Please read this article by Thib.
So, when you say strength, are you talking about absolute strength (moving heavy weight 1 or 2 times), or strength endurance (moving moderate weight lots and lots of times at a high pace–think rowers, cyclists)?
Absolute strength absolutely, positively, needs weight training. Read stuff by Cressey, Waterbury, and Thibs in the archives. Thibs and Waterbury both talk a lot about generating muscle mass while being strong, but they’ve both written things purely for strength.
The general idea is that when you train for max strength, you are training your CNS as much as or more than your muscles themselves. Getting more efficient at the lift, making your brain remember the firing patterns, training your nervous system to tap into more of your muscle fibers held in reserve, that sort of thing.
You are getting confused, but you need to realize that it is a BALANCING ACT. Yes, high weight low reps will lead to lots of hypertrophy IF AND ONLY IF one or both of the following happen: 1) you eat to gain muscle (calorie excess), 2) there is enough overall volume–ie. you do lots of heavy working sets (not warmups) to up the total volume(8x3, 10x3, 12x3, 6x6 not 3x3, or 3x5, or singles).
Also of consideration is the time under tension–olympic lifts and regular lifts in sets of 1-3 reps are lightning fast, where your body only spends 1-6 seconds under the weight, versus a bodybuilding set where you could be under the weight for 30 seconds to 1 minute before setting it down.
Keep your overall volume low, or eat to maintain current weight/slight deficit, and you won’t put on weight quickly. That being said, if you eat at too much of a deficit, you won’t have the energy to recover your CNS or muscles from such demanding work. You’ll also need to throw hypertrophy work in there to get stronger eventually.
Everyone needs assistance work. Simple solution–work hard in the weight room. Weigh yourself once a week. If you’re going up in weight more than 1 lb a week, cut back calories.
If you have to cut back too much, you’ll burn out. At that point it might be better to cut back training volume and up your calories to normal again.
Really, it’s a lot harder to gain muscle than you think. Eat to maintain weight, use cardio to burn fat, you’ll stay around the same weight unless you really, really up the volume and are a freak. Don’t sweat it. I’m in the same boat as you, but 60lb heavier.
165lbs powerlifter Oleksandr Kutcher.
I think you’re mistaken in thinking that that because some of these lifters are light, that they are ‘small’. These guys may be light, but they have more muscle than the underwear models you seem to think that they are.
“Some days pyramid,”
By pyramid do you mean “ascending sets”, where you keep increasing the weight and lowering the reps?
“And if you want to be slim and trim and look like a typical 5’5” guy (without adding mass as you want to do), chances are you’ll STAY as strong as the average 5’5" guy, bein able to do 3-4 pullups nd 15-20 pushups. But you’ll be at harmony with yourself and have no “excess” weight to complicate your life (read no trouble using toilet paper like the rest of us have on this site)."
Wow. How did you know I could only do 3 pullups and 20 pushups?
"So, when you say strength, are you talking about absolute strength (moving heavy weight 1 or 2 times), or strength endurance (moving moderate weight lots and lots of times at a high pace–think rowers, cyclists)? "
Well ultimately I would like to have both.
“The general idea is that when you train for max strength, you are training your CNS as much as or more than your muscles themselves. Getting more efficient at the lift, making your brain remember the firing patterns, training your nervous system to tap into more of your muscle fibers held in reserve, that sort of thing.”
Okay, when I start to get really powerful at the different lifts, how do I translate that into utile strength? Like, if I’m really good at bench press, military press, and deadlift, how can I condition that to be effective strength, say, in a wrestling match or something? (Just an example, I don’t do combat sports)
“Also of consideration is the time under tension–olympic lifts and regular lifts in sets of 1-3 reps are lightning fast, where your body only spends 1-6 seconds under the weight, versus a bodybuilding set where you could be under the weight for 30 seconds to 1 minute before setting it down.”
Okay, so what you’re saying is that I would have to do each rep in a polymetric fashion, ie, explosive speed and power for a very short time? How can I condition myself to do that? It sounds like if I did that on a bench press with high weight, I might hurt myself.
“Keep your overall volume low, or eat to maintain current weight/slight deficit, and you won’t put on weight quickly. That being said, if you eat at too much of a deficit, you won’t have the energy to recover your CNS or muscles from such demanding work. You’ll also need to throw hypertrophy work in there to get stronger eventually.”
