Current Bodybuilding Training Thread 2.0

one thing I think is pretty valuable in bodybuilding training that seems to have fallen out of favour is training to failure.

Call me old fashioned, but I reckon training to failure is a BIG part of bodybuilding training. Obviously some exercises lend themselves to it better than others, but constantly avoiding training to failure is a surefire way to stay a pussy, in my opinion.

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Do you think squatting to failure is a useful practice? Just curious.

I think it could be depending on how good your spotters are!

Probably a better consideration is not how good your spotters are (if you train in a cage), but how effective you are at maintaining your form at the end of the set. My backing away from Squatting at the moment is to deal with some weak areas that were causing me to do weird things like twisting, putting the weight on one leg or a leg shaking. I was going to failure at 465 for 8, but I felt those sets were dangerous at the end, even half way through.

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that’s a very good point and I completely agree. I do think that squatting is probably the exercise that suits going to failure the least. That and deadlifts.

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Do you mind going into a bit more info on this? In terms of exercises, sets, reps and tempo

They are by far my weakest part and due to the whole genetic argument I’ve never really put much time into them. My wife took a picture of me from behind walking with my nieces in the park, was a great picture in a proud uncle sense but seeing my calves in shorts was pretty embarrassing! I need to get them growing.

Also my gym has no calves machine, would standing raises on the smiths or leg press with feet at bottom of the plate be okay
seated gets a bit tricky, only thing I can think is sitting on bench in the smiths with bar across my quads

any info would be greatly appreciated

this works. Use an aerobics step or something to get a stretch.

I really need to get my calves up as well. I’d be lucky if they were 14"…

I tend to think that in general, when it comes to training, people either overcomplicate things (which is great for selling articles and e-books), or over simplify things (which is usually good, except when it’s bad <-how’s that for a Yogi Bera-ism)

As I trained, and progressed as a competitor, I realized that a lot of things I previously held sacred weren’t truly dogma that required constant adherance of else you’d fail to make any progress. The whole idea of over training, that held sway over me when I started out, reading anything I could about/by Yates and Mentzer, was something that once I got it out of my head, and focused on the whole picture, I really came into my own physique-wise.

Like I mentioned earlier, I like to hit my gastroc and soleus on different days. The simple change from bent knee to straight knee is really all you need concern yourself with. The whole toes in/toes out nonsense is just minutae. YES, You can make SOME difference in recruitment based on whether you press through the ball of your foot, or on the outside of it, but I would think more people waste their time and risk sliding off the aparratus worrying about such small details.

As much as I appreciate the standing calf machine, once you’re handling any respectable weight, your traps and neck may not be fans. As such, I was a big fan of doing my straight leg calf work on a leg press machine. After warming up (usually adding 2 more plates with each successive set), and stretching and massaging my calves between each set, I would get up to 6 plates per side. This was never about how much weight can I bounce, but how much can I honestly control slowly during the decent, pause, and get a solid lock out where I could really flex the muscle. My reps were always around 6-8, although if I only got 5, I was content so long as I knew they were solid. Set wise, I never really counted. I knew that with lower repetitions you needed to adjust your sets upward to ensure a certain amount of quality volume.A good guess would probably be 6-8 sets, with the last one sometimes being a quadruple drop (losing a plate from each side before continuing on, until I was down to a plate a side and close to tears).

For seated work, my reps were usually 10-15, and instead of counting sets, I would give myself aboiut 15-20 minutes on the clock to rest as long as I needed, stretch as much as I could between sets, and do as many “quality” sets as I could. I always regarded calves as being able to take a beating, hence why so many people fail to make any progress. It’s not fun, and it’s not comfortable -lol

Hope I touched on anything you wanted to know.

S

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Do you guys ever do the calf raises from a “deadstop?” Like if you did standing calves in the Smith Machine, toes would be elevated and each rep would start, heels on the floor. To eliminate the stretch reflex, or bounce or whatever and focus on the muscles?

Or like running in sand? Could we do calf raises on a pad, or a rolled up towel or something?

I do every calf raise (seated or standing) from a complete stop. However, I do this from a stretched position.

You read everywhere that the biggest training mistake people make with calves is that they don’t stretch them enough, so I decided to do a good majority of my calf work from a deadstop in the bottom of the movement. Doing this definitely takes the impulse to bounce the weight.

I also like what @The_Mighty_Stu said about frequency. I like to train my clalves every other day, rotating between standing and seated positions. I do roughly 5-8 total working sets each time I work my calves. They don’t get over-trained doing this…at least, the don’t for me.

Sometimes, I enjoy doing seated calf raises for time (just keep pumping out reps for 1-2 minutes…say, three sets of those and call it good). Not all the time, but on occasion to keep it interesting and get a super deep burn.

I don’t have super large calves, but they have been my biggest visual change over the past 6 months or so. Something just finally clicked in my brain with them.

That’s quality Stu, thank you very much

I went through a phase a while back where I trained calves 2 a week but I was doing standing raises in the 15-20 rep range Maybe this explains my lack of progress.

