Why Train for Strength If Size Is Wanted?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
21

[quote]Patbone wrote:
Wasn’t there a great quote that explained this phenomena before… You can’t put your ass on two Horses… Size and strength can (mingle) together but you can’t get much mass outta strength

[/quote]

Really?

I trained from the start to get stronger in a 6-10 rep range. I ate to get bigger. There was none of this confusion because no one then was retarded enough to think you got HUGE without getting a hell of a lot stronger. They went hand in hand.

The idea that they now must be trained for seperately is a new one…and we can just see the HOARDS of huge bodybuilders being built from this mind set.

I mean, I just trip over people with 18" arms or bigger all day fucking long.

22

[quote]CGspot wrote:

Well from what I’ve seen in the bodybuilding gym I trained at none of the body builders did free weight bench, squat, or deadlift. Yes they used variations like hammer machine presses and leg press/machine squat(which are all compound lifts). When I stopped doing those three big lifts and moved to machines I got no where.

[/quote]

Also, there is nothing wrong with leg presses…AT ALL. And unless you are moving very substantial weight on those hammer strength machines, why would you START training on only those while ignoring all free weights?

23

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]Patbone wrote:
Wasn’t there a great quote that explained this phenomena before… You can’t put your ass on two Horses… Size and strength can (mingle) together but you can’t get much mass outta strength

[/quote]

Really?

I trained from the start to get stronger in a 6-10 rep range. I ate to get bigger. There was none of this confusion because no one then was retarded enough to think you got HUGE without getting a hell of a lot stronger. They went hand in hand.

The idea that they now must be trained for seperately is a new one…and we can just see the HOARDS of huge bodybuilders being built from this mind set.

I mean, I just trip over people with 18" arms or bigger all day fucking long.[/quote]

Take for example the 5/3/1 program don’t you think the volume and the rep pattern is too little to actually get much mass out of program?

24

[quote]deadman123 wrote:
One thing that helps is increasing all your lift 50 %. With that kind of strength increase, it’s suberbly difficult to have no size increases. With that stress to go through all that to increase strength that substantially the body will be forced to bigger and larger, regardless.[/quote]

Vague statements. A newbie might not experience much size gains going from a bench of 100 to 150. Someone benching 225 might become significantly bigger going to 315.

It’s also a catch-22. You might become bigger because you progressed in some lifts, or you might have to become bigger–either with more food and/or program design–in order to become stronger in some lifts.

And there are some lifts (eg, rear delt raises) in which you won’t be able to progress by 50% after some time, regardless of how big you become or how strong your body becomes and functions as a whole in compound lifts.

25

[quote]Patbone wrote:
Wasn’t there a great quote that explained this phenomena before… You can’t put your ass on two Horses… Size and strength can (mingle) together but you can’t get much mass outta strength

[/quote]

It’s not the getting stronger -part that brick is going against here I think… That’s integral to bodybuilding.

It’s just that starting strength, for example, is just not a good routine for bodybuilding purposes.

26

[quote]CGspot wrote:
Well from what I’ve seen in the bodybuilding gym I trained at none of the body builders did free weight bench, squat, or deadlift. Yes they used variations like hammer machine presses and leg press/machine squat(which are all compound lifts). When I stopped doing those three big lifts and moved to machines I got no where.

[/quote]

Why don’t you post that routine, sets, reps here… Maybe a week from your logbook, plus how you progressed over the next month and what you ate?

Sounds very suspect to me… Did you stop progressing all out of a sudden or what?

27

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Wendler 5/3/1 is ultimately just a set/rep and progression scheme (two actually, as you have two different loading parameter tables to choose from). The 10% table is very close to regular bodybuilding… The only difference being that you cycle your intensity over 4 workouts.

Of course I wouldn’t do the “boring but big” assistance template with 5/3/1 if bodybuilding is my goal.
I would stay the fuck away from it. Or the “bodybuilder” template… None of them are all that great for bbing…

But 5/3/1 as such is quite useful for the main lifts… You won’t need it per se, but it can be used just fine with your regular 4-6 -way split. Rep out on the last set like Wendler says.

It doesn’t violate any bodybuilding principles I know of… You ramp up to a top set… You get stronger… It’s up to you to chose a proper exercise to use it on, i.e. flat bench may not be all that useful for a bodybuilder by comparison. HS bench or incline or so is better in most cases for the chest (at least if you bench with proper setup) and cgp/in-human/SWRGB are all better for the tris… HS machines, SHIPs, Seated militaries etc are better for the delts usually than st. OHP… Etc.

