Hey
I do squats on mondays but I am not fully recovered until saturday. Do you think I should do Deads on Thursdays even if my lower half is not fully recovered?
How many people do them both on the same day? I tend not to cos I’m usually hammered after squats and, well I train better on half hours to 45 mins.
I’m no super hero and I find it very difficult to gain size (probably because I never go over 6 to 8 reps MAX)
but I’m open to ALL suggestions.
Cheers
I do lower body twice a week and upper body twice a week.
I have a squat emphasis lower body day on Monday typically and then lower body day 2 with a deadlift emphasis is on Thrusday.
I’m usually still a tad sore but I just work through it. After a warm up set or two the pain has left.
I also follow a similiar split as Bedz and train them both each week. How bad is your soreness? How good is your PWO and nutrition?
Don’t lose sight of why you’re actually working out.
If you’re not recovered AND adapted, what’s the point?
I usually do 2 upper 2 body…just like BedZ.
I’m thinking something is seriously wrong if your not recovered for 6 days. I never got that even with King’s programs or EDT. Things to look at…
Quality and Quantity of PWO meals (immediate and 60-90 mins after)
Are you taking a multivitamin…this will help speed recovery.
Length of your workouts. You should be aiming for under 1 hr.
Program volume and intensity. Fine, you don’t do more than 6-8 reps. But are you doing 3-5 sets, for 10 exercises? (A bit of an exaggeration…but you get the point…doing too much will hault progress).
If your recovery is that poor, that would help to explain why you have difficulty gaining size.
If you are trying to put on size, then why do you not work with reps above 6-8? You should be using different rep ranges to target all of the different fibre types, especially in the legs. The lower body tends to have a greater propensity to do higher reps at a given % of 1rep max. In other words, it is generally necessary to work in an intensity range of over 70% of maximum in order to best stimulate hypertrophy. The quads can generally perform more reps at this intensity than most other bodyparts. If you performed 15reps in the bench press, for most people the intensity is below 70% therefore you are not stimulating hypertrophy in the muscles, but rather muscular endurance, however when training quads such as in squats or leg press, 15 reps would still be in a range that is above 70% of 1RM therefore you are stimulating hypertrophy. This is in a perfect world, and some people might fall out of this range, especially people such as advanced weightlifters but for the most part it seems most of the general training population falls within these parameters. One exclusion to this, are the hamstrings in the knee flexion exercises. It has been shown in many studies and in the real world that knee flexion exercises should be performed in lower rep ranges in order to best stimulate hypertrophy. This is where 6-8 reps would work best as anything above this number would correlate to a %of 1RM that is below 70%. The point of all this?-Start including some sets of 10-15 reps for your quads and you should notice some much improved hypertrophy gains.
Ok, appreciate the replys. My leg routine on mondays look like this:
Back squats
4 to 5 warm-ups
Total 5 or 6 working sets with 4 to 6 reps @ 3-1-1. Usually last 2 or 3 sets to failure.
Standing single calf raises
4 sets of 8.
I am aware that hamstrings respond better to higher loads and quads lower. I prefer intensity over volume as I bore easily, and I must admit I do neglect my hammy’s. The reason for this being finding it hard to train knee flexors because I dont really like leg flex machines. Lying leg curl with dumbell ok but harder to do by yourself.
PWO meal consits of meat (50g protein) and rice or a banana. My next meal is about 3 hours after that. I do not take too many supplements because I prefer the natural approach, however willing to give l-glutamine and B-C-A-A a birl.
What kind of exercises and intensity do YOU guys see best results from?
Let me know what you think, ALL responses welcome.
Cheers
Daz
UK
You should be using a protein powder mixed with Maltodextrin/dextrose as your PWO meal.
Your next meal should be 60-90 mins after your workout.
Why are you doing 3 sets to failure? I’d personally get rid of that element all together…or at most use just 1 set to failure.
I’ve best responded to programs such as Limping, or EDT. If creating my own I use Back squats, hack squats (the real kind), Bulgarian squats, and lunges as the base movements.
i think your statement about quads and hams and their loads is all relative. and if you know you have weak hamstrings why are you doing them later in the weak. Do your thursday workout on monday, and mentally i think you will be up for the squat day on thursday (since it seems you like them more anyways). and if not… push the work out until friday.
Cheers ND. A quick question, whats EDT and limping and a Bulgarian squat? I may have different terms…
I find sometimes I think that I am to sore to do legs twice a week, but when I suck it up and do it it’s not a problem. Once you do legs twice a week for a while I bet you will barely be sore at all.
