Long Training Sessions

[quote]fisch wrote:

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:

[quote]The Rattler wrote:

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
I prefer quantity and quality :)[/quote]

Did you gradually change to doing more and more volume? Do you have issues keeping strength and intensity up for so many sets?

EDIT: Would love to see a layout of one of your training sessions…[/quote]

Yes I’ve slowly built up volume but I’ve done a lot of training since Hs. It just used to be more sport related.

I bastardized a JM set up. Today was chest and shoulders and actually cut it short because I had an insomnia flare up last night at didn’t get any sleep so felt like shit.

Neutral chest press machine: 6x10 2 sec neg

Incline bb 30 degree: 135x14, 185x8, 205x8 225x6 235x5 245x4 225x6 185x2x8

Very low incline DB: 100x12 110x10,8 120x6 100x10 90x10

Bw dip: 25, 20, 18.

Incline cable fly 10x10 45 sec rest (this I would normally do but didn’t today due to energy.)

Rear delt machine 6x20-12

Land mine lateral 4x10

Lateral partial 4x30

Triceps pump 6-10 sets. [/quote]

Hey ryan, how come for chest you seem to work up to a heavier weight then back off some for more volume, yet for shoulders you seem to do straight sets?

Or did you just not bother to type out exact weight, sets and reps for the shoulder exercises since they were the same principle as the chest portion?

Just curious.[/quote]

I only keep track of weight on a couple exercises for each muscle group. The other exercises I have idea of rep range and push it as hard as I can that day while staying 1-2 rep shy of failure.

[quote]The Rattler wrote:

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:

[quote]The Rattler wrote:

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
I prefer quantity and quality :)[/quote]

Did you gradually change to doing more and more volume? Do you have issues keeping strength and intensity up for so many sets?

EDIT: Would love to see a layout of one of your training sessions…[/quote]

Yes I’ve slowly built up volume but I’ve done a lot of training since Hs. It just used to be more sport related.

I bastardized a JM set up. Today was chest and shoulders and actually cut it short because I had an insomnia flare up last night at didn’t get any sleep so felt like shit.

Neutral chest press machine: 6x10 2 sec neg

Incline bb 30 degree: 135x14, 185x8, 205x8 225x6 235x5 245x4 225x6 185x2x8

Very low incline DB: 100x12 110x10,8 120x6 100x10 90x10

Bw dip: 25, 20, 18.

Incline cable fly 10x10 45 sec rest (this I would normally do but didn’t today due to energy.)

Rear delt machine 6x20-12

Land mine lateral 4x10

Lateral partial 4x30

Triceps pump 6-10 sets. [/quote]

Looks good man. Thanks.
[/quote]

It’s fun. Though I would never reccomend doing this training. I’ve slowly tweaked it to work for me.

I get bored staying in a gym for 2 hours. When I learned Olympic lifting, the average was 1.5 hours.

Since I moved to a 30-45 minutes, I feel more energized. I follow the program (5/3/1 with BBB) and rest what I need to rest. SWF and MAG-10 let me up the pace.

If I am short on time, I’ll just add a 20 rep breathing squat or “21” curls or up and down the rack or etc instead of the regular conditioning.

It’s all about using your bag of tricks to get the most for the time.

And this is including 5-10 min warm up.

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

[quote]pwolves17 wrote: OP, I know what you mean about wanting to feel like you destroyed your target muscle(s) in the gym, but to echo many of the other posters in the thread, don’t let the clock dictate your workout. Rest time is a variable to manipulate and use to gauge progress in the same manner as weight, sets, reps, etc. If you can perform 3 sets of an exercise with a weight using 45 second rest periods for what used to take 1:20 rest, that’s an increased work capacity right there! I tend to notice a point in my workouts where I feel like I reach a point of diminishing returns if I train for much over an hour and 15 mins by myself; that said, if I’m training with a partner, the workout can take 2 hours and I still am getting after it on my sets
[/quote]

Training to get maximum results is not the same as training a lot. If anybody was all about doing more and more volume it was me. I always took great pride in outworking everyone. I distinctively remember one day while in Colorado where I did 70 bench press sets in the morning and50 in the evening!

HOWEVER I will say that doing too much work can kill your progress.

First let’s understand something: there is a significant difference between training in a natural state and training when using performance-enhancing drugs.

I talked about it in the past. Your body has a finite capacity to handle, grow and adapt to hard physical work. The former Soviet sport-scientists called it “adaptation reserve”. I like to refer it as training money!

Everybody has his own amount of training money to spend on training. See it as a form of investing.

The more money you invest (or the better your investments) the greater your return is (growth, strength gains). However if you exceed the amount of training money you have to spend (contract a debt) you will eventually hit the wall and will go backwards (have to pay back the debt with interests).

Now, the thing is that performance-enhancing drugs artificially increase your capacity to perform, recover from and grow from hard physical training; it increases the amount of training money you have. If someone already believes that the more you do, the more you grow (a lot of peoples have that mindset) and turn to drugs because they are disatisfied with their progress (likely because they are doing too much for what their body can handle) and then suddenly do more work to “take advantage of the drugs” and can grow great from doing too much work (because the drugs allows them to handle the recovery), they do not think “hey, drugs made me grow”… they think “I was right all along, it IS about doing more work”.

Just because XYZ big guy can train hard and do tons of volume, 30, 40, 50 sets per workout doesn’t mean that it is something smart to do for someone who doesn’t have the same advantage. I’ve seen some people who are stimulus addicts (are addicted to training) take drugs not necessarily to grow more, but to be able to do more work and recover from it.