Okay, so I can maximize the potential of my CURRENT muscle mass without gaining mass by eating at or slightly below my required calories? This will cut the fat when I do cardio but fuel my muscles enough, yes?
Thank you very much Aragorn.
So basically I’ve walked away with this much:
I can fully realize the potential of my current muscle mass by lifting very heavy weight at high speeds, for low reps. Eventually, however, I will “max out” and need to grow more fibers to be stronger.
I can cut fat while gaining strength but eating at or slightly below my caloric needs.
It is beneficial to randomize my workouts periodicially by doing “pyramids”.
Can I do my “endurance training” (ie, pushups, bodyweight squats) in the same day?
Basically, the only days I have access to the stadium and the weight room (possibly) at the college are Monday, Wednessday, and Friday. So my workout schedule involving weights would have to be on those days, but my unweighted excersizes could be only any day, really.
I think I would only lift weights 1 - 2 times a week, and just hit everything in one session, this way I don’t run a risk of burning out. I’m not in a big rush so I don’t mind the slower gains. Might even give my body more time to recover.
Speaking of which: How quickly does atrophy (or hypotrophy?) occur when someone stops doing excersize?
Thanks a lot guys, it’s all finally starting to make sense.
Honestly, I don’t think you could dissect this any more with a set of tweezers. If you want to be stronger than you are now, you need to lift heavy things.
You know what strength is? The ability to lift heavy things.
You know how to get strength? Lift heavy things.
You know how to express strength? Lift heavy things.
Are you beginning to notice a pattern? If you want to be really strong, you need to find a program using weights or some other suitably heavy object which you can progressively load heavier and heavier and use it. You will not get too large.
I’ve yet to hear anyone, in real life, claim to be too muscular.
If you want “strength endurance” first you need strength. Endurance has a ceiling effect from maximal strength. After all, you can’t lift ten times what you can’t lift once.
I would pick a good strenth routine, follow it to the tee, and just do a ton of GPP on your off days. Tire flipping, sprints, sand bag relays, stadium running, whatever.
[quote]conorh wrote:
Honestly, I don’t think you could dissect this any more with a set of tweezers. If you want to be stronger than you are now, you need to lift heavy things.
You know what strength is? The ability to lift heavy things.
You know how to get strength? Lift heavy things.
You know how to express strength? Lift heavy things.
Are you beginning to notice a pattern? If you want to be really strong, you need to find a program using weights or some other suitably heavy object which you can progressively load heavier and heavier and use it. You will not get too large.
I’ve yet to hear anyone, in real life, claim to be too muscular.
If you want “strength endurance” first you need strength. Endurance has a ceiling effect from maximal strength. After all, you can’t lift ten times what you can’t lift once.
I would pick a good strenth routine, follow it to the tee, and just do a ton of GPP on your off days. Tire flipping, sprints, sand bag relays, stadium running, whatever.[/quote]
Good post. Someone who starts out training by limiting themselves and their progress won’t make it very far. I’m sure most of the people here can still wipe their own asses. To fear getting “too muscular” when you haven’t gained anything yet makes no sense at all.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Good post. Someone who starts out training by limiting themselves and their progress won’t make it very far. I’m sure most of the people here can still wipe their own asses. To fear getting “too muscular” when you haven’t gained anything yet makes no sense at all.[/quote]
I second that. Try this: Start lifting heavy. If you ever get to a point where you feel that you are too muscular, stop lifting heavy.
http://images.t-nation.com/forum_images/9/0/9054c-jcgTwistingBicep.jpg
As far as not being able to “wipe one’s ass without the help of a GF”, here is a picture of John Grimek, one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time.
Weighing as much as 250 lbs at times Grimek could perform the splits, back walkovers, and had amazing body/muscle control. And I’d say that he had a pretty good amount of muscle on him.
The assumption that gaining muscle has a direct correlation to losing flexibility is a false one. It’s true that it is possible to lose some flexibility at a certain point, but trust me when I tell you, you’ll never get to that point unless :
A) you’re genetically predetermined to be able to build that amount of muscle, and/or
B) you really, really try to get to this point.
Good training,
Sentoguy
I’m really impressed with that, but I don’t want to look like that. Is there anything wrong with that? I know this is a website geared towards body building, but I’ve read from the introductory posts and others that this site is also about other things, like MMA, sports, general fitness, etc.