Do a search for Ian King’s Limping series in the previous issues. It’s an awesome leg program.
EDT (Escalating Density Training) is another program. Do a search for that as well. Both are great hypertrophy programs.
Bulgarian squats are single leg squats with your back foot on a bench. (So it’s almost like a lunge with your back foot on a bench)
I also agree that if your hamies are the weak link, move them up in the rotation.
If you don’t like the knee flexion machines then try doing natural glute-ham raises. I too know of few leg curl machines that I actually like but you can’t go wrong with the glute-ham raise-knee flexion and hip extension in one exercise. Very efficient for those pressed with time.
“You should be using a protein powder mixed with Maltodextrin/dextrose as your PWO meal.”
Bad dogma! While this may help a little, it’s really not that big of a deal.
To paraphrase the worlds expert “Who cares? Just have a tuna sandwich.”
Even though you spelled week incorrectly, I agree:) As a powerlifter, I live and die by hamstring exercises. Another thing (which you may find more appealing) is that your quads can benefit from increased hamstring strength, but the reverse probably won’t be true.
Bottom line: Get to work on those hams.
I also agree with what’s been said about fiber differences between hams and quads. There was a time (before powerlifting) when I could do 20-rep full squats with 225, but my max was only about 300.
Also, and I’m surprised nobody has said this, is that it’s not the exercises you do so much as it is the effect. In other words, you’re not doing yourself any favors (favours?) if you are doing both squats and deads in the same manner, i.e. 6-8 reps.
To put it in perspective, what do you think is going to increase your deadlifting strength more, doing heavy squats (1-6 reps, more powerlifting style), or light deads (15+ reps)? I’ll put money on the heavy squats. It’s because it satisfies the training goal much better. The motor units recruited by each lift are similar, so you will get significant carryover.
Also, I see that you are doing absolutely no isolation or supplemental work after squatting. You may not be incorrect, but I find it peculiar. Most people don’t have perfect proportions for any exercise, so supplemental work is necessary to bring up weaknesses that don’t get addressed simply by performing the core exercise. CT has written about this.
Do you also conduct your deadlift days like this? Unless you feel that you can make strength gains indefinitely on your current program, I strongly suggest you consider your weaknesses/imbalances and add supplemental work accordingly.
My Final verdict:
Monday: Deadlift, I’ll leave the details to you but don’t go over 5-6 reps. For extra hypertrophy, I recommend doing these elevated. Use boards, a 100 lb. plate, or mats to raise your body relative to the bar, so you get a longer ROM. S-T-R-E-T-C-H those hammies out:)
Supplemental work: Could be leg curls, back extension, GHR, whatever. Just make sure it’s gonna help you toward your goal.
Thursday: Squat. Again, I’ll leave the details to you but this time do it for higher reps, or low reps for speed, or anything but the same thing you did with deads.
Supplemental work: Again, make sure it’s gonna help you toward your goal.
Whew,
Ryan
how exactly did you determine that you are not “recovered” until saturday?
Cheers dudes. I determin my full recovery by waking up in the morning without no stiffnes or soreness…I’m pretty sure I could do with more sleep though, I find it hard to get my 8 hours + a night.
I also prefer sumo deadlifts over the orthodox method because I have pulled my lower back out before. I am aware of much needed lumbar strength, but I guess paranoia sometimes gets a hold of me.
My other fav leg exercises which I will start doing soon are :
Jump split squats
Walking power lunges
King deadlift and single leg squats
Power cleans
(dont like front squat as I have a shoulder injury)
Yet again, cheers and let us know what you think.
Daz
If the diet and other suggestions fail you, as a fellow slow recoverer here’s what I would suggest.
David Barr: While you’re right that there’s nothing wrong with eating meat or “a tuna sandwhich” post workout…you cannot say it’s anywhere near as optimal as a PWO shake. (I used to have solid food after working out, and when I switched to shakes I noticed huge differences)
And I was looking at this in the manner that if you can optimize conditions immediately PWO, it’ll help boost your recovery because there’s less catabolism.
Dooley.
"Total 5 or 6 working sets with 4 to 6 reps @ 3-1-1. Usually last 2 or 3 sets to failure. "
Going to failure is a lot harder on the CNS, if you stop one rep before failure you’ll recover a lot faster.
Going to failure and forced reps are good once in a while to “chock the system” but to do it every workout is not a good idea in my opinion.