I used to do this for a while and it worked just fine:

Mon - Chest (light tri work sometimes)
Tue - Back (5/3/1 rack pulls)
Wed - Delts (5/3/1 Seated OHP, or at least I think that’s what I chose, was some time ago)
Thur - off
Fri - Arms (5/3/1 close-grip press, PL style)
Sat - Legs (No 5/3/1 I think… Or did I do it on the hack machine or sumo DL? Don’t remember)
Sun - off

In retrospect I would have trained some combination of bodyparts twice per week though.

Used other routines with 5/3/1 as well… Shit, you could even just say “hm, I’m stuck on EZ curls at xxx times x, so I’ll do 5/3/1 EZ curls for a few months and see how it goes”.

[/quote]

Dear lord, C_C, you are an endless fountain of knowledge! Come my next cycle, I, too shall add 5/3/1 EZ-bar curls!

All kidding aside, looking at your suggestions for 5/3/1 for better bodybuilding helped me a LOT, so here’s an inappropriately-placed thanks.

/offtopic

But I think a LONG time ago, there was some Atomic Dog column that included a poll (or maybe it was just some article) that talked about what members of T-Nation’s goals were. Some decent chunks of people wanted size, strength, or fat loss individually, but most wanted some combination of the three I think. Or whatever the last option was.

Point of the matter, I think that it might just be human or contemporary mindset that makes most people want EVERYTHING without sacrificing something else. I mean, there’s no shortage of people who talk about ‘clean bulking’ here. Or slow and steady or whatnot.

28

Doesn’t it make senses that the only reason bigger guys do machines and higher rep ranges is because they want to stay injury-free?

Someone who can barely bench 150lbs could go very “heavy”(3-8 reps) and not get injured. Yet someone who is benching 4 plates per side would be better of using lighter weights and higher reps or machines.

29

[quote]ronaldo7 wrote:
Doesn’t it make senses that the only reason bigger guys do machines and higher rep ranges is because they want to stay injury-free?

Someone who can barely bench 150lbs could go very “heavy”(3-8 reps) and not get injured. Yet someone who is benching 4 plates per side would be better of using lighter weights and higher reps or machines.[/quote]

I first benched 405 several years ago. Since then, I moved away from the bench press with the primary reason being that you NEEDED a spotter to truly push the limits and go even further. Have any of you tried asking a random person in the gym to spot you as you lift over 400lbs? You do that if you don’t mind losing appendages.

I do more hammer strength now because I don’t have to worry about that and I actually noticed more growth from it that I would NOT have noticed if I was so stubborn that I just stayed with the flat barbell bench regardless of results seen.

That doesn’t mean I train light. I don’t.

30

[quote]ronaldo7 wrote:
Doesn’t it make senses that the only reason bigger guys do machines and higher rep ranges is because they want to stay injury-free?

Someone who can barely bench 150lbs could go very “heavy”(3-8 reps) and not get injured. Yet someone who is benching 4 plates per side would be better of using lighter weights and higher reps or machines.[/quote]

Older and bigger guys may use higher reps and more machine work to stay injury free, yes.

The thing is, some machines are just plain better than most (or all) free weight exercises for some purposes.

There are a few lateral raise machines out there which beat everything else you can do for your shoulder width.

Hammer Strength machines make for some of the best chest exercise options available, particularly clavicular portion of the chest and chest/front delt tie-in area.

HS back machines are all great, and it’s a lot easier to get the technique right on those vs. a barbell row. Also easier to get your backwidth up with HS high rows and supinated HS pulldowns (and the old nautilus pullover) vs. weighted Pullups in many cases.

Not that you have to use any of those, but they are totally valid exercises even for non-advanced trainees.

As for the low reps… Well, it depends… Beginners (and many intermediates) don’t know jack about how to set up properly and about “proper” technique. So they may easily hurt themselves (how many guys on here have busted shoulders and don’t even bench 300 yet) or simply won’t get the results they want.

Some have much better “body awareness” than others, and for those, low reps with maximal loads for that rep range are fine… Others may want go with medium to high reps and lighter loads first and get to know their bodies better.

31

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:

[quote]Patbone wrote:
Wasn’t there a great quote that explained this phenomena before… You can’t put your ass on two Horses… Size and strength can (mingle) together but you can’t get much mass outta strength

[/quote]

It’s not the getting stronger -part that brick is going against here I think… That’s integral to bodybuilding.

