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What's your take on 21's

Madcow2 said:
Weighttraining stimulus and driving adaptation are homogenous throughout the population - probably to a great deal accross all mammals not just humans. There are always going to be differences in tolerances to load, the ease with which someone adapts and adds muscle, joint leverages which make certain exercises better/worse for an individual, and some other misc stuff. Everyone is different, but we are not all severe mutations that allow us to respond totally differently from each other. "Everyone is different" while true is widely used to rationalize all sorts of crap. 21s just don't have anything to do with exercise physiology or muscle growth - the effectiveness will be determined by the state of the lifter. Certainly someone who responds better to weight training might grow well off them compared to someone who is not as genetically gifted but this is not due to them being a supperior exercise - this is simply due to him responding better.

Take a total novice, he'll do well with 21s for a time but then a year or so out the gains slow to a crawl. Did the exercise become worse? No. He is simply trained to a degree and more resilient to adaptation. Hence, you don't see advanced periodization plans laid out for novice lifters. Are they better, sure they are, but the state of the novice lifter is that pretty much anything reasonable will work. Later on when he matures, the difference between the results he'll see on a non-periodized program vs. periodized will be night and day. You can't confuse the state of the athlete or his genetics with the viability of an exercise.

In the case of 21s this method has absolutely no backing in science for viability. Granted I can see someone who has been doing all strength work and compound lifts for a period using 21s and seeing some good short-term results but this is do to the state of the lifter and not the exercise being good or supperior in any way.

EDIT:
BTW - damn you Tom for getting me into this thread, I was pretty content in just letting it pass before I saw you post. I generally make it my policy to pass on any thread that I'd group with the "best way to train your inner chest." I kind of indicated as much in my first post.

He's dedicated and beleives in dual theory man...what can you say? Tom is just layin it down.
 
You guys remind me of fascists: "No, this is how it is. Deal with it. These exercises suck. Do HST or Madcow 5x5 to see the gains." Jesus H., reading this shit makes me wonder why these members are so respected in this community ..........

You can't argue with the fact that everyone is different. Yeah, we have muscles, and yes, in order to grow you must apply a stimulus and progressively increase either the reps or the weight, and obviously provide the proper nutrition. But you can't deny that some exercises/routines work better for some and worse for others. I, for example, cannot work off a HST-type of program. I've tried it and I didn't get stronger or bigger. On the other hand, when i train conventional style - high volume, 4-5 exercises/bodypart, etc - I get stronger and bigger. Now, my way isn't the only way, nor is it the best way for everyone. It's the best way for ME. To suggest that a program is superior to all others because you and your people have seen results off it is both idiotic and ignorant.

And to cite scientific studies to support your claims does not suffice. Like I've always said, there are "studies" out there that show Cell-Tech to be 1887% better than regular Creatine. There's also "studies" that show decline bench to be superior to the other benches. See my poiint?

(This isn't a defense of 21's, I don't do the exercise. It's a defense against the "do-it this way or no way" attitude I see so often on this board.)
 
I hear what you are saying and I agree. The Starr 5x5 program is just a really effective and easy to understand implementation of dual factor theory - something that I and the majority of the world thinks is fairly essential to understand or at least consider. The program is not an end all be all and it's really just meant to get people learning and thinking while they get big and strong. However, for it to be most effective it will still need to be tailored to match the individual in certain respects. Something I generally leave to the trainee, making sure that he at least completes the program first to get a frame of reference - especailly people who this stuff is new for.

Look at Bulgarian OL and Russian OL programs, totally different (to a degree - one isn't just stupidly different or anything) in their focus on assistance work and many of their approaches - Bulgaians favoring very little and posting up staggering volumes in the classical lifts. They both produce some outrageously good athletes. Many ways to skill a cat.

All that said, any program or process should be based on how the body works. Granted, some things we don't know or aren't sure of but many we are. There are a lot of people that swear that performing XYZ builds the peak on their bicepts - this is a violation of basic human physiology 101. Granted I'm sure they will say that we are all different but that doesn't make them right. Facist or not, very very few will contend otherwise and no one can support it with anything more than an "I believe..."

