Thib's Q&A

Training
3621

[quote]Gymjunkie wrote:
Hey Coach,

What is your recommended amount of iodine and tyrosine for slow thyroid?

Thanks,
GJ[/quote]

You must first define:

  1. IF you really have a ‘‘slow’’ thyroid… or more precisely if you are underproducing TSH, T4 or T3

  2. Determine which one of your thyroid markers are low (TSH, T4 or T3). Depending on which one is low, the source of the problem will be different. For example, if your TSH and T4 levels are normal, but your T3 levels are low then iodine and tyrosine will be of zero help to you because the problem is the conversion of the relatively inactive T4 into T3, not the actual production of thyroid hormones.

3622

Here’s something I wrote a while ago:

L-Tyrosine: Is a precursor to both major thyroid hormones.

A dosage of 800-1600mg twice per day should be adequate.(Brook and Marshall 1996; Debuse 1998;
Idelman 1990)

Iodine: Necessary for the production of thyroid hormones, much like tyrosine. It?s the second building block of these hormones. Iodine reacts with tyrosine residues in thyroglobulin to form thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3).

If potassium iodine is used, 200-400mg daily should be used. If a pure iodine extract is used the recommended dosage is in the realm of 100-125mcg.
(Philips et al. 1988, Tonglet et al. 1992, De Vijlder 2003
Feldkamp et al. 1996, Glinoer 2004, Brook and Marshall 1996; Debuse 1998; Idelman 1990, Delange 1998, La Rosa et al. 1995)

Selenium: Low intakes of selenium intake can decrease deiodinase activity, compromising thyroid hormone metabolism. Subjects supplementing with selenium have reduced levels of T4 and increased levels of the more active T3. This indicates that selenium can in fact, increase conversion of T4 into T3. Since, even with exogenous thyroid hormone use, there remains a certain production of T4, selenium can help avoid a fat gain rebound upon cessation of thyroid hormone use. When selenium and iodine are combined, hypothyroidism can be reversed.

Vanderpas et al. 1990, Olivieri et al. 1995, Arthur 1997
Duffield et al. 1999)

3623

Thib, in my gym I met a quite accomplished powerlifter, who was coached by some much more impressive powerlifters and even olypmic lifters. He gave me a lot of advice, but some of them seem suspectable. Could you please tell your opinion on these :

  1. Close-grip bench - to train triceps he told me to do these with grip a little narrower than shoulder-width, lift with elbows maximally tucked, and only up to 90 degree elbow angle, and with 3 sec iso hold in this position! This is some kind of hybrid partial-ismoteric, does it make sense?

  2. Accessory movements like shoulder presses - told me to do these without full lockout, to “get the pump”

  3. told me it was worthless training chinups and pullups with maximal strength methods (waves, sets less than 6 reps, etc) if you’re already deadlifting with these methods.

  4. On the bench day, he said bench only once a week, but advised some crazy volume :

  1. Bench press max effort
  2. Bench accessory (floor press 4x5 or speed bench 10x3@50%)
  3. Incline bench
  4. Decline bench or seated press!
    Even with moderate loading on the accessory ones, isn’t this ridiculous volume on one workout?

Thank you if you find time to answer this bunch of questions!

3624

Coach Thibaudeau.

I am planning to tackle your 16 week HSS-100 workout in the new year, and would love your advice on the best dietary program to use along with the workouts.

By way of background, in the late summer and early fall, I dropped down to 6.0% bf at 6 feet, 172 pounds. I’m now back up to about 178-180 and maybe 9 or 10% bf. I lost the bf on a very low-carb diet - almost exclusively lean meat, whey protein, egg whites and green veggies, with some fish oil supps thrown in for healthy fats. Since then I have been on, and am currently finishing up, a six-week stint on the WSFSB program

I’d love to put on as much muscle as possible over the next three months while minimizing fat gain using the HSS-100 program. Should I carb cyle? use targeted carbs approach? Something else? And either way, I assume I shoot for 1.5 g protein per pound of bw ,which in my case works out to about 260 g. protein per day? I guess I’m trying to figure out what to do with carbs, as I tend to be pretty carb-sensitive. At the same time, I don’t want to shortchange gains out of a fear of carbs.

