Great thread.
This is what I think the reincarnation of the Dog Pound would look like. A topic is brought up and people that actually lift and strive to be far from average discuss it. I like it.
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
In regards to insulin sens as discussed earlier:
Maybe this is what the guy was on about when he said the lower bf% better ins sens ???
Anyone care to comment on the “facts” ??
[quote]rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
[/quote]
I think I use to use waaay too much rest in between sets, so I’ve been trying to keep it less than 90 seconds, unless I’m doing heavy singles or something like that.
If I’m doing something with more isolation, like a pulldown or something, I’ll try to keep it at no more than 60 seconds rest.
If I wait too long, it feels like I’m not putting my body through enough, so I suppose I like to keep my muscles fatigued.
For the better part of a decade, I’ve been sleeping 5-6 hours a night. On nights I train, the quality of the sleep is deeper but still in the 5-6 range.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
[/quote]
I’ve found 120 to be too long even when going heavy…my rest periods range from 45-90 seconds, 90 secs being when I’m training legs.
@the sleep topic: sleep and a bunch of it is optimal because this is when the body grows. It’s the fasted state when we sleep that we have problems. The REM cycle is every two hours if I remember correctly. 8 hrs per night is recommended for anybody doing physical activity so this should include weights. lol
If I had the time I’d get a full 8 hrs a night with a 2 hr nap mid-day. Both times loaded up on protein, etc of course to get the best out of my recovery time.
@rest times: IMO I think it depends on what your goals are in the gym. If strength is a concern of course it is heavier weight with a longer rest time. If maximum hypertrophy is your goal then a little less rest. I usually go about 90 seconds.
Then again I don’t time myself specifically. I push myself pretty well in the weight room with no need of much motivation so I won’t pussy foot around while I’m in there. I usually just take enough time off to make sure I can get a productive set in.
Gerdy
[quote]rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
[/quote]
I really think it’s all dependent on what your training focus is. It would more important to hit your desired rep range than it would to minimize rest periods. As an example lets say you want to do five sets of eight reps on the squat with a weight of 315. So here we have 40 reps total. What good does it do if you rest 60 secs between sets and after set 3 you’re too fatigued to get all the reps in sets 4-5?
Set 1: 8 reps
Set 2: 8 reps
Set 3: 8 reps
Set 4: 6 reps
Set 5: 4 reps
That’s only 34 reps.
I believe you’d get a better result with a longer rest period so you can get all the reps and maybe have enough gas left in the tank to squeeze out 1-3 more reps on set 5.
[quote]malonetd wrote:
Great thread.
This is what I think the reincarnation of the Dog Pound would look like. A topic is brought up and people that actually lift and strive to be far from average discuss it. I like it.[/quote]
Agreed, my goals right now are all strongman and powerlifting related, but I enjoy reading this a lot and learning and applying those things to my own goals. Carrying as much LBM as possible is important for those sports so I feel there is a lot to learn from bodybuilding. Just look at Justin Harris and what he has done.
[quote]Corkonian wrote:
In regards to insulin sens as discussed earlier:
The Case Against Bulking Up
Because you can’t flex fat, it’s time to put to rest another stupid myth
by Charles Poliquin
When taking the initial arm measurements of clients, personal trainers often don’t bother to have them flex their arms. It’s not because the trainers are planning to have them flex for the “after” measurement and thereby fool their clients into seeming more muscular than they actually are. No, the simple reason these trainers don’t have their new clients hit a biceps pose is that it doesn’t make any difference if the arm is straight or flexed - you can’t flex fat!
Despite this self-evident truth, in the past it was common practice for bodybuilders to engage in the practice of “bulking up” in the off season. The idea was to gain as much bodyweight as possible, even if some of it was fat, and then, when a competition approached, to diet and exercise to lose the fat while attempting to spare as much muscle as possible. While this may have worked in the past for these athletes, the level of not just muscle mass but muscularity that is achievable today is such that even the great Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime would have a hard time winning even state physique competitions.
It’s not only bodybuilders who used bulking up. Football linemen, even today, believe that it’s best to add as much bodyweight as possible regardless of the composition of that weight. Again, that strategy may have worked in the past, but today’s football line, especially defensive linemen, need speed - and excess fat and speed don’t mix.
