A few more days in a deficit. I went to a beer festival yesterday so absolute writeoff from a cuting standpoint. Ate pretty wisely around it though. Protein shake at about 7AM & at about 10AM, 250g chicken with some mixed vege & black beans so was on about 650 calories at this point before the festival at 11AM. Had half a hotdog & a little beef quesadilla & that was it for food for the day, otherwise just had 7-8 beers, 250ml each, so would’ve been in the high 2000s but also lots of walking around too. Just copy+pasting the below from the workouts prior but editing a couple of things because I’m glad to say I’ve managed to add a rep in a couple places.
Pec Deck: 120kg for 9
Crossbody Pec Deck: 85kg for 8, 95kg for 10
Reverse Pec Deck: 60kg for 10, 85kg for 10
Startrak OHP: 50kg for 7, 60kg for 7, 45kg for 9 (super slow)
On OHP on the top set I actually forgot to change the weight so did 1 rep with 50kg & then 7 more with 60kg, nice. Added a rep to the super slow set too, going from 8 to 9.
Dumbbell Incline Skullcrushers (SS):14kg for 8, 18kg for 9, 14kg for 9
Cable Lateral Raises (SS): 5kg for 6, 7.5kg for 6, 5kg for 12
V-bar Pushdowns (SS): 30kg for 9, 37.5kg for 9, 30kg for 9
Machine Preacher Curls (SS): 50kg for 6, 55kg for 10, 50kg for 8
Hammer-grip Machine Preacher Curls (SS): 50kg for 7, 45kg for 7
Observe the PR on cable lateral raises & on machine preacher curls top set, feels good.
Widish Grip Pulldowns: 100kg for 8, 110kg for 8, 90kg for 8
Seated Leg Curls (SS): 110kg for 6, 90kg for 10
Seated Chest Supported Row (SS): 80kg for 8, 85kg for 9, 70kg for 10
Done in the gym not close to my work on a non-work day so back to seated leg curls, went great as I actually tried a 7th rep whereas for the past several workouts 6 reps was completely maximal. Maybe there’s something to the lying leg curls…
Hack Squat: 80kg for 7, 95kg for 9, 80kg for 9
Weighted Decline Crunch (SS): 20kg for 7
Calf raises (SS): 115kg 10
Somehow added a rep on hack squats, 95kg for 9 on the top set, ATG. Also weighted decline crunches, 7 reps with a 20kg plate at top of my head height. Nice.
RANT: I’ve got a theory around the reason why single set training isn’t quite optimal for a lot of people, (apart from effort required in the set). When we contract our muscles under load, tiny structures in the muscle cell called actin & myosin come together in an overlapping fashion & these repeated overlappings from each rep performed signal growth to occur. The strongest growth signal occurs when they actin & myosin overlap the right amount. If you are doing 1/4 reps on squats, they actin & myosin in your quadriceps will only overlap a small amount. And on the flipside, if you perform a tricep kickback, where all the tension is in the shortened position, the actin & myosin overlap too much - they bunch up, overlapping too far, resulting in a weakened growth signal.
We want exercises done with a tension curve which emphasises the midpoint of the lift in the muscle’s ROM, because these exercises cause actin/myosin overlap to the right degree, (fully overlapping, but at the same time without squishing/bunching up, to signal the strongest growth stimulus). This is also why we anecdotally see people get big at what seems to be a relatively efficient pace using exercises which might not fully shorten the muscle, (notice how 95% of chest exercises don’t have the arm come across the body further than the midpoint yet people still build big pecs) - because they’re doing movements which stress the muscle at it’s midpoint, where roughly ideal actin myosin overlap occur.
Remember that it’s about getting the right overlap, but also about this overlap occurring multiple times, for optimizing muscle growth. This is why static holds aren’t as good for hypertrophy as actually performing reps, even if you perform the static hold at a muscle’s midpoint, because while it’s good you’re holding in this position, you’re still only getting one overlap per set, like performing one super slow rep.
I’m putting forward that there is a minimum threshold of the number of times that actin myosin cross over in a training session for optimal growth signals to be triggered. Of course, for an untrained lifter, once could theoretically be enough, since static holds can definitely build muscle in untrained people. But as you advance, that number goes up. It’s one reason why HIT doesn’t tell people to do 5 reps, because even with superslow reps which can make those 5 reps take as long as 15 regular speed reps, they STILL usually recommend 8-12. This could only be because there is something gained in the process of a muscle going from lengthened to shortened under load a certain number of times. If time under tension was all that mattered, then very low rep sets with very very very slow cadences wouldn’t be shunned, but they are, & the reason for that is that a certain number of actin/myosin overlappings trigger the strongest growth signal.
Now it’s speculation time. I put forward, just casually & without evidence, that like roughly maybe 16-20 overlappings for a muscle is a number for causing that growth signal at any level of development, for a lot of people. That’s a couple of very high intensity sets. That’s why some don’t do too well from single set training even with a high level of intensity - the overlappings aren’t sufficient.
Look at DC Training - it’s usually a single set followed by two rest-pause sets which brings your reps per muscle group per workout slightly lower than the high teens/low 20s number I threw out, (except on rows, squats & RDLs, which are done for two sets). As per the revolutionaryprogramdesign website which has the DC writeup, ‘For example, your target might be 11-15 RP or 20-30 RP. For most body parts Dante recommends shooting for 11-15 RP.’. Anecdotally, DC Training is just slightly too low volume for many who tried it, (it’s fine for some, obviously), & you can see that for most body parts, they’re getting 11-15 reps, with a few body parts getting more. I happen to think it’s very close to being something that would absolutely be near-optimal for a huge swarth of people with just slightly higher volume. That’s why the High Intensity Routine I wrote up is basically DC volume but with one set prior to the top set, done to about RPE 7. It puts the number of reps per muscle into that high teens number, minimum, so ticks the box under this theory.
Also look at Dorian Yates. He would do a warmup set before his working set, but it was really a ‘feeler’ set, arguably a work set to some. If his top set was 200kg for 8, he was doing 180kg for about 7 a few minutes before. We’ve got this set contributing to the volume combined with the actual top set itself, so with 3-5 exercises for 2 sets per exercise, it actually mirrors a lot of the UK bodybuilding style of training currently popular & working for many, partially thanks to UK bodybuilder Jordan Peters & his trainedbyJP website - though a lot of that tends to favor a top set then backoff set style as the way of doing those two sets, but that’s into the minutia.