Any advice you have would be much appreciated.

Many thanks!

3625

Hey coach.

I need a Bartle like transformation. How can I setup personal coaching via e-mail. Can you just simply take my stats and picture and design a program based for me?

I have read -many- of your articles but would like to know if there is a way to combine a workout and diet type program.

Thanks in advance.

3626

[quote]HK_M3 wrote:
Hey coach.

I need a Bartle like transformation. How can I setup personal coaching via e-mail. Can you just simply take my stats and picture and design a program based for me?

I have read -many- of your articles but would like to know if there is a way to combine a workout and diet type program.

Thanks in advance.[/quote]

I no longer do online consults. Sorry, but I can try to answer questions you might throw my way.

3627

I suggest a targeted carbs approach. No carbs (green veggies are okay) all day except for the peri-workout window.

The ideal scenario would be:

Pre-workout/during workout: 1 serving of WORKOUT FUEL (drink half prior to the session, half during), add 35g of BCAA during workout if possible

Post-workout: 2 scoops Surge Recovery + 5-10g glycine

30 minutes later: 2 scoops whey protein + 50g of carbs from solid food (yams, potatoes, sweet potatoes, fruits)

[quote]BWH wrote:
Coach Thibaudeau.

I am planning to tackle your 16 week HSS-100 workout in the new year, and would love your advice on the best dietary program to use along with the workouts.

By way of background, in the late summer and early fall, I dropped down to 6.0% bf at 6 feet, 172 pounds. I’m now back up to about 178-180 and maybe 9 or 10% bf. I lost the bf on a very low-carb diet - almost exclusively lean meat, whey protein, egg whites and green veggies, with some fish oil supps thrown in for healthy fats. Since then I have been on, and am currently finishing up, a six-week stint on the WSFSB program

I’d love to put on as much muscle as possible over the next three months while minimizing fat gain using the HSS-100 program. Should I carb cyle? use targeted carbs approach? Something else? And either way, I assume I shoot for 1.5 g protein per pound of bw ,which in my case works out to about 260 g. protein per day? I guess I’m trying to figure out what to do with carbs, as I tend to be pretty carb-sensitive. At the same time, I don’t want to shortchange gains out of a fear of carbs.

Any advice you have would be much appreciated.

Many thanks![/quote]

3628

First of all I want to start by saying that you can’t argue with results. If the guy got results and if he got those tips from peoples who got results, then they must be doing something right.

That having been said, I may not agree 100% with everything that someone gets results does!!!

[quote]Thy. wrote:

  1. Close-grip bench - to train triceps he told me to do these with grip a little narrower than shoulder-width, lift with elbows maximally tucked, and only up to 90 degree elbow angle, and with 3 sec iso hold in this position! This is some kind of hybrid partial-ismoteric, does it make sense? [/quote]

Yes it does. I actually use this movement quite often.

First regarding the technique… regardless of if it is a partial movement (like in this case) or a full lift, the grip width (slightly narrower than shoulder width) is correct… most peoples do their CGBP with a grip that is much too narrow… this doesn’t recruit the triceps more, forces you to use less weight and puts more strain on your wrists.

I also recommend tucking the elbows to your sides.

Regarding the partial movement from a dead start; it is a great exercise. The triceps are most active during the last half of a bench press. So if you want to focus on their role in the bench press doing partial movements (but not only that) makes sense.

However understand that powerlifters use a bench shirt that greatly helps them get the bar off the chest, but doesn’t help as much during the last part of the movement. For that reason, partial pressing work is more important to powerlifters than other individuals.

[quote]Thy. wrote:
2. Accessory movements like shoulder presses - told me to do these without full lockout, to “get the pump” [/quote]

This is typical ‘‘bodybuilding lifting’’. It’s pretty effective at building muscle mass. But for strength I wouldn’t abuse it as it may make you less efficient at finishing off lifts.

I trained a powerlifter who was a former bodybuilder and who used to do all his pressing work without locking out. It took me almost a year to bring his lockout strength and technique up to bar so that he could maximize his lifting potential.