It’s just that starting strength, for example, is just not a good routine for bodybuilding purposes.

[/quote]

Exactly!

Alright, I didn’t quite express myself clearly…

In order to succeed in bodybuilding you must seek to get stronger in all your lifts and succeed in doing so.

However, there was a time when several gurus on this site were running around constantly repeating, “Train for performance and size will follow.” What they meant was, “Follow my upper-lower or TBT routine and your size worries will go away.”

Provide diet is dialed in, people will experience size gains on any weight training routine provided it’s not irrational. But what kind of size gains are we talking about? Are we talking about gains that are rapid and symmetrical - the kind of development that results in ALL muscle groups being developed to their full potential? Is the end result of following such a routine for years going to be someone who can do OK in perhaps an entry-level bodybuilding show or better or at least look like he can?

MOST powerlifters, athletes, and Olympic lifters–nearly all of whom follow some type of TBT or upper-lower split–don’t look like they’re ready for a bodybuilding show because of their asymmetrical development and, in the case of athletes, suboptimal mass throughout the entire body (granted that’s because being an athlete has nothing to do with being a successful bodybuilder).

32

[quote]Patbone wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]Patbone wrote:
Wasn’t there a great quote that explained this phenomena before… You can’t put your ass on two Horses… Size and strength can (mingle) together but you can’t get much mass outta strength

[/quote]

Really?

I trained from the start to get stronger in a 6-10 rep range. I ate to get bigger. There was none of this confusion because no one then was retarded enough to think you got HUGE without getting a hell of a lot stronger. They went hand in hand.

The idea that they now must be trained for seperately is a new one…and we can just see the HOARDS of huge bodybuilders being built from this mind set.

I mean, I just trip over people with 18" arms or bigger all day fucking long.[/quote]

Take for example the 5/3/1 program don’t you think the volume and the rep pattern is too little to actually get much mass out of program?
[/quote]

Wait…why would I be worried about “5/3/1” in the first place?

5/3/1 has been what successful bodybuilders have been using for decades?

I said I stayed in a 6-10 rep range. I understood the need for more volume from the very beginning, mostly because everyone from powerlifters to bodybuilders trained together in the same gyms and THAT was the primary difference, not even what exercises were being used.

Your goal in bodybuilding is NOT just failure. It is also FATIGUE. There is nothing half ass or light about the way a SERIOUS bodybuilder/weightlifter trains.

33

[quote]A Ninny Mouse wrote:

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Wendler 5/3/1 is ultimately just a set/rep and progression scheme (two actually, as you have two different loading parameter tables to choose from). The 10% table is very close to regular bodybuilding… The only difference being that you cycle your intensity over 4 workouts.

Of course I wouldn’t do the “boring but big” assistance template with 5/3/1 if bodybuilding is my goal.
I would stay the fuck away from it. Or the “bodybuilder” template… None of them are all that great for bbing…

But 5/3/1 as such is quite useful for the main lifts… You won’t need it per se, but it can be used just fine with your regular 4-6 -way split. Rep out on the last set like Wendler says.

It doesn’t violate any bodybuilding principles I know of… You ramp up to a top set… You get stronger… It’s up to you to chose a proper exercise to use it on, i.e. flat bench may not be all that useful for a bodybuilder by comparison. HS bench or incline or so is better in most cases for the chest (at least if you bench with proper setup) and cgp/in-human/SWRGB are all better for the tris… HS machines, SHIPs, Seated militaries etc are better for the delts usually than st. OHP… Etc.

I used to do this for a while and it worked just fine:

Mon - Chest (light tri work sometimes)
Tue - Back (5/3/1 rack pulls)
Wed - Delts (5/3/1 Seated OHP, or at least I think that’s what I chose, was some time ago)
Thur - off
Fri - Arms (5/3/1 close-grip press, PL style)
Sat - Legs (No 5/3/1 I think… Or did I do it on the hack machine or sumo DL? Don’t remember)
Sun - off

In retrospect I would have trained some combination of bodyparts twice per week though.

Used other routines with 5/3/1 as well… Shit, you could even just say “hm, I’m stuck on EZ curls at xxx times x, so I’ll do 5/3/1 EZ curls for a few months and see how it goes”.

[/quote]

Dear lord, C_C, you are an endless fountain of knowledge! Come my next cycle, I, too shall add 5/3/1 EZ-bar curls! [/quote] Hey, it really does work… May need micro plates if your max-10% is too small though.
It’s really just another take on ramping.

