I know I’ve mentioned in past (probably waaaay in the past) the old school approach of “feeder” workouts. The idea being that doing a small, somewhat different workout for a bodypart you trained the day or two before is beneficial. Now, if we consider the multiple methods of stimulating muscle growth (reference Schoendfeld’s wonderful, oft quoted and bastardized article), there is plenty to be gained through the inclusion of heavy work and light, more pump style work.
BUT, and this is something Brad and I routinely (daily?!) laugh and complain about, is the apparent need to overcomplicate matters in this pursuit. I got my best progress when I simplified everything, and most impressive competitors I’ve known maintain a similar approach with their own plans. Obviously I’m not selling articles on programing or e-books though, so what do I know? -lol
Iron, Gorilla, Stu- thank you guys for also offering ur time and knowledge. Iron, I agree with you in that working a sore muscle helps with MMC and I had never experienced this until I had the thought of pump work the day after, so I guess I got a little something out of it, if nothing else.
Is it conceivable that in and effort to remain relative, or “in the discussion”, trainers or “experts” stray outside convention and experienced-backed methods and offer advice or methods backed by “science” that is tailored to fit their desired result? Now that I think of it, maybe it’s also that way with modern day golf instruction ha!
Yes, because the guidelines I spoke about in my first post in the first BB Training thread preceding this one are not fancy and you can’t keep writing articles with them over and over and over again. Yet the fact remains that nearly all decent to great bodybuilders train like that.
Brick and I were discussing the other day the concept that many authors don’t write about what works because it doesn’t sell well. Think about going through a bunch of articles and they all advice doing three-four exercises with 3-4 sets between 8-12 reps. But then one article starts telling you to do cluster sets or drop sets, various intesnsity techniques. That one article stands out. Suddenly (today, for example), all the articles are like that. And a study can be found to support or refute any claim…so, authors are able to back their sell-able articles with science to make them seem reputable. So…when you say:
My answer is: Absolutely. But then again…everybody is different, so it’s difficult to irrevocably say something is BS until you’ve tried it. But then again (again), if you’ve tried enough different things, it becomes easy to read something and dismiss it…
What’s the point of my rant? Yes to your questions.
Hey man…don’t knock shake weights. South Park proved that shake weights have a better use than just “building muscle” or “getting toned” …
One thing I was thinking about last night is the popularity of push/pull workouts in bodybuilding. And people talked about how it leads to underdeveloped chest and backs. Recall though, that when those programs were popular the goal in bodybuilding was not to have a great chest, I believe both Reg Park and Steve Reeves specifically did not want well developed chests because they believed it took away from the impressive effect of large shoulders.
So in short, the fact that it did not lead to a well developed chest was considered a feature of the program, not a weakness.
It has been my observation that body building writers have split off into two groups: Those who write programs that build muscle in general, and those who write programs that build a body building physique. The higher frequency, push/pull, 5x5 type routines can no doubt build a big, strong, muscular physique… but will the Biceps Brachii or the rear delt get fully stimulated?
Do Chad Waterbury’s plans build muscle? Undoubtedly. Though as you said they may leave certain areas under developed because you just cant do all the “refining” work that a true body builder wants/needs to do. I have no doubt you can be a “big SOB” on his training plans. If you only get 1-2 exercises a day to train the muscle group though, you’d be kinda stupid to do rhomboid raises for your only back exercise or pec minor dips as the main entree that day for chest.
However if you get 3-5 exercises then you can do your bench, dips, incline DB presses, flies, and then finish it up with pec minor dips. Nothing goes untrained.
Although it is interesting to speculate about whether doing all 3 exercises in one day, versus one of them each on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is better for growth, I think history has borne out the former.
Right, but I was referring to past observations in the post by people who said it is common for the push/pull people not to have developed those two parts because they did not develop the MMC. Just referring to chest and back for the moment.
I don’t think it is theoretically wrong that people could not develop the MMC for those parts, but perhaps the practical effect of not spending longer periods on those muscle groups is that the muscles like the shoulders or triceps in a push workout would be stressed throughout the workout for greater periods than would simply the chest in the same workout.
You could come to the same conclusion with back and biceps, but I don’t think it is quite the same, because I don’t think there are very many good backs, proportionately, even amoung the highest caliber of bodybuilders. Some will have very good upper backs, but nearly none will have very good lats, because they do not know how to activate them. Others will have neither, rarely does the circumstance happen where they have good lats and bad upper.
This right here, though I think the problems that can arise for sokeoen with bodybuilding aims is greater than simply lagging rear delts and biceps brachia. Some of them just leave people with leg dominant bodies altogether or entire body parts that lag, such as what I experienced with them personally. I believe had I been more consistent with training in general for all these years and had gone for extended periods of time with upper-lower splits and just kept with body part splits, I would now have three to five more pounds of LBM spread out over my upper body and perhaps more size in my hamstrings had I sequenced my exercises and used the Weider principle #173 and #1137 of muscle priority (which actually works) and pre-exhaust.
Look at the layout of upper-lower splits and you will see how they are leg dominant from a volume and prioritization standpoint. For upper-lower splits, one winds up with far more leg work than upper body work. For full body programs, if one does squats and/or deadlifts in the beginning of the workout, then the following bodyparts/exercises suffer (which I think gets worse as one becomes stronger and stronger). Of course one can do upper body exercises before lower body exercises, but squatting with a fatigued upper body is problematic too.