Awesome to see this straight up BB talk and glad this other thread was started to start anew without theorizing and unrelated clutter. :muscle:t2::grin::+1:t2:

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Calves is one area where you really should try to increase your weight or reps every workout, they are a simple muscle and therefore just doing the same form while increasing strength will work.
I never thought I had great calves, because I always wanted them to be better, but every time I have competed I have always had the best calves. I currently do them on a Smith Machine myself, and the machine is set up so that you just have to lean forward to counteract the angle of the machine, which also makes the force harder because you have to work against the natural movement of the machine. This machine says you can safely use 8 plates a side, and it has safety catches.
I only train calves once a week. I had very small calves before lifting, in fact I have a class picture of myself from 12 or 13 years old, and I am the second smallest kid in the class.

For standing calf raises I do have a complete stop, but I do them on the calf machine so my heel can be lower than parallel, allowing for a better stretch, vs the smith machine when feet are on the floor. Start from the full stretch, up slowly, massive contraction, slow down and stop at a complete stretch, but only briefly. You don’t want to fully relax, just enough to ensure there’s no momentum involved. If I were to use a smith machine, I’d stand on a block, plate or something to elevate me from the floor so I can get a full stretch.

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Exactly. Toes up, heels down, starting from the bottom, calf muscle elongated, but Achilles not working like a bow-string.

What are people’s thoughts on using a underhand grip on bench/machine press?

Tried it the last chest session as a finisher for reps to failure and could really feel like I was getting a great contraction in my pecs without my triceps taking over.

If it works for you, then it’s good for you, right?

Personally, my shoulders and triceps usually take the load on this, so it’s great when I want some arm work. But…to echo @BrickHead … different strokes for different folks. If it’s working, don’t stop until it stops be effective.

One aspect of bodybuilding training - legit, literal bodybuilding training, which does require a fat loss phase/contest at some point [topic for another thread, no doubt] - that trips up a lot of people is when it comes to dropping fat.

Should lifting change when the priority becomes fat loss? If so, how?

Is “high reps to carve in definition” unfounded broscience? More effective to lift as heavy as possible on lower calories? What role does cardio play - do as little as possible, make it the main calorie-burner, etc?

These are basically open questions to get feedback from the guys who’ve been there/are there right now.

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These are awesome topics! I know others will have input but I feel like we’ll all be on the same page, in general, typically most will say training should not change much when in contest prep. I do think doing higher reps to “carve definition” is indeed unfounded bioscience as @Chris_Colucci mentioned. LOW BODY FAT carves definition. If you want bigger peaks, get deeper valleys. I think partly some people think if they do more reps it’ll help burn more fat or something, but it really makes such a negligible difference in terms of fat loss if you’re doing lower reps or higher reps. So, doing more reps in an effort to get “carved up” is not accurate.

Most definitely, but it’s important to emphasize the “heavy as possible” part of that. Ideally, lifting heavy (for bodybuilders) means staying in the 8-10, 10-12 rep range and also some 5-8 rep ranges as well for some compound movements. As your calories get lower and lower, you must give the muscles MORE of a reason to stay and hang on. Our bodies always try to adapt. So if we go with lighter weights and higher rep ranges, we’re not demanding enough of our muscles, they don’t have as much of a reason to maintain. It’s important to keep going hard and heavy as much as possible to send the signal, “we’re not done yet, you better stay here!” Obviously some muscle loss might be unavoidable, but the goal of any fat loss program is to lose fat and hold on to LBM, which means going heavy and challenging yourself. I believe Thibs wrote some material on this as well in this article: https://www.t-nation.com/training/destroying-fat. Adding a supplement like Micro-PA will also most definitely help keep that LBM in place!

As we’re talking about bodybuilding training, we’re talking about getting to unnaturally, unhealthy levels of body fat, which takes a severe mental and physical toll. Towards the end of the prep typically there might be some strength loss, there are definitely aches and pains all day, mental fatigue, so it’s not always possible to lift as heavy as you normally might, which is fine. I remember talking about this with @The_Mighty_Stu going through my prep, and @BrickHead and I have talked about this going through his prep now, the priority is to get into the gym and push as hard as possible, always. So, while the numbers might be lower than usual, if you’re sticking to the desired rep range really pushing as hard as you can, that will keep the muscle there. A more common/effective adjustment on a rough day might be to lower volume and shave off a working set here and there, and give yourself longer rest periods that day, rather than lowering weight.

Cardio is essential, some folks will have to do more than others. The priority for cardio should be HIIT workouts. They burn infinitely more fat than steady state and give the metabolism a serious kick in the posing trunks, which is essential as metabolism generally slows down as the prep continues. 2 HIIT workouts a week, split 3-4 days apart, is a good starting method because it provides a constant boost of fat burning good-ness just as things start to slow down, especially when combined with a great fat burner like Hot-Rox. Ideally, starting with 2 HIIT workouts and no steady state is ideal, and then slowly working in steady state as needed, as well as increasing the length of the HIIT workouts (to an extent). I found my body adapted to steady state very quickly; it is a calorie burn, but that’s it, no after affects as there are with HIIT.

Some people will make the mistake of adding a ton of cardio right away. Aside from risking LBM loss, the body will adapt, and after a couple of weeks MORE cardio will have to be added, more and more, etc. Steady state is pretty much unavoidable and is a necessity, some might wind up doing 30 min a day, some might wind up doing 90 min a day towards the end. But always best to take a very slow and steady approach with LISS.

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