My pleasure…

34

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:

[quote]ronaldo7 wrote:
Doesn’t it make senses that the only reason bigger guys do machines and higher rep ranges is because they want to stay injury-free?

Someone who can barely bench 150lbs could go very “heavy”(3-8 reps) and not get injured. Yet someone who is benching 4 plates per side would be better of using lighter weights and higher reps or machines.[/quote]

Older and bigger guys may use higher reps and more machine work to stay injury free, yes.

The thing is, some machines are just plain better than most (or all) free weight exercises for some purposes.

There are a few lateral raise machines out there which beat everything else you can do for your shoulder width.

Hammer Strength machines make for some of the best chest exercise options available, particularly clavicular portion of the chest and chest/front delt tie-in area.

HS back machines are all great, and it’s a lot easier to get the technique right on those vs. a barbell row. Also easier to get your backwidth up with HS high rows and supinated HS pulldowns (and the old nautilus pullover) vs. weighted Pullups in many cases.

Not that you have to use any of those, but they are totally valid exercises even for non-advanced trainees.

As for the low reps… Well, it depends… Beginners (and many intermediates) don’t know jack about how to set up properly and about “proper” technique. So they may easily hurt themselves (how many guys on here have busted shoulders and don’t even bench 300 yet) or simply won’t get the results they want.

Some have much better “body awareness” than others, and for those, low reps with maximal loads for that rep range are fine… Others may want go with medium to high reps and lighter loads first and get to know their bodies better.

[/quote]

The lateral raise machine is why my shoulders are as wide as they are. They did not grow like that while I was only using dumbbells for the movement. My forearms were a limiting factor as far as the weight used. I go VERY heavy on that machine (adding two 45lbs plates to the weight stack). This is apparently something quite a few people find to be strange considering the looks I get carrying those plates to the machine.

35

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:

[quote]CGspot wrote:
Well from what I’ve seen in the bodybuilding gym I trained at none of the body builders did free weight bench, squat, or deadlift. Yes they used variations like hammer machine presses and leg press/machine squat(which are all compound lifts). When I stopped doing those three big lifts and moved to machines I got no where.

[/quote]

Why don’t you post that routine, sets, reps here… Maybe a week from your logbook, plus how you progressed over the next month and what you ate?

Sounds very suspect to me… Did you stop progressing all out of a sudden or what?
[/quote]

ANY time someone acts like one simple thing was preventing ALL of their progress, it smells suspect.

No one’s gains should come to a complete halt simply because they did one movement over another.

Leg presses work just fine so how the hell do legs stop growing from doing them?

36

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Well, there can be a good reason to do that.

Yes, I know that everyone who knows what they are doing in bb’ing and are working seriously at it adds at least 2 lb of muscle a month, or at least 20 lb a year, and for example those who 5 years ago were already experienced and skilled have all added 100 lb of muscle since then.

Or at any rate to hear the talk of many, they are gaining all the time and at a good clip, yet – unless there was a change in drug usage – in fact it is not so unusual for say 3 or 6 months to go by without all that much change.

(If anyone denies this, refer to the previous paragraph: if each 3 or 6 months produced all that much change, then there would have to be cumulatively a gigantic increase over 5 years previously, this being referenced to a point of already having been training for years. I’m not comparing to just starting out, where of course there ought to be a really big increase over 5 years.)

So, if someone has noticed that in fact what he’s been doing seems to not be giving much progress, what in the world is wrong with trying something that is shockingly different and is reported to get one substantially stronger, and rapidly?

Anyone think there is no chance that a size increase will come with that? And given that progress hasn’t been so good lately, in our example, for them with ordinary bb’ing methods, why is it necessarily stupid to try Smolov for example?

Personally, Smolov Jr gave me a real improvement in the chest and rapidly, and that at age 47 and with considerably less PED’s than I’ve used before. Regardless of whether strength was a goal, it improved size. Probably out of being so different than anything I’d done before, and so intensively targeted to a given bodypart.[/quote]

Bill: As I wrote in some posts above and in my Bodybuilding Bible thread, there is NOTHING wrong with trying a strength routine to blast through a strength (and/or perhaps a size) plateau. It’s just–and again, as I’ve written repeatedly–that we had GURUS running around prescribing routines in articles in which they wrote repeatedly, “train for performance and size will follow,” implying that some people’s size worries would go away if they trained like athletes with TBT and upper-lower body splits.

