Stupid Arguments & Recommendations

countingbeans · November 13, 2009, 3:27am

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
countingbeans wrote:
Therizza wrote:
I don’t think anyone ever said not to ask a big bodybuilder how he got there.

yeah man, they have. I posted the picture of the bullshit button when one doucher said it.

While I can see the value of looking to someone who tried like a motherfucker to overcome average genetics, to write off someone with elite genetics, because of them, is stupid.

Perhaps we should ask this fellow…[/quote]

LOL.

You know whats funny?

You and BBB and Sento and a few other guys are like legit geniuses. (I’d put GG up their too, but you know, he’s just over compensating for a small package…) And I’m pretty sure you guys could read every article, book and research study in the world and still make progress. But people who aren’t as generally intelligent will read a quarter of this stuff and just end up all fucked up. (Myself included.)

I started to get wrapped up in it. Then this guy, in 50’s or 60’s, who split cleaned what I was pulling from the floor at the time, said to me that it was a simple as eat, lift, sleep. I felt like I got smacked in the face with the common sense stick. I stopped thinking about it.

Started doing what big dudes did, and bam. (Which makes me a retard. I have been doing that with my career for years, but when it came to moving weights, god forbid I do the same.)

I thank that guy every fucking day. I feel better, look better, am stronger, and actually made progress.

ajweins · November 13, 2009, 3:35am

[quote]Professor X wrote:
GluteusGigantis wrote:
HK24719 wrote:
This isn’t the reason why there are seeming so few truly big guys in most gyms.

Regardless of terminology, which really isn’t all that confusing in the first place, people simply don’t want to take much effort to improve themselves in any area of their lives.

The fact that building an impressive physique requires years of dedication in the gym and kitchen means that there simply will not be many who are successful.

The vast majority of people are too lazy, and much lazier than our ancestors.

I disagree, not in a fuck you kindof way, but here’s my example.

A buddy of mine (owns his own gym, mid 20’s) who trains very regularly wanted to ramp up his strength/size gains and wanted to try something new. I suggested that he have a look at the DC model of training and give it a go. I know he’s been training with weights and all kinds of odd techniques over the years…

So I run into him the other weekend at a mutual get-together, and he said he’d given that (DC type training) a go, but got bored. Also, he found that it wasn’t “functional strength” he was gaining, which was a goal in addition to size and general strength. So, he’s gone back to weight training using Swiss balls/BOSU balls combined with free or cable weights to be more “functional”.

I know, story you’ve probably all heard heaps, but this is my point.

This guy is dedicated, and expresses a desire to get bigger/stronger.

People are getting all cluttered up in bullshit, and are generally trying to do something complicated to make themselves feel more important or look ‘different’ in the gym (IMO), and are missing the big, very basic picture about what works.

Exactly. It isn’t like there were more people 10 years ago that wanted to get huge. It was that those who did didn’t have 5,000 different methodologies being force fed to them as they are told that they must memorize thousands of brand new terms and read tons of ridiculous books from wannabe “gurus”.

That is why we keep saying “keep it simple”. You have skinny newbs on this site who really think they are hot shit because they can quote certain authors by heart. These are often the same ones who are truly so clueless and turned around that they write nonsense like, “I like to use my CNS to lift weights”…as if they can shut it on and off.

You have way too many undereducated people trying to act like scholars.

You have way too many people getting lost in a forest of bullshit jargon when they would benefit more from NOT reading so much crap and simply getting in the gym and working hard while observing what the people who actually built big muscles are doing.

I had one poster call me out for not knowing what “5x5” was a couple of years ago…as if that was even important.

It means there are people who truly think their progress hinges on whether they do exactly “X” number of sets and reps. The fact that they use the same weight for all of these sets and that they really aren’t making that much progress overall AND that their choice of training has led them to having muscle imbalances from pure neglect doesn’t even register as being a problem to them.

Watching lay people try to use terminology outside of their league is painful to watch at best.[/quote]

LOL. I see this all the time. There are guys in my graduate program that have their CSCS from the NSCA and all they do is talk training principles and what they are doing and yet they barely look like they train at all.

BONEZ217 · November 13, 2009, 3:43am

I’m letting everyone know that they are missing a huge point with this stuff. Pyramids are damn three dimensional shapes. Some have 4 side and some have 3 sides. Which kind of pyramid are we referring to when the weight goes up and reps go down? Is that a 3 sided pyramid; I’ve always assumed that was the 3 sided kind.

