[quote]i Man wrote:
If you wanna increase your leg size , should you go for high reps or low reps?
i basically start with 12 reps and end up with 2 reps is that correct? [/quote]
There’s no “correct” way to do it… well, whatever works for you, to achieve your goals, is “correct”.
For some people, lower-rep heavy squats followed by high rep leg presses is what works for them.
For me and some others, they’ve gotten results out of high rep squats.
And there’s a ton of people who’ve focused entirely on strength, never going over 5 reps, that have developed very large legs.
Importance in progressive overload can’t be stressed enough. When your starting out you’ll make strength gains rapidly. From that point on after a year roughly you need to start increasing volume and or intensity. I never really upped my numbers after first year to year 5 or 6 which was a royal mind fuck. Not enough food and not sticking to one program. That being said when your starting out as jake said bw and compound lifts for 5x5 or 3x7 seem to do well.
Chin ups and wide grip pull ups will get your back looking good really fast, bench is a bitch imo, you got it or you’ll work your entire life to be good at it. If you suck at bench as I do, I reccomend a light and heavy day each week, the light day do not use any weight over 50 percent of your max.
Squat till you drop. Deadlift heavy things don’t worry about hitting over 5 reps on this lift.
Creatine helps as well. Consistency is key and the most important thing is form, keep form proper don’t use weights your not ready for. The bestI look is when I’m focusing on strength especially on deads or squats. I’ve tried 3x10 for a month or so I looked bigger but strength is not there I recommend switching between pl and bb styles of training every lets say 3 to 4 months, when your really just starting out you can stay on a program till it no longer works.
It may be confusing but switching programs all the time will leave you not gaining the results as you would if you stuck to it. The body is complex every one has different leverages and composure of fast twitch or slow twitch muscle fibers depending on genes and training and sports background. If you find a program that works do it until you no longer progress then start a new program i would say if your a true noob it will take after 4 months or so to hit that point possibly 6. If you are a hard gainer don’t get discouraged either, it takes years to put on a decent amount of muscle.
The people who are mentally tough and stick to it their entire life reap the rewards of lifting.
Everyone is different. If something works for you, stick to it. Do not listen to every single thing that everyone on the internet has to say. If you try something from a well known “guru” and it does not work for you do not be afraid to ditch it.
Too much to say to really take the time to put it all down in this thread.
Educate YOURSELF. Read, study, think critically, experiment like a scientist (controlled experiment, in other words). You can’t rely on people you know or magazines, or supplement companies. You gotta do it yourself. I put more effort into educating myself lifting and nutrition wise than I did my undergrad degree. Read between 1-2 hours nightly for about 7 years. And thought hard about how the puzzle fit together. Then experimented in the gym.
Don’t cut very often. This whole cut every other month or every 3rd month or whatever is really limiting your gains. IF, and I mean IF, you get down to business quickly and consistently and don’t fuck around missing workouts–even if they fall on Friday nights–or shitting the bed with crappy nutrition, then at best you have spent 4 months out of the entire year in a caloric deficit cutting 1 of every 3 months. At worst it is closer to 6 months. Don’t cut, keep building, and don’t get fat and sloppy in the first place. You can’t necessarily have your 6 pack, and trying to hang onto it will completely halt your building progress, but that doesn’t mean you need to get soft and sloppy.
Obviously if you are currently overweight then you need to fix that somehow. Also obviously, if you DO end up getting sloppy with a bulk then you need to fix that as well somehow. The point is don’t waste more time than you need in a year cutting. I’d have never added near 100 lbs to my frame if I did this cut every summer cut every spring thing. I can remember maybe 6 cuts in 12 years. That’s more time getting strong.
[quote]RampantBadger wrote:
Build a huge work-capacity over time so that you can train both heavy and very high volume…
10 hours sleep at least once a week. Eat tons of quality nutrition. Get as much peri-workout supps in as your stomach and wallet will allow.
Read a bunch of articles by guys like Dan John
Do you suggest a beginner to copy Alpha’s training style? I really like it, combining strength, endurance, he’s fucking superman .[/quote]
Like I said build it up over time. Alpha is in the special forces, it took several military bootcamps to get to that level.
A good strategy is to take a basic template like 5/3/1 and once a fortnight go crazy on assistance work, then gradually start doing this more frequently. Eat tons of protein and perfect world get some top supps like plazma
10 hours sleep at least once a week. Eat tons of quality nutrition. Get as much peri-workout supps in as your stomach and wallet will allow.
Read a bunch of articles by guys like Dan John
Do you suggest a beginner to copy Alpha’s training style? I really like it, combining strength, endurance, he’s fucking superman .[/quote]
Like I said build it up over time. Alpha is in the special forces, it took several military bootcamps to get to that level.
A good strategy is to take a basic template like 5/3/1 and once a fortnight go crazy on assistance work, then gradually start doing this more frequently. Eat tons of protein and perfect world get some top supps like plazma[/quote]
I will serve my country as well in about two years and I’m planning to be the strongest, quickest, and to be the best I can to help and serve others as well my self. Still I have to focus hard in school which is a bummer, I wanna serve already.
Because I can’t always get to the gym that much I’ll do FBW 3 times a week and on the off days I’ll swim, sprint and run with a bunch of food in my hand ;D
[quote]
I will serve my country as well in about two years and I’m planning to be the strongest, quickest, and to be the best I can to help and serve others as well my self. Still I have to focus hard in school which is a bummer, I wanna serve already.