I wouldn’t dismiss this type of lifting though. For accessory work it’s a good technique to build muscle and is easier on the joints.

[quote]Thy. wrote:
3. told me it was worthless training chinups and pullups with maximal strength methods (waves, sets less than 6 reps, etc) if you’re already deadlifting with these methods.[/quote]

I don’t agree. The deadlift is indeed a great overall back builder, but it works the lats, rhomboids, rear delts and teres major only isometrically while chins and pull-ups do so dynamically. You need to train both capacities to maximize growth.

Also understand that he is talking from a powerlifter’s perspective, not someone who wants to maximize overall muscle growth.

As an olympic lifter I never did any chins or pull-ups, neither did any of the top lifters in the world. It’s just not a very useful lift for the competitive movements. But they are very useful to build overall size and strength.

[quote]Thy. wrote:
4. On the bench day, he said bench only once a week, but advised some crazy volume :

  1. Bench press max effort
  2. Bench accessory (floor press 4x5 or speed bench 10x3@50%)
  3. Incline bench
  4. Decline bench or seated press!
    Even with moderate loading on the accessory ones, isn’t this ridiculous volume on one workout?

[/quote]

Looks pretty typical for a high level powerlifter; I’ve seen much higher volumes of work. When I competed as an olympic lifter we did something similar with our competitive lifts. However understand that:

  1. You need to GRADUALLY build up to that amount of work. The body can tolerate a lot, but it must be eased into it.

  2. Elite powerlifters and weightlifters are genetically built to handle a lot of heavy lifting. They are built on a huge frame with solid joints, big bones and have naturally thick tendons and ligaments. These guys can tolerate a lot more heavy work than someone built on a slighter frame. The later will not be able to do as much heavy work and will often need to deload to avoid an injury.

3629

Thanks Thib!! That cleared a lot, I was thinking about building up to this volume like this :

  1. Bench press max effort
  2. Bench accessory
    These two are easily handable with full force.
    And then :
  3. Incline bench 1 set - add one set per week to a max of 3 sets
  4. Decline bench or seated press - 1 set, add one set per week to a max of 3 sets

What do you think?

Also another thing that amazed was that he was advocating full bodybuilding-like volume of biceps training! (3-4 sets of 3 exercises), which he said was important for “supporting” the barbell in the bench, and also emphasized the importance of reverse curls for bench. He even got me warming up for benching with a superset of very light reverse curls followed by overhead triceps extensions!
And these methods are common in his large circle of accomplished powerlifters. And on the internet most of the gurus will tell you that this is uneffective or that no powerlifter would train like that!

3630

[quote]Thy. wrote:
full bodybuilding-like volume of biceps training! (3-4 sets of 3 exercises), which he said was important for “supporting” the barbell in the bench, and also emphasized the importance of reverse curls for bench. He even got me warming up for benching with a superset of very light reverse curls followed by overhead triceps extensions!
[/quote]

I agree 100%.

For the past 4 weeks I have been doing a set of reverse curls or preacher curls between sets of bench pressing (got that from an old Doug Hepburn article). In those 4 weeks my bench has increased from 405 to 435. It could actually have been more because:

  1. Both shoulders are killing me right now (must be old age!). The 435 felt easy, but I didn’t try more to be on the safe side.

  2. I’m actually on a fat loss diet … in those 4 weeks I went from 230 down to 218.

Is it all because of the curl? Obviously not. But I really feel that it made a difference.

Note that on top of that biceps work I actually do a full upper arm day every 5 days.

3631

[quote]Thy. wrote:
Thanks Thib!! That cleared a lot, I was thinking about building up to this volume like this :

  1. Bench press max effort
  2. Bench accessory
    These two are easily handable with full force.
    And then :
  3. Incline bench 1 set - add one set per week to a max of 3 sets
  4. Decline bench or seated press - 1 set, add one set per week to a max of 3 sets
    [/quote]

Here are some recommendations:

Do the incline and decline/seated work with dumbbells using a neutral (hammer) grip. This will take some strain off of the shoulder joint/rotator cuffs until you adapt to the high amount of pressing work.

