madcow. RBE?

i don't frequent here as much as i would like, but I do live by a lot of your words. (thank god someone introduced me to dual factor training). So maybe I missed it, but did you ever mention your thoughts on the repeated boute effect?

I know the HST'ers out there will be all over this, but I am curious to here your thoughts too.

I'll tell you, I'm a nuts & bolts/blocking & tackling guy. I don't get too fancy or focus on minutia. I look at what works and do it. I'm convinced that people lose the core 45% blocks getting wrapped up incorporating the little stuff they are trying to glean from exotic studies. To that end it's pretty obvious that the entire approach to training I use is based on strength. Hypertrophy is odd in the short term but over the mid to long term hypertrophy tracks nicely with strength increase as the whole reason why a muscle hypertrophies is to adapt to increased demands. Granted BBers and athletes aren't necessarily concered with 1RM performance but the goal of increasing the best 5 or 8 or whatever works quite nicely.

I mean maybe there is some magic out there to bring on a bit more but really when you increase your big lifts 30% you are going to look pretty much the same with or without a magic ingredient assuming diet is excess and held constant of each example. I mean, it's not like you are going to be an extra 50% bigger because you did some odd thing in there - muscles respond to the stress imposed on them and that's the weight so I've never really thought there'd be anything on the recovery or programming end that would be another factor that would come close to matching that big one or causing a significant deviation in magnitude.

Now dipping into HST's thread on this and the hypertrophy mechanism http://www.hypertrophy-specific.com...i?;act=ST;f=14;t=4406;hl=repeated+bout+effect - man I don't even want to touch it and I'm not exactly sure what your question might be on it but I'm just not expert enough in that area to offer much in the way of opinion. Glenn might know about this area and be able to offer something. I know Fortified Iron and the Hypertrophy Research people might have something to say, probably a good place to post is the advanced training board at www.fortifiediron.com here http://www.fortifiediron.com/invision/index.php?showforum=1. Looking at the studies and extrapolating hypertrophy specific conclusions is just beyond me and it would take me a while to get up to speed before I'd be comfortable doing that (sorry to disappoint you).

I work from the other end, with strength increases in hypertrophy ranges in big lifts that matter and enough food, hypertrophy happens all on its own and takes care of itself. The body works nicely that way. I don't know a better way to get big than that. I know that's not sexy from a science bodybuilding viewpoint but I have yet to see anything 'wow' me or even that I thought really mattered or affected the relationship. Good programing, non-neural ranges, increase lifts - that's common to all successful programs.

So now I've typed 4 paragraphs to say nothing because I kind of feel like I'm letting you down not having an entire theory layed out about exploiting this optimally specifically for hypertrophy. I just take a different approach and nothing has yet wowed me into thinking that there's another factor out there nearly as important as the amount of resistance your muscles can handle. Wish I could do more.

Fugin A Man!

That's exactly right proto. It's the framework and the progression, not the rep range.

You WANT to change the reps from time to time. If you're into hypertrophy mainly (or just for the sake of your joints) higher reps are a great way to change it up. Alternativley, you can use lower reps to focus on nueral adaptations. Also, it does seem that different rep ranges effect people differently. 5's are a pretty good mix of heavy, nueral stimulation and a decent amount of TUT in my opinion.

The point is to be able to set something up that realistically manages workload and fatigue, and keeps making you stronger (in whatever rep range) while not hurting yourself in the process. You want to always move forward.

Other stuff like HST, WSB, DoggCrapp etc. do this in slightly different ways but the underlying ideas are the same.

Sets and reps are just a means for work with slightly different blend of components 3x10 is 30 reps 5x5 is 25 reps - the weight you use for 5's is generally higher, might equate to the same total or decently close. 10 rep sets are on the high side in my mind, double and singles maybe on the low, but that doesn't mean there isn't something to be had for a bodybuilder training on those ranges at different points in time and that this won't facilitate progress a lot more than trying to do one thing all the time.

In a sense it's just simple progression. Get better at the stuff that matters, address any issues as they arrise, keep progression moving in that fastest possible way over a period (i.e. manage workload and programming to achieve the desired balance), and manage diet depending upon your goals. If you squat 225x10 and come back next year and are only about to do 225x10, I can assure you that you will look very much the same (odd/weird argumentative manipulation of cases being set aside).

The real issue is that bodybuilders in particular try to get fancy and like to believe that they are so very different from anyone else who uses weights. This different approach of their's which seems to be largely ignorant and randomly all over the place just clouds the issue of progression and leaves many of them frustrated, spinning their wheels, or resorting to drugs when their goals are very achievable. Many of the ones who have put in a year or so and exhausted their newbie gains are just rotating exercises and templates, micromanaging their diet, and getting nowhere. They've been rooked so badly on training info that they'd rather spend $30 on a month's supply of Monkey Ass Oil than buy a book and learning what productive training is really about and how to program for progression (of course most are only familiar with Joe Schmoe's Guide to Ripped Bis). This is why they have "routines" and not programs and everybody asks people to look at their split which, if you are lucky includes the exercises with sets and reps. I've never really seen one that has any type of planning or variation over time.

And that's the state which hopefully will get changed as a lot of people are willing to invest their time and hard work only to be rewarded with marketing of supplements and a drugged out "sport" (term used very loosely). Rediculous and IMO unethical but look around the gyms and you see why they get away with it - the general populace and to a large degree their entire target market is woefully ignorant of what it takes to improve and make progress and how to go about it.

Just thought I'd throw this out there b/c above I asked why do sets of 5. This isn't a new link or anything but I just read it again today and thought it'd be helpful if anyone else comes across this thread. It's from Mark Rippetoe on why do sets of 5.

Mark Rippetoe said:

Matt: Why do you guys like 5 reps so much? How often do you utilize other rep schemes?

Rip: On page 200 of Starting Strength figure 7 integrates a huge amount of information about how human physiology responds to exercise, and provides a very clear way to see the relationship between the number of reps in a set and the effect on the body.
(this can be seen at www.startingstrength.com.)

Five reps is good because it provides a general strength response, and strength is cool.

I use more reps when I want to produce a specific hypertrophy response, such as bicep training. Now, not many people care how strong their biceps are, since there aren’t many strict curl contests anymore. They just want them to be bigger. So we train biceps for 10-15 reps, and do fives for them occasionally so that we can do more weight on the sets of 10. Lower reps are used for the obvious stuff, like getting the squat, bench, deadlift, and press up, and for the Olympic lifts since they are explosive/technique movements. Nobody does sets of 20 snatches around here, at least not since I tried them that time and made such a mess on the platform. But this is all basic stuff that most people know. Fives are just a good number of reps: enough work to make you grow, not so many that the spotters wander off.

Glenn: I answered a question in another interview recently by saying that I knew I could come up with a detailed scientific answer that demonstrated my command of muscle physiology and made me look really smart, but that it would in reality be a load of bull. Pretty much the same thing here. I’ve tried other things, I always come back to multiple sets of 5 simply because I’ve yet to find anything else that works as well. For all our strength exercises, squats, presses, things like that, we do most of our work with 5 reps.

Click to expand...

http://readthecore.com/200510/markr2.htm