To not be misleading, they could have wrote something like, “You might want to use this sort of routine to bust through plateaus you’ve experienced with your traditional bodybuilding routines.”

37

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Well, there can be a good reason to do that.

Yes, I know that everyone who knows what they are doing in bb’ing and are working seriously at it adds at least 2 lb of muscle a month, or at least 20 lb a year, and for example those who 5 years ago were already experienced and skilled have all added 100 lb of muscle since then.

Or at any rate to hear the talk of many, they are gaining all the time and at a good clip, yet – unless there was a change in drug usage – in fact it is not so unusual for say 3 or 6 months to go by without all that much change.

(If anyone denies this, refer to the previous paragraph: if each 3 or 6 months produced all that much change, then there would have to be cumulatively a gigantic increase over 5 years previously, this being referenced to a point of already having been training for years. I’m not comparing to just starting out, where of course there ought to be a really big increase over 5 years.)

So, if someone has noticed that in fact what he’s been doing seems to not be giving much progress, what in the world is wrong with trying something that is shockingly different and is reported to get one substantially stronger, and rapidly?

Anyone think there is no chance that a size increase will come with that? And given that progress hasn’t been so good lately, in our example, for them with ordinary bb’ing methods, why is it necessarily stupid to try Smolov for example?

Personally, Smolov Jr gave me a real improvement in the chest and rapidly, and that at age 47 and with considerably less PED’s than I’ve used before. Regardless of whether strength was a goal, it improved size. Probably out of being so different than anything I’d done before, and so intensively targeted to a given bodypart.[/quote]

Bill: As I wrote in some posts above and in my Bodybuilding Bible thread, there is NOTHING wrong with trying a strength routine to blast through a strength (and/or perhaps a size) plateau. It’s just–and again, as I’ve written repeatedly–that we had GURUS running around prescribing routines in articles in which they wrote repeatedly, “train for performance and size will follow,” implying that some people’s size worries would go away if they trained like athletes with TBT and upper-lower body splits.

To not be misleading, they could have wrote something like, “You might want to use this sort of routine to bust through plateaus you’ve experienced with your traditional bodybuilding routines.” [/quote]

Here is a prime example of how screwed up many of these newbs are as a result of some of the articles and approaches to training.

It is also why you have people using the SAME weights (only worrying about form) as if gaining size has little to do with gaining strength (you know, because strength needs some COMPLETELY different strategy all of a sudden).

38

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:

It’s not the getting stronger -part that brick is going against here I think… That’s integral to bodybuilding.

It’s just that starting strength, for example, is just not a good routine for bodybuilding purposes.

[/quote]

It may not be a “bodybuilding routine” but for MANY people Starting Strength is the best routine for bodybuilding purposes. The name of the program says it all, and for many people going through the program and progressing your lifts in strength, within a couple of months you will be much better off down the road that someone that just starts with “bodybuilding routines”.

**You guys think you know what your are talking about, and it sounds like you do, but you are using opinions and speculation along with LOUD TALKING to try to claim what you know.

39

What are we talking about here? Brick you’re trying very hard (I don’t know why) to put your ideological thinking out there. Its all semantics. Is being huge the equivalent of being a bodybuilder? We have guys in pro wrestling, the Lashleys, the Cenas and the Ezekiel Jacksons looking huge but they aren’t bodybuilders. What are they doing when they are in the gym? We don’t have to call it anything but TRAINING. I could care less if a guy was doing push ups and curls all day but at the end of the day he looked like something. Feel me? I learned and etched a phrase into my brain not so long ago that went along the lines of “results are all that matter.” If I’m following the I bodybuilder program I’m not doing a program strictly done by Kai Greene or Dexter Jackson even though the principles of both MAY be very similar or identical; intertwined, mashed and mushed to the point where you cant extract them.

40

[quote]Professor X wrote:
The lateral raise machine is why my shoulders are as wide as they are. They did not grow like that while I was only using dumbbells for the movement. My forearms were a limiting factor as far as the weight used. I go VERY heavy on that machine (adding two 45lbs plates to the weight stack). This is apparently something quite a few people find to be strange considering the looks I get carrying those plates to the machine.[/quote]

I really wish my gym had one of these machines.

Anyone aware of something similar that can be done with cables or free weights? I have pretty long arms so the weight I can use on lateral raises is pretty poor for hitting the delts.

I could just stick to upright rows or high pulls or whatever, but I could really do with a decent isolation for shoulder width.