Of course there are full body or upper-lower powerlifting programs out there that have given great results to some POWERLIFTERS, I don’t see them being great for modern bodybuilding standards. But of course the anti-split bunch always seems to fall back on there following:
Schoenfeld’s research. Look, I like the guy. He seems like a good guy, but his research is not the be-all-end-all for what BBers should be doing, in the same way that CT’s writings are not those of god (though I like him a lot and have some his articles saved as references, his older ones, that is), nor have these guys done or said the same stuff all their lives! And actually, with the intelligence of both, I don’t even think they’d want us to hold their words as godly! I’d bet they’d say to be open minded and continue doing what works best for each of us for our personal goals!
Protein synthesis. I’ve said this before also. Just because there is doubled protein synthesis, doesn’t mean there is double the rate of actual growth. And a decent split has plenty of overlap. And also, just because protein synthesis ends, it doesn’t mean one regresses in five to seven days. They might progress and regress slightly less than the progress made but still be ahead of the curve or progress and maintain till the next time the muscle is trained! No one freaking knows and I’ll settle on what every other damn BBer does: train a muscle DIRECTLY once every five to seven days.
And this might sound sarcastic and jaded, but please take it in context people: I don’t view personal trainers, bodybuilders, and nutritionists or even RD’s such as myself as a special bunch. Many of them say and do dumb shit, they lie, they like to hear themselves speak, they don’t do as they say or preach, they change their views every other freaking day, they think they’re smarter than they are… and so on and so forth.
Instead, as I’ve said god knows how many times, I focused on the reasoning of “spiking protein synthesis every 72 hours”, “frequency”, and the logic of “104 growth cycles versus 52 per year (as if… lmao!)” and earning a strength base.
Alright, I’m getting lost here, so I will stop. lol.
When I was reading up on DoggCrapp this one always stuck out to me. The group over there is generally very smart and thoughtful about training, but this one always struck me as too simplified.
It isn’t JUST the number of training sessions per year. Obviously, otherwise just train everything every day. What if the once-a-week training session is 3x as growth inducing? Or what if you aren’t fully recovered by the next session and are short cutting the repair process?
I guess the assumption is that you are fully stimulating and recovering every cycle, but I’m not sure that’s the case. I like DC training quite a bit, did it and liked it, and would have no problem recommending it to someone, but that particular line of thought was always weird to me.
Yes, Dante and the rest are decent people, but again, they are not know-it-alls. They are bodybuilders. And bodybuilding is far more of an art than a science!
And this might sound arrogant from a guy who did just one show so far, me, that is, but I from that one experience, dare to say it, I feel changed. That is, and I know I keep reiterating this like a broken record, from either passion or to drive a point home on the severity of a prep done correctly with the guidance from a seasoned pro @The_Mighty_Stu, and being friends with pro BBers and having a family friend in his mid 50’s and has done sixty-plus shows, I now look to see if gurus have been through a prep or ever looked like a bodybuilder themselves. Did they ever have to bring up a weak body part, which is damn hard to do? Did they ever ask judges about their physique and what they need to do for next time? Did they have the balls or allow themselves to give up their ego to get up onstage, even at a small show, to be scrutinized against other men, some of who might be far better than them? Have they coached people that made improvements? Have they improved?
If the answer to most of the above questions is no, then I don’t pay much attention anymore. I rather get my advice from people walking the walk, even if they’re not great bodybuilders, but just decent and have been in the trenches.
Again, I have nothing against Dante. But for some odd reason, for someone as fanatical as he is about BB, he never did even one show. I am unsure if this is true, but someone once posted elsewhere that DC did not continue with a prep once because he simply didn’t like what he looked like when he dieted down to 240 pounds, and this is likely because of the smack in the face nearly all first-time competitors–ESPECIALLY those who love being the big guy in the room or sizeaholics–receive when they are nowhere near as muscular as they thought, or have to go through the annoying “in-between” phase, the “dead zone” in which they appear neither extremely jacked or ripped.
Cliff Notes: I go by what decent to great BBers do generally.
Success leaves clues. One thing that I noticed when I first started competing and even years later interacting with and being friends with some of the top competitors in tested federations as well as the IFBB, is that there is a good amount of agreement in terms of what works.
It’s usually people selling articles, or e-books, or just the online experts constantly quoting studies to feed their own egos who seem to think differently… And let’s be honest, there aren’t really many studies conducted on bodybuilders anyway so why would you even considet how relevant a supplements effect on post menopausal women is to your own gym Session?
Brick, this is awesome. Certainly not things I’d thought about regarding various splits and protein synthesis, etc. Seems simple enough, kinda like “duh, no shit”, yet still never thought of it. I guess as you gain experience you see more layers of information and more angles.
On a training note…I’ve realized that when doing shrugs I feel nothing in my traps. I only feel engagement as my arms move in front of me, as in an upright row, or if I’m doing shrugs lying face down on an incline bench. Does anyone else experience this?
hold for 3 seconds at the top and squeeze your traps in every rep you do.
this is something i learned from john meadows and i use this technique on an exercise that i learned from CT : one arm barbell shrug.
it works wonders.
Kiv, thank you. I’ve tried that before and didn’t really feel it still. I’ve done 1-arm barbell shrugs on the smith machine as well. I’ve found that if I do a close grip upright row and a similar move lying on an incline bench, I feel it most. Could it have to do with varying insertion/origin points, whether or not someone feels a lift at various angles?
I like straps for trap work too, even with lighter weights combined with the 3-second-squeeze technique.
Something about the straps takes the arms out of it for me and let’s me move the tension to where I want. Also less forearm fatigue which can add up quick on the higher rep squeeze sets
