The title pretty much says it all. For the past couple of years i’ve been doing either full body training or a push/pull split, with what I had always felt were good gains until I step on the scale (I know, I know, shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of results)… I’ll get stronger and my clothes will be tighter, and my gf says I look bigger, but I really haven’t gained much weight in a while (other than the 10-15 lbs of muscle I added over the past few months coming back from a broken neck, but I feel that was basically replacing what I had lost while in a halo).
Anyway, I don’t think I’m a “skinny bastard”, 5’5, 160 lb, probably about 10%, maybe less, and I want to slowly add 5-10 pounds while maintaining my bf%, and also get stronger. - I don’t want this to turn into an argument between clean-and-slow gaining vs. all out mass (I don’t mind it coming slowly and I want to keep my abs), I’m just curious if WS4SB works well for someone with a fair musclar base, who is not a beginner.
Thanks in advance for any input.
I suppose that putting work into it could be said for any program. I’m just wondering if there’s anyone here who has done it and continued to make gains despite not being a traditional ecto. I.e. is the frequency great enough to stimulate continuous muscle growth and strength gains?
Get in the gym and lift some heavy weights, eat/recover/sleep, and repeat.
In most cases it is that simple.
I’m not your traditional ecto and I’ve made gains on the program. That doesn’t mean you can stick to the same program for an extended period of time and continue to make progress forever. Some variability is necessary.
[quote]IMCS614 wrote:
I suppose that putting work into it could be said for any program. I’m just wondering if there’s anyone here who has done it and continued to make gains despite not being a traditional ecto. I.e. is the frequency great enough to stimulate continuous muscle growth and strength gains?[/quote]
No it wil not work. Your body will not respond to the heavy ass weight and instead, you should do low weight high reps for the burn effect. Nevermind the fact that there are very un-skinny bastards who have built slabs of throbbing muscle on years of training Westside.
Obviously when I asked the question I was looking for a sarcastic response. I enjoy lifting heavy most of the time, which is where my major questions come up w/ the program - other than the max effort lift, nearly every other exercise is recommended @ 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps (or max repetitions). That actually seems kind of high reps to me, so I was looking for some first hand knowledge from someone who’d done it. - And Blongo thanks for the response… how long did you use the WS4SB template before switching (to another program, not just rotating ME exercises).
[quote]Der Candy wrote:
IMCS614 wrote:
I suppose that putting work into it could be said for any program. I’m just wondering if there’s anyone here who has done it and continued to make gains despite not being a traditional ecto. I.e. is the frequency great enough to stimulate continuous muscle growth and strength gains?
No it wil not work. Your body will not respond to the heavy ass weight and instead, you should do low weight high reps for the burn effect. Nevermind the fact that there are very un-skinny bastards who have built slabs of throbbing muscle on years of training Westside.
/end sarcasm.[/quote]
If you’re going to pull this kind of arrogant sarcastic crap, you should know what you are talking about. WSFSB calls for 15 lifts, only 2 of which are heavy sets. The rest are basically 3-4 sets of 10-15 reps. The repetition day is basically a burnout day, which calls for something like 20 sets of high rep upper body exercises.
Gael: have you tried this? I’m a bit wary of the high rep day, but DeFranco says it works well w/ his skinny bastard athletes. It’s certainly been a while since i’ve done anything that high rep, so who knows, maybe it gets results, it just seems a bit light - especially with only one heavy compound for upper and one for lower per week.
I am no expert, but I tried it but didn’t like it because I had to use such light weight to keep up with the high number of sets and reps on the rep day that it was ridiculous. I don’t know how anyone can use any decent kind of weight when you’re doing 20 sets of high rep upper body exercises.
It seemed like a bunch of bullshit so I scrapped it the rep day and replaced it with a second ME upper body day with overhead presses and weighted pullups being my exercises of choice.
What are your lifts? Have you been making progress lately?
Before that I did a Waterbury inspired 4 day/week TB program - day 1: 6x4, Day 2 4x6, Day 3 3x9, Day 4 Eccentrics, increasing sets weekly.
Honestly, I’ve been making pretty solid strength and visual size progress, but scale weight has stagnated. I’m wondering if my strength gains have been merely getting back what I lost after my injury, so I was thinking of trying WS4SB to try to improve a little faster and beyond where I was at before. Thanks for the input though that the high rep stuff didin’t jive with you.