Bodybuilding Training, Can We Make This Clear?

I mentioned Flip not as TRT patient but, to show that someone “on” called you out. So, as to not have people screaming “hater” at me.

He didn’t “call me out”. And does him being on multiples of a clinical dose make him a doctor or authority on physiology?

If someone wants to indentify as natural, who are we to question it?

…sorry, I just wanted to make the debate even crazier.

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Can you read? He may have all those but, IT DOES NOT MATTER since his production of testosterone does not depend on it. He has a steady supply all the time.

Hence I’m fine with being called a a TRT patient, but not fine with being called “assisted”.

So do eugonadal males, in eugonadal amounts! Even when their favorite ball team loses or their wives yell at them.

Back to BB talk… Which is what this thread was made for.

Please don’t take my comment seriously. It will just complicate things.

Lol, why yes I can! I read real good and type even gooder. You seem like you need to come down a notch, maybe you’re in a fit of roid rage?!

Let’s keep this thread centered on training! Do you have any input to offer on the subject?

I understand. I am not saying he should not be treated. I believe that all men should have the choice to get on testosterone to reach what would be natural genetic elite levels. Sadly, this is not the case. Do I believe Bricks body is attainable naturally? Absolutely.

However, this does not change the fact that his average is above most mens average. Especially at his age. It does not change the fact that as true naturals we experience dips and fluctuations that he does not. It does not change the fact that in a caloric deficit in a contest prep mind you he STILL continued the have those same above average levels.

To say that it is of no help is ridiculous.

“More recently a case study was completed by researchers like Jeremy Loenneke at the University of Oklahoma that followed a high level natural bodybuilder over the course of his contest prep, and the 6 months post contest [1]. This case study has been discussed quite heavily in the bodybuilding news world, but in general they found drastic decreases in body fat, resting heart rate, and blood pressure over the course of his contest prep. They also found that testosterone decreased 9.22 ng/mL to 2.27 ng/mL over the contest prep period, which represents a 75% decrease in testosterone. That’s pretty significant as you can tell, however as with any case study, the population sample doesn’t necessarily prove that testosterone drops during contest prep.”

"If we want a bigger sample size, we need to go back to a rarely discussed study conducted on 14 amateur male bodybuilders [2]. In this study they specifically wanted to find out how contest prep affected anabolic and catabolic hormones. They split them into two groups. The control group was instructed to maintain the same food intake, and training volume throughout the 11-week study. While the Contest Prep group was allowed to diet and train as they wished, but only with the intention that they would compete in the European National Championships at the end of the 11 weeks. I should note the contest prep group was natural, or at least they were self reported natural, and had shown proof they had not failed any drug tests from previous shows, and they also did not fail a drug test at the national championships (at the end of the study).

Testosterone

Decreased 11.3% from 11-weeks out to 5-weeks out
Decreased 4.4% from 5-weeks out to 3 days out
Decreased 15.2% from 11-weeks out to 3 days out"

@maverick88 Aside from the fact that I lift weights, I don’t really know much about the sport of bodybuilding. If receiving a legitimate medical treatment tangentially related to bodybuilding constitutes an unfair advantage, what do you think about the competitor who simply has naturally high testosterone?

Should there be high-testosterone natural federations? Special federations for low-testosterone competitors? Why should one have to compete against the other? Isn’t that unfair? Should bodybuilding be fair?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but it all seems rather silly to me. I’d rather read about how these strange people lift their weights.

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Thanks for the post. How about this be discussed elsewhere? This thread was started to discuss bare bones bodybuilding training, which hasn’t been discussed here in God knows how long and now we are derailing it. Noobs can learn from it and experienced, lurkers are coming out, a pro is giving input and now we’re screwing around with a topic that helps or entertains no one–just to prove points!

Do you have some BB insight to offer?

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Yeah, see my most recent post above.

I can’t moderate this forum or act as mayor but it’s about time it’s revived with useful stuff!

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EDIT: I posted this earlier but it got lost in the keyboard war, moved it hoping to get the convo back on topic.

Regarding pre-exhausting and exercise selection, here’s something interesting I found in the latest edition of Muscular Development, which lead me to another article with some more details on the studies:

Previous Research About Muscle Pre-exhaustion

Before we get into the newest research, I think it’s important to take a look at what’s been done in the past. In a previous study, researchers examined the motor firing of the quadriceps and hamstrings by using a leg extension pre-exhaustion before performing leg presses. Contrary to what bodybuilders would expect, muscle pre-exhaustion with leg extensions before the leg press resulted in a decrease in muscle activity of the quadriceps muscle during the leg press, compared to no pre-exhaustion.1 Pre-exhaustion has been touted for many years to increase the number of fibers activated during an exercise— but the research showed it decreased fiber activation.

Another study reported similar findings. Researchers investigated the effect of pre-exhaustion on upper-body muscle activation during bench presses, and reported that training chest on the pec deck immediately before the bench press lead to similar muscle activation of anterior deltoid and pectoralis major muscles. However, they observed an increase in the triceps muscle activation, and the worst performance during the bench press exercise was with pre-exhaustion.2

Based on these two studies, pre-exhaustion leads to a decrease in muscle recruitment or no change in the actual muscle group performed during exercise— not an increase, as so many people once thought. Muscle growth is about keeping tension on the muscle. Any time there is a decrease in motor unit firing during exercise, tension is being taken off the muscle.

New Study: Pre-exhaustion Does Not Lead to Greater Muscle Activation

Scientists in Brazil got together to retest the validity of muscle pre-exhaustion before exercise. They took young men and they hooked electrodes all over their chests and triceps to measure muscle activation, and separated the men into two groups who performed different exercises.