For the assistance work, use a 3 weeks wave (kinda like you want to do) but work up in 10 weeks…

Week 1: 1 set
Week 2: 2 sets
Week 3: 3 sets
Week 4: 2 sets
Week 5: 3 sets
Week 6: 4 sets
Week 7: no assistance
Week 8: 3 sets
Week 9: 4 sets
Week 10: 5 sets

3632

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Note that on top of that biceps work I actually do a full upper arm day every 5 days.[/quote]

Gotta build the guns to get the girl!

3633

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Thy. wrote:
full bodybuilding-like volume of biceps training! (3-4 sets of 3 exercises), which he said was important for “supporting” the barbell in the bench, and also emphasized the importance of reverse curls for bench. He even got me warming up for benching with a superset of very light reverse curls followed by overhead triceps extensions!

I agree 100%.

For the past 4 weeks I have been doing a set of reverse curls or preacher curls between sets of bench pressing (got that from an old Doug Hepburn article). In those 4 weeks my bench has increased from 405 to 435. It could actually have been more because:

  1. Both shoulders are killing me right now (must be old age!). The 435 felt easy, but I didn’t try more to be on the safe side.

  2. I’m actually on a fat loss diet … in those 4 weeks I went from 230 down to 218.

Is it all because of the curl? Obviously not. But I really feel that it made a difference.

Note that on top of that biceps work I actually do a full upper arm day every 5 days.[/quote]

Thib, I tried searching for the “old Dough Hepburn article” you spoke of, but was unable to locate it. Could you give us a link to the article. I am intestested in learning more about this. Thanks

3634

BTW, that’s my wife… so it’s 100% legal.

3635

[quote]Serd wrote:
Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Thy. wrote:
full bodybuilding-like volume of biceps training! (3-4 sets of 3 exercises), which he said was important for “supporting” the barbell in the bench, and also emphasized the importance of reverse curls for bench. He even got me warming up for benching with a superset of very light reverse curls followed by overhead triceps extensions!

I agree 100%.

For the past 4 weeks I have been doing a set of reverse curls or preacher curls between sets of bench pressing (got that from an old Doug Hepburn article). In those 4 weeks my bench has increased from 405 to 435. It could actually have been more because:

  1. Both shoulders are killing me right now (must be old age!). The 435 felt easy, but I didn’t try more to be on the safe side.

  2. I’m actually on a fat loss diet … in those 4 weeks I went from 230 down to 218.

Is it all because of the curl? Obviously not. But I really feel that it made a difference.

Note that on top of that biceps work I actually do a full upper arm day every 5 days.

Thib, I tried searching for the “old Dough Hepburn article” you spoke of, but was unable to locate it. Could you give us a link to the article. I am intestested in learning more about this. Thanks

[/quote]

It’s from an old magazine, not the internet.

3636

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Note that on top of that biceps work I actually do a full upper arm day every 5 days.

Gotta build the guns to get the girl![/quote]

3637

Bummer. Can you recommend any programs that I can follow? I have Poliquin’s book German Body Comp. I plan on going to Oakland to get measured up by a BioSignature trainer.

I weigh roughly what Bartl did (255lbs at 5’10") and have the same goals. Is there anyway to get a version of that routine he was put on?

Again, thanks in advance,

Nathaniel

3638

If you go to transformations there is an article ocalled Transformation of Bartl there. The end of the article provides you with a link to Bartl’s physique clinic which consists of all the routines Bartl was put on.

3639

Daffy,

I have seen some of his workouts and some of his diet but not laid out and across many pages…unless you are talking about some other section I havent seen.

-Nate

3640

hey Thib,

When I squat (usually feet just a touch wider than shoulder width and toes slightly out), I get a lot of soreness in my upper/inside parts of my hamstrings, usually more than the soreness i get in my quads. Does this mean my quads are lagging as the hammies are taking over the movement? And if so, would partial squats be the best bet for improving this? I know moving my feet in would help with getting more quad stimulation it’s just when I’m going for max weight this position is the most effective.