no answer to this earlier, so I’ll try again…
Hey Charles, I’ve always enjoyed your writing, but I can’t really see what EDT accomplishes that just timing rest periods and using gradual, progressive overload doesn’t. Doesn’t that also force you to do more work in the same period of time? What am I missing here? Thanks, Frank
Try putting that little thing to work that is on your shoulders, I’m sure you can do better than that. But seriously, I have given EDT much thought and have come up with the following: 1. it is higher volume than what most t-maggers are currently doing (a lot higher infact), which brings up the question if the average M&F reader would get the same results…hmm. 2. it stresses improving from workout to workout. While this may seem like a minute point, as yourself how many consecutive workouts over the last 3 months have you made gains from? 3. it primarily utilizes machines, again a different stimulas. 4. allong with higher volume rest periods are reduced (maybe not at first, but after a few workouts they will drop), again this may seem like a miniscule point, but they all add up. So insummary, EDT is exactly the OPPOSITE of what most t-maggers are (or were) doing, which equals massive sorness and (hopefully) massive growth. As you might or might not know, there are mostlikely many more reasons for its success, but you’ll never know until you try.
Progressive overload is involved in all the programs I do, and by maintaining consistent rest periods from workout to workout within each microcycle, I’m assured that I’m not just doing more work due to resting longer. I haven’t noticed any volume recommendations in EDT, so it’s not necessarily a greater volume than average, just increasing volume/ weight from week to week (as I do already).
The only thing that I can see that this program accomplishes is making people accountable for how long it takes them to finish a workout, since most people spend so much time socializing, reading magazines, etc.
This is good, but I wouldn’t call it revolutionary.
That was the point of EDT. To do more work in a specified time period. If you continually do more, then your body should adapt and grow bigger. It was made to be simple and that is what Charles stressed in the first EDT article.
Frank, if you read the article staley states there is nothing revolutionary about the program, it just happens that it is a well organised method of making sure that the workout includes all means of overload (i.e intensit, volume and density). The reason that most people are getting sore and results from this program is most programs dont usually use an effective means of increasing workout density- where as EDT does.
No its not really going to be different from periodising your training to account for all the possible avenues of overload - but if you are looking for a simple plan of maximising hypertophy by using all overload possibilities then why complicate matters - it is much simpler to just use EDT.
What I’ve noticed to be a major difference from the “typical” training program is the intensity recommendations. Selecting your 10-12 RM and performing no more than 5-6 reps. That’s definitely not conventional. Other than warm ups, I would guess that most lifters don’t complete a set until they either failure or 1 to 2 reps short of failure. I noticed that training with such a low intensity (at least in the early sets) I didn’t require much rest between sets, so I ended up performing a lot more volume than I normally would. Doing 30 sets in 40 minutes did a good job of shocking my system and causing several days of soreness.