1. The pre-exhaustion group performed a set of flyes and immediately performed a bench press until failure.

2. The control group only performed the bench press.

When the researchers measured muscle activation of the chest muscles after pre-exhaustion, they concluded that there was no greater activation of the chest muscle, but there was a greater activation of the triceps by 17.8 percent. So how come the triceps were activated more with a pre-exhaustion set before bench presses? Because the chest muscle was fatigued, it relied on activation of the triceps to move the weight. This research is in alignment with other studies where scientists reported a significant (33.67 percent) increase in triceps muscle activation during bench press exercises with pre-exhaustion.

The bottom line is that pre-exhaustion is not going to lead to greater muscle activation, but it will lead to greater activation of muscle groups because the muscle is pre-fatigued.3 These studies suggest that the pre-exhaustion method must be reconsidered for its effectiveness in enhancing strength and muscle size gains.

Additionally, muscular weakness induced by pre-exhaustion affected exercise form— changed the pattern movement— of the men who performed bench presses. This change in movement pattern requires caution, because limited ability to control movement is related to abnormal mechanical loads at joints. These abnormal lifting patterns may be a factor in injury during exercise.


References:

1.Augustsson J, Thomee´ R and Karlsson J. Ability of a new functional deficits after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc, 12: 350-356, 2004.

2. Gentil P, Oliveira E, Rocha Ju´nior VA, Carmo J and Bottaro, M. Effects of exercise order on upper-body muscle activation and exercise performance. J Strength Cond Res, 21: 1082-1086, 2007.

3. Brennecke A, Guimarães TM, Leone R, Cadarci M, Mochizuki L, Simão R, Amadio AC, Serrão JC. Neuromuscular activity during bench press exercise performed with and without the preexhaustion method. J Strength Cond Res, 2009 Oct;23(7):1933-40.

So, here we see a few studies done that show pre-exhaustion does not have any long term benefits for muscle growth. However, again we need to take things into context, including the limitation of the exercise selections, we don’t know about the training experience level of the subjects, etc. A few questions come up then:

-Do we feel that pre-exhausting is effective because we feel more of a “pump” or fatigue in the desired muscle with pre-exhausting? I know if I do leg extensions before squats I’ll feel grater quad activation (although my weight for squat will typically go down slightly to maintain optimal form), but does that mean my quads are getting more of a benefit, or are they simply already fatigued?

-When some tries pre-exhausting without having done it before, and they feel it works, is it because it’s something new and anything new will cause greater stress and adaptation?

-What is the optimal exercise order? Compound then isolation? Vice versa? To pre-exhaust or not?

***I do think one benefit or pre-exhausting is it may allow for better MMC during an exercise that might be hard to connect with the muscle. For example I find during heavier compound movements, I don’t feel as much of a “pump” in the muscle, just overall fatigue. If I’m doing heavy squats, I won’t feel as much of a “pump” in my quads as if I was going for reps, as the “pump” typically takes more TUT (time under tension). But if I pre-exhaust with leg extensions, I will feel more of an activation in my quad, because they’ve already been fatigued. I don’t necessarily think though this means I’m activating my quads to squat more than I usually do, I think it just means I feel like I am because they’re fatigued.

Just my thoughts from what I’ve tried, when I try pre-exhausting I do like the way it feels in the desired muscle group, so I change it up. Sometimes I’ll do pec deck before flat bench, leg extensions before squat or leg press, etc., and sometimes I won’t. I think it’s impossible for anyone to tell if they’ve actually gained muscle mass from pre-exhausting, but because someone feels a big pump they may be inclined to think it’s a better method. I’m not saying it isn’t, I just think it reinforces what we’ve all been talking about on this thread, that ultimately we have to throw some changes into our programs every now and then to keep making progress. And that whatever program we feel is optimal for ourselves, it won’t continue being optimal as we adapt over time. So adding or changing something in our training that we previously might not have considered “optimal” before is actually extremely beneficial because it’s different.

“Everything works, but nothing works forever” as Stu likes to say.

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I don’t think these studies take mmc and altering ROM into account. This is why I’ve told noobs in the past NOT to pre-exhuast until they’ve built their mmc.

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Wow! I read all this because I want to find my lats and have boulder shoulders. Appearently I need to be enhanced. Where in the hell is cousin Ron when I need him?

Getting away from splits and rep schemes, I’ve found that being consistent with intensity and breaking through the pain barrier ALWAYS spurs progress and new growth despite the split of rep scheme I’m currently implementing.

Professionals or advanced people always talk about a set being a “hard ten” or “hard eight” reps. I’ve found that a good way for me to get this is to mentally feel like quitting half way through the set…and then getting those extra 4 or 5 reps

I’d love to hear someone else’s thoughts on intensity.

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Some really good points in this thread. I know that I bought in hook, line, and sinker originally on a few of the following:

  1. Full body or Upper/Lower is the best way to train for “naturals.”
  2. Compounds are all you need/ Isolation exercises are a waste of time.
  3. Split routines are only for steroid using bodybuilders and will make you “muscle bound,” (whatever the hell that is).
  4. Cardio is the devil and will make you shrivel up and die.

I focused my training around these principles for years and did add a fair amount of muscle, but I was left with underdeveloped weak areas, not to mention carrying more body fat then I should thanks to #4 combined with a shitty diet.

I also found that higher frequency became less helpful as I got stronger/older and also led to some tendonitis.

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Yes! I honestly can’t tell you how happy I’ve been seeing the bodybuilding forum getting the action it’s seen the last half year or so. Seeing more folks gettin onstage, sharing their experiences, comparing notes, “passing it on” as some of the more experienced folks do,… It’s just getting back to being a really good scene for folks serious about the competitive side of things - either as athletes or even just as fans.

S

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that pic is a hillarious

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