Yeah… i run 5/3/1 on extended MWFM rotating the movment approach. Have been for years. Pretty good way to help increase recovery.
Honestly not even a origional idea on my part. Ive seen several authors and coaches bring up the notion over the years.
I vaguely remember Dave Tate doing a Q&A a while back. Somebody asks something in the ilk of “I can’t get to the gym more than 3x a week to run >insert 4x/week program<, what should I do?”
“Make it an 8 day program. Next question”.
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Yep he was one of them.
Guys got it in their head that a extra day is going to cause them to de train and atrophy.
The Efferding 10-minute walk protocol ?
Most importantly, walking keeps you out of the gym. “Taking an easy day” does not come naturally to some lifters. Doing a tough cardio workout is not recovery.
But it’s more than that. Walking allows a small degree of connection with nature or community. The fact it is low effort and outside will help with stress but won’t disrupt muscle building. (Weather permitting. Weather is so important to Canadians it tends to show up three or four times on TV news.)
Independent of that, dogs are awesome.
But it could be any other reasonably gentle exercise. I see it as an extension of the principle you do better when, within reason, you mix up high and low effort (or sets or volume or weight or whatever.)
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Good way to start
Thanks for writing succinctly what I was trying to organize cogently in my muddled pea brain.
The leanest I have ever been was when I was walking 20-30 miles a week. As I recall, Stu Yellin was having @BrickHead and @robstein do HIIT (sprinting as I recall) for contest prep, but there was also LISS - aka walking. There was also carb cycling and a few other things I don’t recall.
For me, it’s also active recovery - getting the blood flowing as you mentioned - not to mention a meditation effect when walking in nature.
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Yes, all that.
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Yo guys!
Yes I did HIIT during contest prep, it worked but man it absolutely wrecked me. Being out of contest season for 6 years now I’ve been able to maintain 10% body fat year round with LISS/MISS 5x per week, maintaining a bodybuilding style workout template 5x per week and clean and monitored nutrition. If I were to get contest lean again I would avoid HIIT completely because just my .02 after so much experimentation it’s too taxing on the body while in contest prep mode. Getting shredded happens in the kitchen primarily, with cardio added as necessary.
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Absolutely dude! I have to thank Jamie Lewis for re-introducing me to walking. It’s amazing how much I wasn’t doing it, and how positive things got when I started it. It contributes so much to that leanness, and to just being a human.
@robstein - What does your workout template currently look like?
Happy to share! I’m about to start a zoom call so I don’t have time to post the entire thing with exercises and sets and reps, I’m in a growth phase right now so the volume is a little higher than what I’ve been doing, got a new coach for some good growth! Slight caloric surplus as well. Shoulders and arms are a focus to bring up, definitely want growth everywhere but delts and arms are priority
MON - Push A
Shoulders
Chest
Tris
TUE - Push B
Back
Biceps
WED - Legs
Quads
Hams
Calves
THU - Push B
Shoulders
Chest
Tris
FRI - Pull B
Back
Biceps
The “B” days have some different exercises, set and rep schemes than A, they’re intense but not quite as intense or high volume as A.
Saturday is cardio only
Sunday is off
Cardio I do 30min elliptical Monday-Saturday for a few reasons:
-I used to HATE cardio, I definitely had cardio PTSD from competing. But, as I get older, that whole “heart health” thing becomes more important. I’m also genetically predisposed to high A1C/pre diabetic, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, so even with all my clean eating and lifting, I have to do the cardio to keep all that stuff at bay. I do NOT want to take prescription meds so the cardio helps a lot.
-I can eat more
-I can maintain great, lean conditioning all year round, and so far during my mass gaining phase I’ve gained two pounds over the past two weeks and am looking just as tight
Happy to elaborate more of the specifics of the workout if that would be helpful.
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Yes please Sir. Thank you.
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Holy crap, triple like to @The_Myth for pulling pros @BrickHead and @robstein back into a bodybuilding thread! Always awesome having you gents post!
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Lol - every time they try to get out . .
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Thank you @TrainForPain and @The_Myth . I only did one show, as you know, but I was such a huge fan of bodybuilding for much of my life. I’m still very consistent lifting and doing cardio before work these days, but it’s more for general fitness and health now. I actually cannot name a competitor in the Olympia, Arnold Classic, or NY Pro now. And I went to many NY Pro shows, been a few times when it was called Night of Champions.
Edit: I know of Nick Walker. I do not know of anyone else competing in the IFBB regularly now.
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Junk volume. Is it really junk volume if you’re building work capacity?
Yes, it can bite in to recovery.
Yes, direct muscle growth will be low to non-existant
Yes, some people stay stagnant junk voluming their way through all their workouts.
Everyones afraid of it these days because too many people don’t work hard enough. But can intelligently placed junk volume have a benefit?
Bodybuilders won’t want to ever do much because you want all your working sets to count. Anything outside of that has potential to bite into your goal. What about your average general strength, health, wants to put on some muscle kind of guy?
That work capacity somewhere down the line allows you train harder more often. Train like an athlete, look like an athlete?
What’s the anti-bro science on this?
I think work capacity is built much like a farmer’s… sub maximal, mod intensity, repeated effort, med to high volume
Good to hear from you and great to hear you are still paying homage to the iron gods.
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Damn, good to see you back posting.
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