Work Capacity In Novice vs Seasoned Trainees?

Work capacity threshold? Dr Darden i would like to hear your thoughts on this topic! When it relates to all kinds of hit protocols pertaining to negative accentuated training , when did you come to the conclusion to 2 workouts per week for average Joe?

I donā€™t think ā€˜Work Capacityā€™ is the term youā€™re looking for ā€” or at the very least, itā€™s not the ONLY term you want to look at with regards to your question. Volume and Frequency have many facets that change over timeā€¦

  1. Novices will Grow Faster and also have the Most Potential for further growth
  2. You want to work out at least 2 times/week to develop the muscle memory and correct performance factors
  3. Typically, Novices are using less weight and thus putting less overall load on their bodies
  4. Also, Novices have usually not yet learned how to make the deepest Inroads
1 Like

P.S. As to why itā€™s 2 times/week and 3 or 4, thatā€™s a question of Empirical Data best answered by Dr. D himself.

1 Like

Right now, Iā€™m giving a lot of thought and action into three-times-a-week training versus two-times-a-week training. Itā€™s going to take a while to give the various involved factors a fair shake.

Be patient. Iā€™ll have some guidelines soon.

2 Likes

== Scott==
Dr. Darden , Ive only done the 30 10 30 workout twice now so itā€™s premature to make any decision on it but in keeping with using a weight where I have 2 reps left in the tank on the 10 reps part this routine seems way easier that most other HIT routines Iā€™ve tried. At the end I wasnā€™t tired in the least which is great! Iā€™m wondering if this is why you are experimenting to see if the body can handle more of these kind of workouts per week?

Wouldnā€™t a high level trainee have a higher capacity for
a deeper in road from the training stimulus compared to a novice/beginner and tolerate a higher volume relatively speaking?

Scott,

You may be correct. Three times per week many be better for some people.

Yes, I believe so.

Dr. Dardenā€¦after reading one your books ā€œThe Nautilus Dietā€ just recently and seeing your input on this thread, it appears you may be going back to the original protocol of the Nautilus Principals of training full body 3x/weekā€¦is that because most trainees donā€™t how to train to failure or is it because failure really is not necessaryā€¦do you think that all of your latest clients in your latest books would have gotten better results?

thx, dan

Dan,

I donā€™t know the answers to your questions, but Iā€™m trying to find out.

I could be wrong but it seems like back in the day training 3 times a week was the standard no matter what routine you were doing and Iā€™m guessing Jones went with that briefly until he realized people really training like he advocated by going to failure and such just could not recover from 3 days a week of that so he changed it to twice a week and in some cases less. I suspect 30 10 30 provides good results ( especially for us old timers) with out over tasking the system as Jones all out training would do.
Scott