Because I can’t always get to the gym that much I’ll do FBW 3 times a week and on the off days I’ll swim, sprint and run with a bunch of food in my hand ;D[/quote]
A couple words of advice from a former Army special ops guy:
Ruck. Put as much heavy shit as you can fit into a big backpack, the kind with a frame that’s made for hiking, and put on a weighted vest, put the backpack over the vest, then go for a walk. Walk longer and faster every weekend until you can get 18 miles in about 3 1/2 hrs. Once you can do that keep conditioned by doing 12-15mi at least once a month.
Also make sure you can run, pushup, situp your ass off. If you plan to go to airborne school then also work on chins and pull-ups a lot. Be able to run 2mi in 13min and 5mi in 40min. Once you can do all of that, transition to maintenance work and focus on strength. In my opinion rucking, carries, sprints and strength are the most important aspects of being fit for combat, but absolute strength doesn’t reward you the same in a training environment, and you gotta get through the training first.
Only conditioning and endurance will serve you if you’re already even moderately strong. If you’re well enough conditioned it will make SFAS, Ranger School or any of the other cool-guy schools a tiny bit more bearable. Ruck.
I don’t know if my experience will necessarily apply to everyone, but I’ve found that frequency REALLY makes a big difference.
I like to pick a weakness/goal and hit it several times per week. It’s a very effective way to bring up a weak point for me. Despite all the interwebz BS about only DLing once every week/2 weeks, you can do this with anything, even deads, but you definitely have to moderate your intensity smartly.
I suppose this kind of relates to Jake’s comment about concentrating on one thing at a time.
[quote]i Man wrote:
If you wanna increase your leg size , should you go for high reps or low reps?
i basically start with 12 reps and end up with 2 reps is that correct? [/quote]
The best thing I’ve ever done was working up to a heavy (but deep, you squat a mile high) 5-8 reps, then take 85% of that weight and do 1-3 backoff sets, around 15-25 reps for the first one.
[quote]AnytimeJake wrote:
When it comes to putting on size, the best results I’ve seen for myself and clients, is so simple, most people won’t follow it. All we do is squats, dips, chins. Three exercises done twice a week. One workout is a 5x5 workout getting as strong as you can, and handling as much weight as you can in that format 5x5, adding weight when ever possible.
The the second workout is a rep workout using body weight. We do 3 sets of as many reps as you can get with your body weigh for dips and chins, then for squat put roughly your body weight on the bar, and do one set for as many reps as posible. Breathing style, so after the first ten reps, you take 5-10 breaths at the top between reps, 20-30 reps, once your there you can start adding 5lbs a week, to this one all out set.
Eat and sleep as much as possible. There’s lots of weight, and size gaining programs out there, but we do this one for 3 month blasts, and I’ve never seen anything work as well. 2cents[/quote]
Out of interest when you say 5x5 do you ramp up to your top set of 5 or do 5x5 with the same working weight ?
[quote]
I will serve my country as well in about two years and I’m planning to be the strongest, quickest, and to be the best I can to help and serve others as well my self. Still I have to focus hard in school which is a bummer, I wanna serve already.
Because I can’t always get to the gym that much I’ll do FBW 3 times a week and on the off days I’ll swim, sprint and run with a bunch of food in my hand ;D[/quote]
A couple words of advice from a former Army special ops guy:
Ruck. Put as much heavy shit as you can fit into a big backpack, the kind with a frame that’s made for hiking, and put on a weighted vest, put the backpack over the vest, then go for a walk. Walk longer and faster every weekend until you can get 18 miles in about 3 1/2 hrs. Once you can do that keep conditioned by doing 12-15mi at least once a month.
Also make sure you can run, pushup, situp your ass off. If you plan to go to airborne school then also work on chins and pull-ups a lot. Be able to run 2mi in 13min and 5mi in 40min. Once you can do all of that, transition to maintenance work and focus on strength. In my opinion rucking, carries, sprints and strength are the most important aspects of being fit for combat, but absolute strength doesn’t reward you the same in a training environment, and you gotta get through the training first.
Only conditioning and endurance will serve you if you’re already even moderately strong. If you’re well enough conditioned it will make SFAS, Ranger School or any of the other cool-guy schools a tiny bit more bearable. Ruck.[/quote]
Thank you very much! I hope it won’t make my progress in the gym suffer, I have 2 years and even more till I start my army experience and all the sorting.
Sorry for grammar mistakes.
Thank you everyone for the kind advices!
[quote]bbrock171 wrote:
Put as much heavy shit as you can fit into a big backpack, the kind with a frame that’s made for hiking, and put on a weighted vest, put the backpack over the vest, then go for a walk. Walk longer and faster every weekend until you can get 18 miles in about 3 1/2 hrs. Once you can do that keep conditioned by doing 12-15mi at least once a month.
[/quote]
You do realize that is over 5 miles per hour, which is well more than speed walking, and more like a slow jog. Even speed walkers don’t hit near that speed, and jogging with that weight would be awful on your joints.
You do realize that is over 5 miles per hour, which is well more than speed walking, and more like a slow jog. Even speed walkers don’t hit near that speed, and jogging with that weight would be awful on your joints.[/quote]
Special forces soldiers aren’t known for having the best joints in the world. They’re going to get beat up and wrecked doing crazy shit that most people don’t.
He’s talking about rucking here, not walking, which is possibly where the confusion may exist.