Studies produced by companies with a marketing agenda are biased - think Arthur Jones/HIT(i.e. Nautilus) and I'm guessing CellTech. They just can't be trusted. However, there are tons and tons of studies that have been confirmed, reproduced, and recomfirmed countless times that are largely unbiased (many of those in Eastern Bloc/Russia had access to a large body of elite athletes which makes them even more pertinent and desirable). This is how research is done in every field. You can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Healthy skeptisism is good but a lot of this stuff is very broadly accepted as accurate for the simple reason that it has been confirmed again and again - some of the stuff I post might seem different or advanced but really this is basic blocking and tackling that has been around for a long time.

We are all different but gravity works the same for you as it works for me (of course I'm sure there are some that don't believe that either), I might be a bit more aerodynamic and fall at a faster rate for a bit but that doesn't change the underlying principle. There is a reason why people have based their programs on such principles and the fact that people who earn their living by producing high level athletes have tested and universally implemented these programs worldwide - it's because they work better accross the entire spectrum of athletes. They still tailor many aspects to the individual as any good program should, but the underlying principles employed are common and produce better results accross the board.

This is why I don't supply %'s, am very careful with the volume I suggest to people, and encourage them at all times to learn about their own tolerances and weak points to layout their own training programs to address this. This is why I tend to stick to basic general programs on here simply because to do much better, I need to be much closer to someone to tailor a program to them or have a good understanding of what they can currently tolerate - and the vast majority of programs in use are to flawed to convey anything worthwhile.

So, while I agree with what you say and I certainly know that one can find a study (obviously biased or not) to support almost any contention, you can only take this so far before you wind up in fantasyland and throw out a lot of valuable insight into the human body.
 
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There comes a point in any discussion like this on almost any worthwhile topic where you have to look at whether a solution is topical or fundamental. A topical solution being one that works in a restricted set of circumstances and a fundamental one being one that applies at all times and can also explain why a topical solution works when it does and why it fails at other times.

If dual-factor training can take and enhance a few tens of thousands of lifters and general athletes who have tried conventional training and hit long-term plateaus and can also explain why they were hitting those plateaus then I have to think that it offers a more fundamental understanding of how the body is working. You simply do not find successful athletes who train by conventional bodybuilding methods without copious quantities of drugs. They don't even train horses or dogs that way.

I wouldn't suggest that it offers a complete understanding of how to grow and perform better but it does offer another step beyond the simple "train and grow" that we all begin with.

Madcow's 5x5 is just one program built around the dual-factor method. It's not some holy grail of bio-enhancement and he most of all suggests that once you have an understanding of the principles involved that you should be tailoring your own program for your own needs. Westside does the same: Tate has a 9-week beginners' program after which you're your own coach.

It's in the details where we get down to all of us being different yet fundamentally the same. We end up with differing applications of the underlying fundamentals. It's important to reach the fundamentals first, though, and these are what most of the discussions on here on dual-factor topics relate to: knowing why it works; why it must work for everyone and how to make it work best for an individual. Part of that knowledge is going to include knowing why the old, conventional BB methods really don't measure up and yet also why they are valid methods.
 
Madcow - I agree with you. Bicep peaks, inner chest, upper/middle/lower chest, etc are definitely myths that need to be corrected. I think it is most important for someone to know why they are doing an exercise - for example, one shouldn't do preachers to develop a bicep "peak", but rather use it because it will stimulate the muscles in the bicep. I see what you're saying, and I think we are at an agreement. I was more speaking towards those who say an exercise is ineffective when just about anything that will stimulate the muscle will promote growth (with other factors present, naturally, such as diet, etc.)
 
The main factor which should be present is a program.

Any exercise can be productive. Equally, that same exercise can be a waste of time and effort in the wrong context or even counter-productive; done with too little or too much weight or too often or too infrequently.
 
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