Those puppies will make your thighs grow eyeballs so they can cry.
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Soooooo smooth… hit 12 plates for 7 the other day
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I can agree with this, but I would add that for quad hypertrophy, reps of at least 10 are important. (I wish that I had included some leg days that involved 20 rep squats.) Lower rep squats increase strength, but for optimal hypertrophy you need to utilize your strength increase to lift higher rep sets with more weight.
Yeah that makes sense in general, and I’m sure it’s probably true in most cases. I’ve personally always seen the most growth between 6-12 reps across 3-4 sets, at or within a rep or two of failure for each set… so touching your low end for hypertrophy.
I’ve read about different stimulus demands for different muscle groups and believe it as a potentially optimal scenario but 6-12 still works for me.
Except for calves and biceps. I have to hammer them.
That’s simply not physiologically true… different muscles don’t need different rep ranges. If you simply prefer 10’s…you’ll likely just push harder for them but there’s nothing special about them.
Some “growth” people experience from higher reps is simply swelling edemas, inflammation… not actual myofibrillar addition. And it lasts quite a few days.
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Have you tried holding the stretch in the bottom for 3 to 5 seconds for calfs?? Only muscle that responds to that extreme stretch but man it works… 2 sets of 6 to 8 every 2 days on a leg press or calf press style machine
I haven’t tried a hold, but I’ll do a very slow concentric and eccentric for them, but standing on a hack squat machine. One with both an angled plate and a flat edge, which I use to stretch off of in to a negative.
I forget what the name is called but I’ll also do sort of a bent over donkey raise wearing a weighted belt, but instead of the donkey raise it’s a calf raise off an Olympic plate for thickness. I get a good stretch this way.
I’ll try holding.
I used to do iso holds in wrestling but never for calves.
I’m a tall guy with long limbs, so the standard programs felt like checklists, rather than an actual workout. I wanted to look muscular with clothes on, and while not consciously chasing the pump, it felt like a way to add extra physical stress on muscles while minimizing stress on bones and tendons with the increased blood flow for nutrient recovery, and make more room for more calories later.
Also, targeting a muscle from multiple angles allowed more accumulated stress and more “rounded” development, while working on both myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic fibers seemed to make sense. Growth is growth, right?
Anyway, I wasn’t going to compete, just kick my own ass and see what my body did.
You’re a hedgehog with a machine gun, a pump would make you explode.
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I do them on the leg press… you’ll see significant growth in a short time especially if done unilaterally. The hold in the bottom is key.
Sarcoplasm isn’t actual growth…Brunt
Thanks man. I’ll try it tomorrow morning.
Well yeah, but you can still use it to grow.
I’ll defer to an expert here.
What I like best about you is that you have convinced me that I must have great genetics, because I don’t do anything correct for growth. I once thought that I had fairly good genetics that I optimized with optimal diet, AAS, and training. But it seems that in spite of my total ignorance, my great genetics had overcome all my training and knowledge short comings.
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned over multiple decades of weight training to support various, changing goals with varied changing programming considering, it’s that there are many ways to skin a cat.
Science will sometimes point the way to optimal, and sometimes it will mislead us. For years. Massive dudes have built massive physiques on programs like Dogg Crapp, Skip Lacour was a big proponent for low and heavy, lots of pros were. HIIT is successful, so is high volume stuff.
Hell, even CrossFit guys can manage to be pretty muscular in spite of themselves, sometimes.
I think they all work, and optimal depends on individual leverages, muscle fiber type distribution and a slew of other variables.
And, I’m not a certified coach or exercise scientist, but I’m aware over analysis can be crippling in general.
So I think bro-science is actually pretty valuable. Within the confines of proven systems “bro try this, it worked for me”. Ok. Let’s see.
Like the calf thing. I’m going to try @marine77 suggestion, which flys against the advice of a former pro bodybuilder in my gym, who swears only the top half of the movement is valuable and stretching is just losing elasticity .
Well, his advice gave him killer calves but doesn’t seem to do much for me. The guy in my gym.
I’m sure @RT_Nomad cpuld offer useful advice and anyone else.
As a matter of fact, I’d like to hear some bicep advice, and what has worked for others. I have biceps (and calves), but they’re my trouble kids. Exercise selection, rep schemes, programming frequency, form and execution, let’s hear it. Especially if you’ve struggled with biceps and made them imposing anyways.
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There is some danger in generalizing things since genetic things like bicep tendon insertion location do make some difference.
Like you say, a mix of stuff works best.
I have built sizeable biceps, but when starting lifting did not give them that much emphasis. I think biceps respond to volume, lots of reps at 60%. And I think biceps respond to bigger weights distributed over many muscles: things like volume Gravitron (assisted) pull-ups, heavy vertical rows and preachers. Big arms need brachialis and brachoradialis targeting - hammer curls (with added wrist flicks at the beginning and end) and vertical rope pulling or climbing work that nicely. But I think heavy holds - holding a heavy weight overhead in the Smith, or rack pulls, are much underrated. I never really did 21s.
I have always had strong legs. I do hold calves for three to five seconds on the vertical or horizontal machines, since I think people use them so much just with walking that it makes sense to reduce the elastic rebound. Jumping probably works well but I don’t do this much myself (is jump rope good for the calves? Bet it is.) Doing loaded carries on tiptoe really works the calves. But it looks funny. I am not too self-conscious but don’t do this in a crowded gym. Mostly I depend on general leg exercises to work the calves too.
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Gastroc loses tension a bit over 90 degrees… I’d caution against taking advice from genetic outliers as nearly anything they do will work wonderfully. Us unfortunate mutants have to rely on physiology and bio-mechanics \m/
I’m headed back to bash single moms now
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Apart from forearms (and maybe they are equal), calves are mostly genetic. I have only seen one guy really build calf size, and he was right out of high school. The first exercise he did every workout was standing one legged calf raises with a dumbbell. He did the exercise slow, flexing at the top and each set seemed to last at least 60 seconds, maybe more. It seemed to take him 15 minutes to do his calves. He never rested between sets, but just changed to the other calf.
What I now realize is that he had lengthy time under tension. He didn’t bounce at all with a deliberate stop at the bottom, so he removed most of stretch reflex as a component of the exercise.
Speaking of time under tension, way back when Boyer Coe was admired for his huge calves, he promoted a tennis shoe with an elevated pad glued to the ball of the shoe. There walking would really add to time under tension.
My favorite excuse was what Chris Dickerson said once (that I know of) when asked what he did to get such massive calves. He said his brother had bigger calves and never did anything. So, there is your genetics excuse when nothing seems to work.
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Poe’s Law ??
Use a leg press if you can… no need to load the spine with standing raises.
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Occasionally bro-science is ironically correct… wide grip lat pulldowns = wide lats…only because the lats lose tension at above around 120 degrees… doubt the bro’s know that.
And the reality is so few people, generally speaking, have the genetic ability to have a truly impressive physique. I do not have those genetics. So, I have to rely on actual physiology