted chins:
Bw x 5
+10 x 3
+10 x 3
25 lbs plate x 3
30 lbs x3
35 lbs x 3
40 lbs x 3
45 lbs x 1 => Started to hold peak contraction at top, and did some mini “pulls”
Kept going up by 5 lbs until I hit 75
Then dropped to a 25 lbs plate and did a bunch of triplets for about 5 minutes. After awhile it felt like “myoreps”.
Ended workout with more bodyweight chin and row variations.
CT would this be an appropriate ramp/density workout using chin-ups? Thanks.
CT - Regarding your post in this thread about neural adaptations taking up the first 2-3 weeks of a new program, how would that apply to a program like your 10-day layer where it cycles through different rep maxes from week to week and then repeats? I’m wondering if the 2-3 week range applies since you’re doing the same lift but with a different max ramp rep target every workout.
I ask because I’m doing a similar cycle plan but based on your ramp/density/carry using either a 1, 3, and 6RM ramp depending on the week, and then starts over. One cycle takes me about a week and a half… I’m only into my second cycle of it and expect I’ll be able to get through it at least 2 more cycles beating my previous numbers. Thank you.