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Hi CT,
First of all, a massive thank you for putting together these awesome webinars with Tom!
If you don’t mind, I have a couple of questions:
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Mechinal tension is the main driver of hypertrophy (if technique is solid and you’re training close to or to failure). 6-10 reps on compound movements is considered ideal. However, we also learned that muscle damage is not great for maximizing hypertrophy. Lifting in the 6-10 reps zone will allow for much more load an thus poses a bigger risk for muscle damage, especially with accentuated eccentrics. So, to avoid this, is it better to go slow (5-6 sec eccentric) or add a pause in the stretched position (1-2 sec) to reduce muscle damage because the load is now lighter?
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Doing a slow concentric (for example 3120 which would be 2 sec concentric) is not ideal because of late FT fiber recruitment. An explosive concentric is not ideal either so is it best to just stick with a 1 sec concentric, except for maybe growth factor accumulation sets with isolation movements?
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Concerning effective reps: is the maximum number of effective reps that you can get in a set always 5 when you take that set to complete failure? I believe I saw somewhere in the hypertrophy course that the total amount of effective reps is actually 6, maybe 7 when a set is taken to failure.
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Not directly related to the webinar but still a valuable question I believe: I’m currently having issues with properly feeling and contracting certain muscle groups hard. Technique is solid and I’m really trying to focus on control and squeezing but if feels like my muscles give up before I can reach an intensity where the muscle gets pumped up after. It’s like you’re trying to squeeze and your efforts are met with resistance that drops your motivation to squeeze that muscle even harder because you can’t feel it properly. I hope I’m not being to vague with my description. I tried using up to 8 grams of citrulline malate pre-workout to get better at feeling my muscles but even then I still won’t get near a pump in my lats for example. What could be the issue here? Low intramuscular sodium/water? Too much peripheral fatigue? I drink plenty of water and I don’t cut sodium at all in my diet.
I’d be grateful for your help. Sorry for the long text, I’m not great at being concise with my questions.
You’ll get 5 MAXIMALLY effective reps. But in a set of 10-12 reps, you can get 1-2 that are SOMEWHAT (not maximally) effective
Muscle damage is biochemical, not mechanical.
You are not causing damage by stretching the fibers under load, it’s the calcium ions that leaks during muscle contractions that cause the damage.
As such, volume (under sufficient tension) is a bigger factor in muscle damage than load… new science finding, and one of the reason why I’m working on re-shooting my hypertrophy course
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I don’t use seconds (while I sometimes do include tempo prescriptions in my online programs, it is because it’s quicker than give qualitative advice, but it is not to be taken to the letter).
1 second concentric on a wrist curl is not the same velocity as 1 sec on the back squat.
The best way to do the concentric is, as I explained in the webinar, like an airplane taking off: the first segment is slower and deliberate and then you gradually and smoothly push faster/harder
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Wow ok, this is completely new to me. I thought muscle damage was mainly caused by stretching a muscle under load in a full ROM where the eccentric portion causes microtears in the actin-myosin bridges. Seems like I have some catching up to do. Looking forward to that new version!
That’s a great point. Thank you for the plain analogy, it helps.
Okay, so when you’re doing 3 sets of back squat for example with 1 rep in reserve, you’d get 12 maximally effective reps? I guess counting the somewhat effective reps can leave room for error when you’re trying to estimate how much volume you need to do for growth.
I’m currently co-coaching an athlete for his next men’s physique competition at NCOBB. We’re using a modified push/pull split with only 1 exercise for legs per workout because in Belgium legs are not judged in men’s physique and that way we can invest more volume in exercises that help build his lower lats, upper chest and side delts.
He trains 4x per week and we’re using 5-6 exercises per push/pull workout. We are not going to failure on his compound movements so I naturally gravitated towards doing 2 exercises per workout for the above mentioned muscles that need the most attention (either 2 compound movements or 1 compound and 1 isolation movement). Doing about 6-7 worksets per muscle group per workout should be sufficient to accumulate enough maximally effective reps I guess.
Thanks for your time CT!
By the way, where can we download the PDF link of this webinar?
To get you started
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/jphysiol.2005.091694
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1440-1681.2004.04032.x
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00770.2011
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Hi Christian, thanks for the excelent webinar. Could you share the pdf of the presentation. Thank you again…
It’s just below the video
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Thanks Christian…
Another huge thanks - these webinars are incredible. I know I’m posting a week late to this party, but I’m just now catching up. I hope you’re able to keep doing them; I love them. I’ve got to think attendance will grow exponentially as we all catch on and tell our friends (well, other people will tell their friends - I don’t have any).
How does one take advantage of the ridiculous program offer? I don’t see that bundle on the site but definitely want to do so.
Hey @Christian_Thibaudeau I always were under the assumption that I had a long torso and short limbs, but then I went and took take my measurements and now I am kinda confused.
Upper limbs, wing span 1cm longer than height (average) with long ulna. Works like short limbs, no problem here.
Now the lower limbs, here is where the confusion started.
Stats:
Height: 173cm
Leg length: 88cm
Leg/Height ratio: 50,87%
Femur:40cm
Tibia 37,5cm.
Tibia/Femur ratio: 93,7%
From these numbers I have long legs with a long tibias. Problem is, I always had a much more developed quads than the rest and were more confortable doing squats than regular deadlifts, my programs were always quads based like the example from long legs but I feel that my hamstring and glutes are lacking in comparion.
So should I try the exercise selection for long legs or not?
Also, can you give a especific measurement of the clavicles and what would be consider narrow and wide?
Thanks!
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