I guess I fall into the more “general fitness” category; I’m not interested in getting big, but I am interested in improving my strength and losing fat mass. If I gained some muscle mass, I would not be overly concerned, since muscle mass looks much better than fat mass.
But if I gain a little or lose a little I would not be concerned, as long as I lost the fat mass and increased my physical performance.
Thank you for all the great feedback guys. All the different views are why I read this site so much.
Paleo,
When I said oly lifts and reg. lifts of 1-3 reps were lightning fast, what I actually meant was that you spend very little total time under tension. Oly lifts by definition are explosive strength and power driven and are always fast.
Regular lifts of 1-3 reps with heavy weight are generally slow grinders, but the TOTAL time under tension remains low. Also, you can use 55-65% of your max for sets of 2 or 3 and train to be fast and powerful (like mimicing Olympic lifts with a regular bench, squat, or dead).
BUT all these styles of lifting are hard on tendons and connective tissue (especially if you’re not used to this kind of stuff), so you need to throw in rep work (bodybuilding style) and light weight stuff to help keep tendons healthy, even if you’re not after size.
As for losing fat, probably won’t be as effective as a dedicated fat loss period (you can’t ride two horses at the same time very well), but it would maybe be a slow and steady approach. Bottom line is experiment.
Oh, and on the topic of taking bench/overhead strength to wrestling strength, you should know that just like training to get stronger (with or without adding mass) is as much about training the CNS as the muscles used, the same is true of wrestling, or MMA, or strongman training, or football position work, or whatever.
It’s as much practicing the techniques themselves and getting good at them (CNS) as it is having the strength to do them.
It’s called the principle of specificity. Basically, you’re good at what you practice a lot. This principle has been misunderstood (maybe intentionally) by some coaches as a way to justify doing stupid balance board stuff or ridiculously complex and contrived motions that are supposed to “mimic sport movements”. That’s not the point.
The point is this–strength training gives you the raw ability to do something (like football or wrestling technique), but practicing the technique itself will ultimately make you more efficient at it. This is the difference between a guy who can power a technique through (sheer strength) and a guy who can finesse a technique through even on a much bigger opponent (practice).
The strength may help you be able to do something you normally could never do. In this sense any strength gained from heavy free weight training is “functional”. But practicing the actual techniques are what give you true mastery, instincts, and the ability to impose your will on your opponent.
[quote]bretc wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Good post. Someone who starts out training by limiting themselves and their progress won’t make it very far. I’m sure most of the people here can still wipe their own asses. To fear getting “too muscular” when you haven’t gained anything yet makes no sense at all.
I second that. Try this: Start lifting heavy. If you ever get to a point where you feel that you are too muscular, stop lifting heavy.
[/quote]
yeah, bottom line this is probably the best way to approach it. Exactly so. Much better than my previous posts :).
Okay, so eventually I’ll stop losing fat, and just be gaining muscle. So eventually I’ll have to go through a “cuttng cycle”. How do those usually work? Just a lot of cardio and HIIT?
[quote]PaleoTeegan wrote:
Okay, so eventually I’ll stop losing fat, and just be gaining muscle. So eventually I’ll have to go through a “cuttng cycle”. How do those usually work? Just a lot of cardio and HIIT?[/quote]
Firstly you need to understand that a lot of the terminology used on this site is bodybuilding terminology. Bodybuilders NEVER try to “cut” muscle. A “cutting cycle” generally refers to cutting body fat levels drastically, either in preparation for a contest, or just to get “ripped”.
If you are truly after “maximal strength” then sooner or later you’ll need to realize that skeletal muscle hypertrophy is something that will need to occur at some point. Yes, what others have said concerning making improvements in CNS stimulation and movement pattern efficiency can improve strength. But, once your body has made those improvements (and quite possibly while it is making those improvements) it will also make improvements to the contractile tissues performing the movements (the skeletal muscles).
Hypertrophy is one of the body’s natural responses to being exposed to increased loads. Just look at the legs of an overweight person sometime. They may have never stepped into a weight room, but because their legs must carry around their weight day in and day out, they have grown (hypertrophied) in response.
Look, it’s fine if you don’t want to look like Grimek, I only posted that picture in response to your post about “being too muscular to wipe one’s own ass”. I was also planning on posting some pics of some heavyweight wrestlers to illustrate that muscles don’t necessarily have a detrimental effect on cardiovascular fitness either, but didn’t have time to. Look at Shawn Sherk for example, he’s probably the most heavily muscled 155lber in MMA right now, but his conditioning is as good as anyones.