Often I see workout programs on the Internet still promoting the supposed superiority of bulking-up programs. Here are some of the nonsense statements I’ve read:
“Just gain weight; worry about cutting up later.”
“You can’t gain muscle without gaining fat.”
“Eat Pop-Tarts. They are the most caloric-dense food.”
“The key to gaining weight is to eat more candy bars - you can’t gain weight on clean foods.” Interestingly, the author of that one gives a history of switching brands of candy bars, leading up to the most calorie-dense one.
“Add Nesquik to every protein drink to help you gain weight.”
The Downside of Bulking Up
Besides the obvious health problems associated with adding excess fat, bulking up is a really bad approach to trying to achieve your physique goals or athletic fitness goals. Here are six reasons why:
Anti-Bulking Fact #1. Bulking-up diet programs won’t produce any more muscle growth than ingesting an ideal amount of nutrients. Sorry, but it’s simply not possible to force additional muscle growth by overfeeding.
Anti-Bulking Fact #2. Bulking up makes you more insulin resistant, which makes it harder in the long run to gain muscle. What happens is that carbohydrates will go preferentially to fat stores, not muscle tissue.
Anti-Bulking Fact #3. Bulking up will make it harder for you to get leaner because insulin resistance is hard to reverse. The fatter you get, the harder it becomes to get lean.
Anti-Bulking Fact #4. The fatter you get, the more aromatase enzyme your body will produce. In the extreme, getting fat could be considered a form of self-castration, as your own testosterone will be converted into the female hormone estrogen. If you’re a man and you enjoy wearing a bra, go right ahead and get fatter.
Anti-Bulking Fact #5. Getting fatter will ramp down the effectiveness of your thyroid hormone production. The fatter your abdominal wall gets, the less conversion of T4 to T3, the metabolically active form of thyroid.
Anti-Bulking Fact #6. The lower your percentage of body fat, the better your body gets at nutrient partitioning. This means that individuals with low body fat are more effective at storing the ingested nutrients in the muscle (as muscle tissue or glycogen) or in the liver (glycogen) and less effective at storing them as body fat. To put it in simpler terms, leaner individuals can eat more nutrients without gaining fat.
Maybe this is what the guy was on about when he said the lower bf% better ins sens ???
Anyone care to comment on the “facts” ??[/quote]
Good find Corkonian.
I’m the type of person that doesn’t have a problem getting fat. I know people dislike the term hardgainer and I agree to an extent. If I stopped exercising and eating right I would lose weight. What I gain is mostly muscle and what I lose is mostly muscle. It’s a love/hate relationship.
I can pretty much eat whatever I want and not worry about getting obese but I chose to eat my 4-5g in calories from healthier foods. I don’t eat pop tarts, etc because they are caloric dense. lol I don’t even like fast food and I’ve always been this way.
I feel that for most people that are training hard in the gym and eating right that they can gain muscle without having to put on lbs of fat like some research has proven otherwise. I think some fat gain will always occur but not to the point where Insulin levels get affected. I still believe that a decent amount of muscle can be put on without serious fat gain. If you let yourself get that bad in your bulk phase then you were either eating or training wrong.
The last 15-20lbs of muscle that I have gained over the past 1.5 years or so has been mostly muscle. I have put on a little extra bf and hold more water but I still have shredded obliques and 6 visible abs. Granted I am only 20 and still growing maybe this is why I am able to do this. I have not gotten taller and have jumped from 15.34-near 17in arms so I’d assume I’m putting muscle on. All of my lifts have gone up as well. Maybe somebody past the age of 25 or so doesn’t physiologically have the ability to do this but a younger man with a fast metabolism certainly does unless I’m some genetic freak. lol
I certainly agree with bulking facts 1,2,3.
An adiphocyte cannot be burned, just shrunk. So the fatter you get and more adiphocytes you get the harder it will be to get/or stay lean. So bulking to the point of excess doesn’t make sense to me. As they stated the body only needs a certain amount of nutrients for muscle growth. I’m a believer that you cannot force more muscle growth by simply adding more food/calories. Consuming more than what is needed to build/preserve muscle will just lead to fat gain imo. And what is the point of that when building muscle is the main goal here.
all this imo…
Gerdy
[quote]rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
[/quote]
I’ve trained to the point where I have a stopwatch for rest sets. And currently I don’t time anything. Depends on the training obviously. Training for a PR or a real heavy set of 5 or less will call for complete rest. But if I’m say, doing a DC Rest-pause set, you got to with the 15 breath thing which will definitely leave you worn out.