So I guess that would make going up in weight and down in reps then back down in weight a 4 sided pyramid. What about pyramids that are flat on top, like Mayan temples. Is there a rep and weight range for that type? I think a big problem is that most people picture the Great Pyramids of Giza and completely forget about the Mayan pyramids.

I understand that the Mayan people just vanished meaning they probably aren’t a great society to model one’s traning philosophy after but they did have a sweet calendar. If the Mayans had a battle with the Egyptians who would win? My guess is that the Mayans win because they got stronger from their mysterious weight/rep scheme.

Some people really make too big of a deal about this shit. I’m going to stop using names and go back to calling it what I did when I first started: Lifting Weights

countingbeans · November 13, 2009, 3:47am

[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
What about pyramids that are flat on top, like Mayan temples?[/quote]

Wouldn’t that be a trapezoid?

I’m not sure, I stopped taking math at accounting for a reason.

Mad_Duck · November 13, 2009, 3:52am

[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
I’m letting everyone know that they are missing a huge point with this stuff. Pyramids are damn three dimensional shapes. Some have 4 side and some have 3 sides. Which kind of pyramid are we referring to when the weight goes up and reps go down? Is that a 3 sided pyramid; I’ve always assumed that was the 3 sided kind.

So I guess that would make going up in weight and down in reps then back down in weight a 4 sided pyramid. What about pyramids that are flat on top, like Mayan temples. Is there a rep and weight range for that type? I think a big problem is that most people picture the Great Pyramids of Giza and completely forget about the Mayan pyramids.

I understand that the Mayan people just vanished meaning they probably aren’t a great society to model one’s traning philosophy after but they did have a sweet calendar. If the Mayans had a battle with the Egyptians who would win? My guess is that the Mayans win because they got stronger from their mysterious weight/rep scheme.

Some people really make too big of a deal about this shit. I’m going to stop using names and go back to calling it what I did when I first started: Lifting Weights [/quote]

Okay, the pyramid argument is getting a bit circular now.

BONEZ217 · November 13, 2009, 4:15am

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
BONEZ217 wrote:
What about pyramids that are flat on top, like Mayan temples?

Wouldn’t that be a trapezoid?

[/quote]

Semantics…

Patriarch · November 13, 2009, 4:30am

What ever happened to the Weider Principles? Hadn’t heard folks talk about those in years (or at least not by Weider name) . . . I’ve always preferred instinctive training.

Bill_Roberts · November 13, 2009, 4:33am

Well then, the Weider Instinctive Training Principle ought to suit you just fine!

Bill_Roberts · November 13, 2009, 5:00am

For background – it’s not that I think anyone needs to read it to see what to do – I found this a few hours ago, as I also hadn’t seen the Weider Principles for a long time and was interested to see what the full list was and so decided to go look.

(Note: I’ve clipped out part of the article for reasons of length.)

THE JOE WEIDER BODYBUILDING SYSTEM
by Frederick Hatfield PhD of DrSquat.com

The Weider System has been in existence for fifty years or so, and has grown over the years to incorporate other great training ideas as they came along. It’s actually not a “system” in the strict definition of the term, but rather a “guide” to aid you in developing your own personal system based on your own unique recuperative ability, experience, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and —well – “guts” to go the distance.

[It is important to recognize that] The list of methods is totally flexible. Within the instructions for each are listed guidelines to aid you in discerning whether to use it and how often to employ it in your day-to-day training microcycles.

The three categories of principles discussed in the Weider System are listed below with a brief explanation of each. One of the principles appears in all three categories. That’s the Instinctive Training Principle. Folks, it’s simple. Use your own training experience and knowledge of how your body responds to exercise stress when planning and carrying out a training program! This must take place on a cycle-to-cycle, day-to-day and quite literally a minute-to-minute basis!

