I have no idea what HDII is.
And I described no time frame.
No, you simply said “entire lifting career”. I was simply 1) agreeing with you and 2) indicating that it could happen in a much shorter time span. One of the tenets of Heavy Duty II (HDII), was adding rest days whenever progress stalled. In a matter of months, one could get to a point where only 2-3 sets were done every 7-10 days. Result: Strong muscles that somehow managed to appear flat and untrained.
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But I’m not speaking of any particular thing happening. The opposite: I’m talking about things NOT happening. Specifically the development of work capacity.
Concur that the way a lot of folks train sets them up for poor development in that regard. Hell, most folks just completely neglect conditioning. Lifting weights is the EASY part.
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I think 6-12 weeks accounted for a bell curve within only a select group of Dante himself and his closest peers (i.e. limited population study). The later adjustments showed that he did, very well, account for the feedback from the more normal ‘masses’ who had worked his program (in addition, to what he himself encountered as he got older)
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This IS in regard to work capacity. You’re just being a contrarian.
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Perhaps, instead, I simply misunderstand you?
I’ll accept that. I think we may be talking about the same thing from different directions! I indicated one example practically guaranteed to move a trainee AWAY from a better/higher work capacity (in a shorter time frame).
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Absolutely. And a trainee that trains in such a manner for their whole career will absolutely never reach the point of having any worthwhile development there, and thus be very prone to under-recovery. Definitely sounds like we’re in agreement there.
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Like you and Pwn, we may be inadvertently agreeing on somebody parts of this. Normal people don’t train hard, and don’t push through discomfort or fatigue in order to break through to new levels of strength or size. Where we disagree is you call that level of discomfort/fatigue “overtraining” and I call it “necessary in order to grow.”
Ordinary people have the capacity to do extraordinary things. All this to say, I once again freely admit overtraining is a thing, but it’s a thing best left out of many trainees’ vocabulary, along with “genetics”. It’s just an excuse to not work hard.
So when somebody asks, “can I do this low volume 3x/week training program as a natural?”, if the point is to help that person - the best response is “try it and find out for yourself.” Otherwise, you might have just convinced somebody who can handle the program to never try it.
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I’m having flashbacks of Murph in the pharma forums all over again.
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I think everyone is on the same page with Metzger and Heavy Duty. Work super hard, rest more, then work harder because you’re so rested, then have to rest more because you worked so hard… until you’re never in the gym and have no work capacity.
It’s similar to the Ripplistiltskin method of doing less and less with longer and longer breaks until you have no work capacity and the weights injure you.
All the neuro-type 2A lifters and coaches I like say to do other stuff (high reps, or light weights, or cardio or whatever) in between really strenuous workouts. That way you can still develop something while you recover from the harder stuff.
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This is one of the greatest tricks the devil played on man. “Strength” by working less.
I still slum over on the SS forums. I think the message is a good one…for the first 12 weeks of training. That part just seems to get missed.
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The 6-12 week range is a good point. That’s a big difference. I didn’t really know much about the specific time line Dante recommended.
I agree about “Try It Out” is good advices! It’s easy to talk shit from the outside, when you don’t know anything about the program.
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I’ve used rest pause successfully many times over the years, all the way back to the early 90’s, and LONG before DC training (or any of these newer ‘rest pause’ ideas).were ever even invented.
A set plus 2 rest pause sets after. But I found even way back then, the same thing Dr Darden just recently has been talking about and that’s NOT going to failure. For the same reasons he talked about (really kills recovery and it’s better to do a bit more with less effort, than less with killer effort).
If you look at 30-10-30, it’s 3 ‘bouts’ in a row, which makes a deep inroad but without frying the nervous system. That’s how I’d do rest pause, a hard set , 20 seconds rest, more reps, 20 seconds rest and more reps. 3 ‘bouts’, deep inroad, but no ‘nerve frying failure’ effort.
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An interesting discussion! Overtraining vs DC-training, and the length of procedure.
The problem with following a protocol as it’s written, is you tend to be fixated on “proper procedure” - rather than following your own judgement in terms of dosage (volume, frequency, intensity).
My routine these days is an unholy alliance of different routines and strategies, keeping an eye of symtoms arising re overtraining. Many trainees here surely do the same.
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I agree. Problem is, some of the hardcore HIT/Menzter/SS crowd has been so adamant on training to failure 100% of the time…and that constant stress on the CNS just forces one to train ridiculously brief and infrequent. I know from experience. But if you back off just a bit even for a while, the wide range of productive options broaden considerably.
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You are supposing too much about what I know or don’t know. I’ve been around a while and have done many workouts as painful as anything you’ve experienced. To repeat what I said in another post: Overtraining is a process, not an event. It is defined much more by a lack of or plateuax in results, than by “ouch, that hurts”. I’ve bumped up against and fought past my “limitations” many times — with the full understanding that exceeding those limits requires more compensation time and resources than not “pushing it”. I don’t care how magical you think our bodies are!!
Stagnated progress is my main ruler for OT (along with sleep, mood, and daily energy problems). If you continue to push against stagnate limits for repeated episodes, that’s Textbook Insanity.
I did advise them to try it. I also tempered the recommendations with knowledge gained from actual experience and not just mine! I recommended a version that would give them a better chance of initial success than the full-on original protocol. Then, if they were pleased with their achievements with the [EDIT HERE>]lower frequency version (volume stays the same, though intensity is parsed out among fewer exercises), they could give the full program a try. I know for a fact that the full program with the full duration (even 6 weeks) is too much for some people to take.
I won’t apologize for being a pragmatist. And I don’t get the insistence many have with always turning the knob to 11 right out of the gate. Try 8 for a while…Then 9…etc.
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What you’re typing here includes the possibility of them trying the full program. You stated, unequivocally, that the program was not applicable for natural trainees. That’s a deterrent for anyone not on gear, so I took issue with it, especially given how frequently I’ve seen people try it ‘round these parts.
But - I didn’t ask for you to apologize for anything, and you indeed shouldn’t have to. Even if things get testy, we’re just disagreeing. No hard feelings from me here.
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They are similar in appearance. Both are muscular, 40+ bodybuilders with short hair cuts. But I doubt they are the same guy.
One clue is that Stevenson has a rather extensive bio on his web site, with positions and associations that can be verified. He also has collaborated with other folks that have good reputations (e.g., he has co-authored a book with John Meadows).
I’ve been seeing David Feather videos for a long time. His main claim to fame seems to be that he and his business partner, who own a gym in Hawaii, have a collection of over 500 strength training machines, some rare and vintage.
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results from overeating and overtraining is same