All in all, I’ve gotten to the point, and I think most serious guys can do this, where they can gauge how long they need to be able to push an maximal load…and I think you always want to train with as much as possible. Thats one thing I love about DC training principles, you just have that one RP set to train as hard and heavy as physically possible.
[quote]IronAssassin wrote:
rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
I’ve trained to the point where I have a stopwatch for rest sets. And currently I don’t time anything. Depends on the training obviously. Training for a PR or a real heavy set of 5 or less will call for complete rest. But if I’m say, doing a DC Rest-pause set, you got to with the 15 breath thing which will definitely leave you worn out.
All in all, I’ve gotten to the point, and I think most serious guys can do this, where they can gauge how long they need to be able to push an maximal load…and I think you always want to train with as much as possible. Thats one thing I love about DC training principles, you just have that one RP set to train as hard and heavy as physically possible.[/quote]
As far as DC goes - how long does one rest between body parts?
Long enough to set up for the next set?
Until you get your breath back?
Until you get feeling back in your previously worked body part?
[quote]Corkonian wrote:
In regards to insulin sens as discussed earlier:
The Case Against Bulking Up
Because you can’t flex fat, it’s time to put to rest another stupid myth
by Charles Poliquin
When taking the initial arm measurements of clients, personal trainers often don’t bother to have them flex their arms. It’s not because the trainers are planning to have them flex for the “after” measurement and thereby fool their clients into seeming more muscular than they actually are. No, the simple reason these trainers don’t have their new clients hit a biceps pose is that it doesn’t make any difference if the arm is straight or flexed - you can’t flex fat!
Despite this self-evident truth, in the past it was common practice for bodybuilders to engage in the practice of “bulking up” in the off season. The idea was to gain as much bodyweight as possible, even if some of it was fat, and then, when a competition approached, to diet and exercise to lose the fat while attempting to spare as much muscle as possible. While this may have worked in the past for these athletes, the level of not just muscle mass but muscularity that is achievable today is such that even the great Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime would have a hard time winning even state physique competitions.
It’s not only bodybuilders who used bulking up. Football linemen, even today, believe that it’s best to add as much bodyweight as possible regardless of the composition of that weight. Again, that strategy may have worked in the past, but today’s football line, especially defensive linemen, need speed - and excess fat and speed don’t mix.
Often I see workout programs on the Internet still promoting the supposed superiority of bulking-up programs. Here are some of the nonsense statements I’ve read:
“Just gain weight; worry about cutting up later.”
“You can’t gain muscle without gaining fat.”
“Eat Pop-Tarts. They are the most caloric-dense food.”
“The key to gaining weight is to eat more candy bars - you can’t gain weight on clean foods.” Interestingly, the author of that one gives a history of switching brands of candy bars, leading up to the most calorie-dense one.
“Add Nesquik to every protein drink to help you gain weight.”
The Downside of Bulking Up
Besides the obvious health problems associated with adding excess fat, bulking up is a really bad approach to trying to achieve your physique goals or athletic fitness goals. Here are six reasons why:
Anti-Bulking Fact #1. Bulking-up diet programs won’t produce any more muscle growth than ingesting an ideal amount of nutrients. Sorry, but it’s simply not possible to force additional muscle growth by overfeeding.
Anti-Bulking Fact #2. Bulking up makes you more insulin resistant, which makes it harder in the long run to gain muscle. What happens is that carbohydrates will go preferentially to fat stores, not muscle tissue.
Anti-Bulking Fact #3. Bulking up will make it harder for you to get leaner because insulin resistance is hard to reverse. The fatter you get, the harder it becomes to get lean.
Anti-Bulking Fact #4. The fatter you get, the more aromatase enzyme your body will produce. In the extreme, getting fat could be considered a form of self-castration, as your own testosterone will be converted into the female hormone estrogen. If you’re a man and you enjoy wearing a bra, go right ahead and get fatter.
Anti-Bulking Fact #5. Getting fatter will ramp down the effectiveness of your thyroid hormone production. The fatter your abdominal wall gets, the less conversion of T4 to T3, the metabolically active form of thyroid.