WEIDER PRINCIPLES TO HELP YOU PLAN YOUR TRAINING CYCLE

Cycle Training Principle (Breaking your training year into cycles for strength, mass or contest preparation you help avoid injury and keep your body responsive to adaptation)
Split System Training Principle (Breaking your workout week into upper versus lower body training, for example, results in more intense training sessions)
Double or Triple Split Training Principle (Breaking your workout down into two or three shorter, more intense training sessions per day)
Muscle Confusion Principle (Muscles accommodate to a specific type of stress (“habituate” or “plateau”) when you continually apply the same stress to your muscles over time, so you must constantly vary exercises, sets, reps and weight to avoid accommodation)
Progressive Overload Principle (The basis of increasing any parameter of fitness is to make your muscles work harder than they are accustomed to)
Holistic Training Principle (Different cellular organelles respond differently to different forms of stress, so using a variety of rep/set schemes, intensity and frequency will maximize muscle mass)
Eclectic Training Principle (Combining mass, strength or isolation-refinement training techniques as your instincts dictate into your program often help you achieve greater progress)
Instinctive Training Principle (Eventually, all bodybuilders instinctively attain the ability to construct diets, routines, cycles, intensity levels, reps and sets that work best for them)

WEIDER PRINCIPLES TO HELP YOU ARRANGE YOUR WORKOUT

Set System Training Principle (Performing one set per bodypart was the old way; the Set System calls for multiple sets for each exercise in order to apply maximum adaptive stress)
Superset Training Principle (alternating opposing muscle group exercises with little rest between sets)
Compound Sets Training Principle (alternating two exercises for one bodypart with little rest between sets)
Tri-Sets Training Principle (Doing 3 exercises for one muscle group with little rest between sets)
Giant Sets Training Principle (Doing 4-6 exercises for one muscle group with little rest between sets)
Staggered Sets Principle (injecting 10 sets of boring forearm, abdominal or calf work in between sets for (say) chest or legs)
Rest-Pause Principle (using 85-90 percent of your max, do 2-3 reps and put the weight down. Then do 2-3 more, rest, 2-3 more and rest for a total of 3-4 rest-pauses. The short rest-pauses allow enough time for ATP to be resynthesized and permit further reps with the heavy weight);
Muscle Priority Principle (Work your weaker body parts first in any given workout; alternatively, work the larger muscle groups first, while you’re fresh and energy levels still high)
Pre-Exhaustion Principle (example: superset flies, a chest isolation exercise, with bench presses, a compound exercise involving triceps and chest, in order to maximize chest development by pre-exhausting the [pecs].)
Pyramiding Training Principle (start a bodypart session with higher rep/low weight and gradually add weight (and commensurably reduce the reps), ending with a weight you can do for 5 reps or so)
Descending Sets Principle (lighter weights from set to set as fatigue sets in – called “stripping”)
Staggered Sets Training Principle (stagger smaller, slow-developing body parts in between sets for larger muscle groups)
Instinctive Training Principle (Eventually, all bodybuilders instinctively attain the ability to construct diets, routines, cycles, intensity levels, reps and sets that work best for them)

WEIDER PRINCIPLES TO HELP YOU PERFORM EACH EXERCISE

Isolation Principle (All muscles act as stabilizers, synergists, antagonist or protagonist. By making any given muscle the prime mover in any given exercise you’ve “isolated” it as much as possible, and therefore the stress applied to it)
Quality Training Principle (gradually reducing the rest between sets while still maintaining or increasing the number of reps performed)
Cheating Training Principle (swing weight past the sticking point at the end of a set in order to add stress)
Continuous Tension Principle (maintain slow, continuous tension on muscles to maximize red fiber involvement)
Forced Reps Training Principle (partner-assisted reps at the end of a set)
Flushing Training Principle (Doing 3-4 exercises for a bodypart before moving to another bodypart)
Burns Training Principle (2-3 inch, quick movements at the end of a set
Partial Reps Training Principle (Because of leverage changes throughout any given exercise, it’s sometimes helpful to do partial movements with varying weight in order to derive maximum overload stress for that bodypart)
Retro-Gravity Principle (“Negatives” or “eccentrics” as they’re called, make it possible to get more muscle cells to respond because you can lower about 30-40 percent more weight than you can successfully lift concentrically);
Peak Contraction Principle (holding the weight through maximum contraction for a few seconds at the completion of a movement);
Superspeed Principle (compensatory acceleration of movements to stimulate hard-to-reach fast twitch fibers);
Iso-Tension Principle (method of practicing posing, tensing each muscle maximally for 6-10 seconds for up to a total of 30-44 flexes in a variety of posing positions);
Instinctive Training Principle (Eventually, all bodybuilders instinctively attain the ability to construct diets, routines, cycles, intensity levels, reps and sets that work best for them)

Patriarch · November 13, 2009, 4:57am

Good stuff.

3hitter · November 13, 2009, 2:16pm

Bill,

Great find. You just summed up every article that has been written on training and all that will be in the future.