I have worked with enough pro and high level amateur bodybuilders to know that they themselves do not realize how much money they artificially have and thus do not realize how it is like to train on a “normal” body.

Furthermore not everybody has the same amount of “training money” as naturals. Just because someone can tolerate and grow from doing 30-40 sets in a workout doesn’t mean that everybody can. We all have our own physiology to live with as well as our own athletic background, which influences our capacity to perform and recover from hard work.

What I’m saying is that everybody can handle a different workload and grow from it. Some can recover from a lot more work than others (either because of drug use, their own natural physiology or their background) so even if someone successfully does 50 sets every workout and grow doesn’t mean that YOU can do it too., unless you share a similar physiological situation.

Then there is the issue of isolation vs. compound and light vs. heavy. Big compound lifts are superior to build overall strength and size. But that comes at a cost. The impact on both the nervous system and energy expenditure is much greater than when doing isolation work. As a result doing 50 sets of deadlift and clean & press will be a zillion time more draining than doing the same 50 sets in biceps curls, triceps extensions and lateral raises!

Similarly, heavier work drain the nervous system much more. Ask a sprinter to run 60m sprints at 90% intensity and he can easily do 12-20 sets in a workout. Ask him to run at 100% and if he does more than 4 or 5 he will be neurologically fried for 2-3 days and performance will suffer. Same thing goes with lifting… if you like to lift heavy for 3-5 reps per set you will burn out more easily than if you prefer sets of 8-12 reps.

And if you go to total failure you can tolerate much less volume than if you stop 1-2 reps short. So 50 sets is not 50 sets… other variables have to be included in the analysis.

We were raised to think that if you do more, you get more back… study more and you will get better grades… work more and you will earn more money… etc. But it doesn’t always work like that. You can invest 2 millions dollars… if it’s all on sh*tty investments you will not grow rich… someone could invest only 100 000% in the right places and earn a lot more than you did![/quote]

This is an excellent analogy. I think most everyone on here should read this. Thank you for your increased contributions to the forum.

I think it was Charles Staley, had a density training system a few years ago, I used it at teh end of my workout for my arms, thats the most destroyed feeling I’ve ever had. I can’t imagine doing squats or deads with it. There is a guy at my gym though that trains all day long it seems, and he’s huge, so who knows. My money on harded not longer though !

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I like to increase volume by increasing frequency, not length. Slowly add training sessions to the week, then you can start adding some days where you train twice a day and on up.

Right now, my sessions are only 30-45 minutes, but I’m doing a total of 10 sessions a week. 4 days have 2 sessions, 2 days have 1 session, and 1 rest day.[/quote]

This is exactly what I used to do when I had the time to do it.

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I like to increase volume by increasing frequency, not length. Slowly add training sessions to the week, then you can start adding some days where you train twice a day and on up.

Right now, my sessions are only 30-45 minutes, but I’m doing a total of 10 sessions a week. 4 days have 2 sessions, 2 days have 1 session, and 1 rest day.[/quote]

IMHO and experience, that is the smartest way to do it[/quote]

I agree with you, I like frequent training. Sadly not everybody has the ability to do that kind of set-up and sometimes have to just add into the workout they’re already doing :(.

Great info in your posts, thanks for chiming in!

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I like to increase volume by increasing frequency, not length. Slowly add training sessions to the week, then you can start adding some days where you train twice a day and on up.

Right now, my sessions are only 30-45 minutes, but I’m doing a total of 10 sessions a week. 4 days have 2 sessions, 2 days have 1 session, and 1 rest day.[/quote]

IMHO and experience, that is the smartest way to do it[/quote]

I agree with you, I like frequent training. Sadly not everybody has the ability to do that kind of set-up and sometimes have to just add into the workout they’re already doing :(.

Great info in your posts, thanks for chiming in!

[quote]Steel Nation wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I like to increase volume by increasing frequency, not length. Slowly add training sessions to the week, then you can start adding some days where you train twice a day and on up.

Right now, my sessions are only 30-45 minutes, but I’m doing a total of 10 sessions a week. 4 days have 2 sessions, 2 days have 1 session, and 1 rest day.[/quote]

This is exactly what I used to do when I had the time to do it.[/quote]

How did you lay out your training then, and how has it changed for now with less time available?

[quote]Steel Nation wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I like to increase volume by increasing frequency, not length. Slowly add training sessions to the week, then you can start adding some days where you train twice a day and on up.

Right now, my sessions are only 30-45 minutes, but I’m doing a total of 10 sessions a week. 4 days have 2 sessions, 2 days have 1 session, and 1 rest day.[/quote]

This is exactly what I used to do when I had the time to do it.[/quote]

With my gym in my basement and getting some or all of the days training done before work, I find it saves me a lot of time.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Steel Nation wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I like to increase volume by increasing frequency, not length. Slowly add training sessions to the week, then you can start adding some days where you train twice a day and on up.

Right now, my sessions are only 30-45 minutes, but I’m doing a total of 10 sessions a week. 4 days have 2 sessions, 2 days have 1 session, and 1 rest day.[/quote]

This is exactly what I used to do when I had the time to do it.[/quote]

How did you lay out your training then, and how has it changed for now with less time available?[/quote]

It was basically this:

Now it has changed for a combination of reasons, the two biggest being time and injury.