Found this routine on Men’s Health. Interesting, somewhat similar to 30-10-30.
Comments?
"Working every minute, on the minute (EMOM), you’re going to perform a 60 second hold, attempting to maintain it for the entirety of the minute. As soon as a new minute elapses you’ll perform 10 reps of your prescribed exercise, resting for the remainder of that minute before moving back into your hold.
You’ll perform 5 total rounds for each hold and movement, for a total of ten minutes each, bringing this workout in at just under 30 minutes."
Interesting! Accentuated holds vs negatives. My vote in favor for negatives, but do the holds have any merit? To what extent?
Isometric excercise hasn’t gotten any serious scientific backing, since the initial good results from combining it with anabolic steroids way back when.
But, I do implement holds on some sets just to preserve the tension… Could use some help here to further the reasoning re holds.
Thanks for sharing this. This sounds intriguing as a “mix-up” option for 30-10-30.
Given the date of the article, and the fact that Men’s Health published “Killing The Fat” we can safely assume that there was inspiration involved here
That is interesting. It’d be a killer preforming it as mentioned in the article, you’d certainly get one Hellva pump. Don’t think you’d get as much growth as Dr Ds 30/10/30 though.
Personally I’d go with just one round, and shorten the holds to 30 seconds. Might give that a go actually when the gyms open here in a few days.
Are holds a forgotten jewel or useless crap (wasn’t that a Hutchens term re Nautilus?)? We have no reps, no negatives and no pump? Therefore no science to back it up (which the other alternatives have). No results?
Just empasizing isometric contraction seem counterproductive to me. Useful while carrying stuff (but not exactly farmer’s walk were dealing with here). As an add-on to keep tension I can understand it. Did Hutchens further his reasoning?
There are a lot of things that are similar to the 30/10/30 and I think the effectiveness is due to the change during the set. I used something similar years ago and just the other day noticed an article on it somewhere of T-Nation, Instead of a long negative and 10 regular speed reps you do two slow reps ( maybe 5 up and 5 down ) then two fast reps and repeat it again - 8 rep set. Try for two such sets , good luck with that if you keep your rest as short as it should be.
Doesn’t seem like much but trying for two sets or cycles like this is a killer. One thing for me is that it’s not boring like timing/counting 30 second negatives which kills my interest right off the bat. Roger Schwab once told me that no matter how good a method might be, it’s useless if you won’t do it.
There is probably some mileage in an HIT routine where you are performing the same whole body workout three times a week but altering the cadence/rep style in each session. For example:
Day 1 - 30/10/30
Day 2 - Superslow (10/5)
Day 3 - One up - 4 down - 2 bottom stretch
There are countless variations you could incorporate, e.g. static holds, loaded stretches, negative only, etc.
I did a similar combination before, every workout shifting with 30-10-30, 30-30-30 or normal cadence. I must admit I did some serious gains with that regime!
Since we are heading in the direction of variations on the 30-10-30 theme:
I have thought about combining a set of Zone Training/Jreps thirds (approx 60 sec “partial” rep-set) - with a finishing 30 second negative. Has anyone tried that? Too much of an inroading? I know Brian Johnston do not advocate negatives.
My though is using this as a “set limiter” in order to preserve HIT full body workouts - and will probably give it a try for variation, as I tend to approve negative training, and really like 30-10-30.
Somewhere in these discussions, I think Dr. Darden indicated that he doesn’t use 30-10-30 exclusively when training clients, that he mixes in the use of other protocols or cadences. I wonder if he has a strategy for how he rotates through different cadences over the course of a training program?
CT talks about this a lot now. It makes a lot of sense because you are exercising various pathways.
As I’ve said on this forum in the past, I personally believe the occlusion effect from 30-10-30, and its various associated schemes, is the primary growth driver here. And there is good science behind occlusion and hypertrophy. If you start to mix this up by introducing sessions emphasising, e.g. mechanical tension, you could potentially reap the best of all worlds.
I’m a bit late to this discussion but I recall one thing that Brian mentioned on the old website and that was doing chin-ups in the following way: 30 second positive followed by a 30 second static hold in the top position and finally a 30 second negative. I’ve experimented with this and it works well. For me one of the key things is not to just hang on your joints in the fully contracted position during the static hold but to do the hold in a very slightly lowered position (roughly with your nose level with the bar) to make sure that you working the muscle rather than just hanging there with you chin over the bar.
Great input of yours here! An interesting variation. I will try your suggestion, though I doubt initially able to make it 30 secs, as I’m heavier nowadays (thanks to Dr Darden) and haven’t done chinups in a while. I will let the positive rep decide the reptime, and work my way up to 30 secs.
For the record I have always liked 30-30-30! A very tolerable approach as/when 30-10-30 can become too much of an inroading.