Now if the guys that like to read and quote all the “NEW TECHNIQIUES” would just understand that there really isn’t anything ground breaking since this and apply the ball busting work it takes, substantial muscle growth could happen for them.

Sometimes it seems that people want to read themselves big.

LankyMofo · November 13, 2009, 2:17pm

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Using the term “semantics” as a pejorative or dismissingly (if one does so) winds up missing the point that using words contrary to how others – due to longstanding usage over decades – understand them is an unproductive thing to do.

Therefore, although maybe it is “just semantics” that going up to a top weight while dropping reps and not back down again is pyramiding, while going back down and increasing reps again makes it double-pyramiding, it is useful to use the words according to what has been normal usage for many decades.[/quote]

I think it’s natural for terminology to change over a period of decades. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but to expect weight lifting terminology to stay the same for the rest of eternity is ridiculous, it just won’t happen.

This is not limited to weight lifting, either. Most industry speak and most activities will have different terminology 30 years from now.

In the end, I agree. It would be much better if all of the terminology stayed the same, it would help everyone be on the same page. But it is semantics, and to expect it to stay the same is a little naive.

Bill_Roberts · November 13, 2009, 4:14pm

The terminology on the thing in question hasn’t changed.

One guy here got it in his head that what everyone else here called pyramiding was really “half-pyramiding,” with pyramiding meaning going first up in weight and down in reps, then down in weight and up again in reps. No one responded saying yes that’s right or any such thing; at least a couple and maybe several responded how that was interesting, that they didn’t know that and learned something, and that sort of thing.

That is how the error set in.

My expectation is that outside of this board, not 1 person in 100 who uses the word pyramiding with respect to weight lifting claims that going only up and not down is not pyramiding. More likely not 1 in 1000.

And of those on this board that believe that, I expect that all but one got that belief off of this board, having had no idea otherwise that that was supposedly so.

The meaning hasn’t changed.

What is naive is your belief that just because someone on this board said it and a few picked up on it, therefore that’s what the meaning is now in weightlifting.

Bill_Roberts · November 13, 2009, 6:56pm

Also: since you say that the error “makes sense” to you, providing diagrams for you may be helpful.

From Tudor Bompa and Mauro DiPasquale’s book: Serious Strength Training - Tudor O. Bompa, Mauro G. Di Pasquale, Lorenzo Cornacchia - Google Books

LankyMofo · November 13, 2009, 5:20pm

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Also: since you say that the error “makes sense” to you, providing diagrams for you may be helpful.

From Tudor Bompa’s book: Serious Strength Training - Tudor O. Bompa, Mauro G. Di Pasquale, Lorenzo Cornacchia - Google Books

I try to leave diagrams out of my weightlifting regimen, thanks.

And in regards to our discussion about pyramidding, perhaps you’re correct in your assertion that not 1 in 1000 would regard pyramidding as the one poster described, I don’t know and frankly, I still believe it’s all semantics.

And this is unrelated to the topic at hand, but for everyone that complains that people make weightlifting more complicated than it needs to be, I think you’re the number 1 culprit. I’m not saying this to insult you or try to change what we’re discussing, it’s just an observation I’ve made.

Bill_Roberts · November 13, 2009, 6:57pm

[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
Also: since you say that the error “makes sense” to you, providing diagrams for you may be helpful.

From Tudor Bompa’s book: Serious Strength Training - Tudor O. Bompa, Mauro G. Di Pasquale, Lorenzo Cornacchia - Google Books

I try to leave diagrams out of my weightlifting regimen, thanks.

And in regards to our discussion about pyramidding, perhaps you’re correct in your assertion that not 1 in 1000 would regard pyramidding as the one poster described, I don’t know and frankly, I still believe it’s all semantics.

And this is unrelated to the topic at hand, but for everyone that complains that people make weightlifting more complicated than it needs to be, I think you’re the number 1 culprit. I’m not saying this to insult you or try to change what we’re discussing, it’s just an observation I’ve made. [/quote]

You’re completely entitled to a second wrong opinion in the same thread: no one would dispute that.

And the fact that you choose not to learn from diagrams or from men such as Tudor Bompa and Mauro DiPasquale, but instead from random posters who claim that what everyone else calls pyramids are instead half-pyramids and that real pyramids go both up and then back down in weight, is also entirely your business.

To each his own, to be sure.

HK24719 · November 13, 2009, 7:54pm

[quote]GluteusGigantis wrote:
HK24719 wrote:
This isn’t the reason why there are seeming so few truly big guys in most gyms.