Anti-Bulking Fact #6. The lower your percentage of body fat, the better your body gets at nutrient partitioning. This means that individuals with low body fat are more effective at storing the ingested nutrients in the muscle (as muscle tissue or glycogen) or in the liver (glycogen) and less effective at storing them as body fat. To put it in simpler terms, leaner individuals can eat more nutrients without gaining fat.
Maybe this is what the guy was on about when he said the lower bf% better ins sens ???
Anyone care to comment on the “facts” ??[/quote]
What “facts”? Where are the references?
[quote]rainjack wrote:
IronAssassin wrote:
rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
I’ve trained to the point where I have a stopwatch for rest sets. And currently I don’t time anything. Depends on the training obviously. Training for a PR or a real heavy set of 5 or less will call for complete rest. But if I’m say, doing a DC Rest-pause set, you got to with the 15 breath thing which will definitely leave you worn out.
All in all, I’ve gotten to the point, and I think most serious guys can do this, where they can gauge how long they need to be able to push an maximal load…and I think you always want to train with as much as possible. Thats one thing I love about DC training principles, you just have that one RP set to train as hard and heavy as physically possible.
As far as DC goes - how long does one rest between body parts?
Long enough to set up for the next set?
Until you get your breath back?
Until you get feeling back in your previously worked body part?
[/quote]
You rest as long as it takes.
For the rest pause set…its
As many reps till failure-15 breaths-a couple more reps to failure-15 breaths-rep till failure.
Thats your one Rest Pause set.
Everything is rest pause except back thickness and quads for safety reasons.
For those you perform one heavy ass set usually 6-8 reps.
Wait as long as you need to recover for another, EVEN HEAVIER, set for generally 4-6 reps.
Rest as long as needed in between body parts or after warm-ups. As long as you can perform your one Rest Pause set with as much weight as possible and fail 3 times total.
Same goes for straight sets on quads and back thickness.
A typical smythe incline for chest might be…
Warm up for a set of 12
Warm up a set of 8
Warm up a set of 4
All of these are non-taxing, and there are no guidelines to how you warm up, just warm up however you need to.
Now for chest if your rep range is 11-15 Rest pause your set my look like…
8reps=failure
take 15 breaths
4reps=failure
take 15 breaths
2reps=failure
You have now performed 14 reps which means you are in your 11-15rp range. Next smythe incline day you would want to up the weight since you were at the top end of your range.
Now I just explained alot…and I’m certainly no expert. But his site has some great stickies about it.
The point is, don’t overthink rest for in between bodyparts. Just take what it needs to perform a maximal set with a maximal load.
[quote]IronAssassin wrote:
rainjack wrote:
IronAssassin wrote:
rainjack wrote:
On the topic of rest - sort of:
How long do you rest between sets? 60-90-120 seconds?
I think if I extended my rest periods a little, I could move a lot more weight, but do I want to give my muscles a full rest, or keep them a little fatigued?
I’ve trained to the point where I have a stopwatch for rest sets. And currently I don’t time anything. Depends on the training obviously. Training for a PR or a real heavy set of 5 or less will call for complete rest. But if I’m say, doing a DC Rest-pause set, you got to with the 15 breath thing which will definitely leave you worn out.
All in all, I’ve gotten to the point, and I think most serious guys can do this, where they can gauge how long they need to be able to push an maximal load…and I think you always want to train with as much as possible. Thats one thing I love about DC training principles, you just have that one RP set to train as hard and heavy as physically possible.
As far as DC goes - how long does one rest between body parts?
Long enough to set up for the next set?
Until you get your breath back?
Until you get feeling back in your previously worked body part?
You rest as long as it takes.
For the rest pause set…its
As many reps till failure-15 breaths-a couple more reps to failure-15 breaths-rep till failure.
Thats your one Rest Pause set.
Everything is rest pause except back thickness and quads for safety reasons.
For those you perform one heavy ass set usually 6-8 reps.
Wait as long as you need to recover for another, EVEN HEAVIER, set for generally 4-6 reps.
Rest as long as needed in between body parts or after warm-ups. As long as you can perform your one Rest Pause set with as much weight as possible and fail 3 times total.
Same goes for straight sets on quads and back thickness.