Heck, if you really are interested in getting very low body fat levels (ripped) while still being relatively strong and in good cardiovascular condition, why not join a wrestling club? I know you said you don’t do combat sports, but I’ll tell you from experience, that there isn’t anything out there (in my experience) that will get you as ripped, strong, and boost your cardio at the same time as live wrestling.
Good training,
Sentoguy
Just for Reference here is a picture of Sean Sherk (sorry spelled it wrong in previous post) weighing in here at 168 lbs, prior to his fight with Matt Hughes.
Now, once again, I’m not suggesting that you need to look like Sherk. I’m simply posting this picture to dispell the notion that muscle has a detrimental effect on conditioning. In fact, I think you’ll find that if you stick around here long enough, and actually get in the gym and start lifting, that many of your current notions concerning muscle will be proven false.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I know personally that the more muscle I’ve built the stronger, faster, more agile, better balanced, better coordinated, and all around better athlete I have become. Just something to think about.
Good training,
Sentoguy
I meant that if lifting only made me gain muscle and not lose fat, that eventually I’d have to “cut” to lose the fat.
Personally I don’t mind some mass gain. I’m sure once my fat stores deplete a bit, I’ll want to gain some muscle to “flesh things out”. I’m just not interested in being huge. That Sherk guy looks like he has the type of build I’m naturally prone too; short person, with short stout arms and a predisposition to big abdominals and pecs.
If I gained some mass in my forearms and chest I’d be pretty happy about that, since I hate hate hate that HUGE bicep, normal forearms look. I’d like to stay proportional lol.
Right now we’re pretty poor so the only things I have to work with are 10 lb dumbells, mabye some natural structures, a track, and my own bodyweight. But I’ll keep this topic bookmarked and put into effect as much as I can (like maybe doing pushups with a backpack containing rocks on).
Thanks.
[quote]PaleoTeegan wrote:
I meant that if lifting only made me gain muscle and not lose fat, that eventually I’d have to “cut” to lose the fat.
Personally I don’t mind some mass gain. I’m sure once my fat stores deplete a bit, I’ll want to gain some muscle to “flesh things out”. I’m just not interested in being huge. That Sherk guy looks like he has the type of build I’m naturally prone too; short person, with short stout arms and a predisposition to big abdominals and pecs.
If I gained some mass in my forearms and chest I’d be pretty happy about that, since I hate hate hate that HUGE bicep, normal forearms look. I’d like to stay proportional lol.
Right now we’re pretty poor so the only things I have to work with are 10 lb dumbells, mabye some natural structures, a track, and my own bodyweight. But I’ll keep this topic bookmarked and put into effect as much as I can (like maybe doing pushups with a backpack containing rocks on).
Thanks.[/quote]
While it might not get you onstage for the Mr. Olympia, you can get some pretty good strength and mass gains from strong man types of training. See if you can find a heavy rock, or perhaps a couple of varying sizes; get yourself a canvas duffle bag and fill it with sand; get yourself an empty keg and fill it with water. You can get a pretty damned good workout with the above pieces of equipment.
As far as bodyweight stuff goes, at a certain point you’ll either need to add resistance or make the exercise more difficult if you want to keep gaining strength/mass. I’d suggest checking out some gymnastics/breakdancing/rockclimbing sites for some ways to progress to more and more challenging variations of exercises.
For instance, regular push-ups probably won’t take very long to begin to lose their value as a maximal strength exercise. But, there are variations of push-ups that are extremely challenging and require HIGH amounts of strength to perform. Planche push-ups for example would be pretty much beyond the ability of everyone other than high level gymnasts/acrobats, some breakdancers, and possibly a highly conditioned athlete who trained specifically to perform them.
Keep in mind though, that at a certain point you’ll still want to add in some traditional strength training exercises as you will eventually master the strongman implements, and there are certain muscles that are very difficult to strengthen with bodyweight exercises.
Hope this helps.
Good training,
Sentoguy
It is ineffective to try to develop different physical characteristics at the same time such as trying to develop strength at the same time you are trying to develop muscle endurance. You need to plan your training in order to maximize results.
I would suggest learning a little about periodization of training. A good place to start is a book called Periodization by Tutor Bompa.
Yea, that planck stuff sounds like it’d be the type of stuff I’d get into, and all the gymnastic strength and flexability.
How do those guys do that stuff?