A typical smythe incline for chest might be…
Warm up for a set of 12
Warm up a set of 8
Warm up a set of 4
All of these are non-taxing, and there are no guidelines to how you warm up, just warm up however you need to.
Now for chest if your rep range is 11-15 Rest pause your set my look like…
8reps=failure
take 15 breaths
4reps=failure
take 15 breaths
2reps=failure
You have now performed 14 reps which means you are in your 11-15rp range. Next smythe incline day you would want to up the weight since you were at the top end of your range.
Now I just explained alot…and I’m certainly no expert. But his site has some great stickies about it.
The point is, don’t overthink rest for in between bodyparts. Just take what it needs to perform a maximal set with a maximal load.[/quote]
Your first sentence answered my question. But thanks for posting up the rest of it - maybe more folks will become interested in DC.
It works thats for damn sure.
People just need to be experienced/intense enough to use it. (Read probably most guys in this thread, but not many others.)
I don’t DC but I have been playing around with some Rest-Pause last week and I’ve started incorporating the extreme stretches.
I think anyone training for size, or really for any type of gains, you incorporate the extreme stretches. According to the Dogg, and many others, they really really contribute to complete muscle hypertrophy, they help with recovery and of course they stretch the muscle fascia to allow room for more growth.
Theres no question that it works based on his hundreds (thousands?) of followers who make great gains on his program, even after having made little to gains gains for several years if they are really advanced lifters who have trouble making gains anymore.
And obviously stretching muscle fascia in an extreme way aids growth, just look at how synthol works. I think tight fascia probably limits a lot of peoples size gains.
[quote]SSC wrote:
Professor X wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Wimpy wrote:
Shugart updated his blog today. Another piece from a T-Nation author bashing bodybuilding. Why am I not surprised? They should just go ahead and have T-Nation redirect to Men’s Health.
Like BBer’s don’t have a life.
It’s a shame he won’t allow anyone to call him out. I’ll put my life up against his any day.
Evidently he wasn’t talking with Mark Dugdale. He’s a family man if there ever was such a thing.
I think the root of the problems on this site has been located.
Apparently we don’t. I went to school all of those years yet Shugart can’t find even one bodybuilder with the desire to compete who could hold him a conversation on or above his level.
Isn’t P22 a licensed nurse?
I’m sort of confused as to what’s going on here. I keep hearing complains about “an author,” and then here people are talking about Shugart. I haven’t been a member for a long time, but I’ve been reading articles for a while. Is there some sort of conspiracy or something. . . ?
Or if it’s a touchy subject, can someone at least PM me and tell me about what’s going on?[/quote]
The issue is the apparent despisal of bodybuilding by some of the authors here, which is fine in and of itself until we start to notice there is no counter-opinion to it being voiced at all. A certain diet can not be spoken ill of or else those posts won’t exist for long…in spite of the many newbies jumping on it when they only weigh 150lbs.
Conspiracy? Only if you count not being able to discuss these issues openly as one.
Want to talk about dumb bodybuilders (off of the top of my head):
Ronnie (!!!) graduated cum laude with a degree in accounting
P22 is a nurse
Justin Harris has a BS in exercise science, works as an Echocardiographer and is certified in advanced cardiac life support
Dave Henry works for the Department of Defense (as an engineer?)
Jason Wojo is getting his PHD in Immunology
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
Want to talk about dumb bodybuilders (off of the top of my head):
Ronnie (!!!) graduated cum laude with a degree in accounting
P22 is a nurse
Justin Harris has a BS in exercise science, works as an Echocardiographer and is certified in advanced cardiac life support
Dave Henry works for the Department of Defense (as an engineer?)
Jason Wojo is getting his PHD in Immunology
[/quote]
That’s just the short list. If someone actually had the desire to search out educated bodybuilders, they would find them. Focusing on the ones who aren’t and using this to label everyone else makes no sense…
Guys thats are B-I-G, What do you find better for building muscle, heavy work (4-6 reps) or moderate work (8-15) reps over the long haul? I know everyone is different, and after a few years of doing this I think, for myself, I’m leaning towards heavy work.
The strength seems to come quicker and its easier to focus on going 110% if you only have 4-6 reps to hit. Maybe on a few accessory exercises going a little higher, but for the big guns (Squat, Bench, Press) I like lower rep ranges for now.
How say you?