Best way to train for hypertrophy. How do YOU do it ?

[VictorBR]

OK , this is it .

I will have to admit that my knowledge in training is not that good . Actually it is bad , I have a pretty damn good knowledge when it comes to diet and AAS but when it comes to training ....it is not that good ....

So , I am going to start a biig cycle soon and I really want to have the training in check as I have my diet and rest ....

So , I will tell you guys how I have been training for the last years and you tell me what do you think and what I could change for better results . The details can make the difference when it comes to DIET and I am starting to believe that the details can ALSO make the difference when it comes to training ..

my goal is ALWAYS hypertrophy , I really don't care about strenght gains , I believe that when your muscles hypertrophy the strength gains will come on its own ...

So , I have always liked to TRAIN one MAJOR muscle group per day , this way I can hammer it pretty hard . So for the last 4-5 years this is the schedule that I follow . A LOT of people keep telling me to train 2 muscle groups each day , like chest and tris ( monday and thursday ) , backs and bis ( thusday and friday ) ..etc... because they say 6 days it too much for the muscle to rest ....But what they don't understand is that when I work backs , it is actually backs , shoulders and bis , when I work chest , it is actually chest , shoulders and tris , yeah it is not ISOLATED workouts for the shoulders and tris , BUT they are working out hard so ...... that is my point of view ...

But I just prefer to do it like this : ( what do you guys think ? )

Monday - backs ( upper and lower )
Thusday - Chest , abs
Wednesday - Legs ( quads , Hams , calves )
thursday - shoulders / traps
friday - Biceps , abs
saturday - triceps
sunday - OFF

So , this is how I have been doing it . Now let's talk reps , rest time , and exercises .

I ALWAYS try to maintain my reps between 8-12 . THat means that I try to reach FAILURE between 8-12 reps . I have READ several times that the best for hypertrophy is to keep your reps between 8-12 , less than 8 and you will be looking more into strenght gains than hypertrophy gains and more than 12 you would be looking more into muscle endurance gains instead of hypertrophy .

Rest time ,ok this one here is probably the one I need most atention .... I have heard that for the best hypertrophy gains you should REST no more than 1 minute between sets ..... problem is when I rest one minute only I have to use 20-30 % less weight than what I can use when I rest 2-4 minutes... How much are you guys resting between sets ? I think it is a trade somehow , rest LESS , use LESS weight , grow less ......rest more , use heavier weights , grow more ? I am not sure ....

Finally , exercizes types , number of exercizes and number of SETS

I have been thinking a LOT about this lately ....Ok , here we go .

We all know that we should change our routines often so our muscles don't adapt to it and stop growing . BUT HOW OFTEN ? Can you change it every week ? Or do you need to give it time for the muscles ADAPT and GROW, then when they stop growing , then you change .

And do you really need to change it ? Because if you just keep increasing the weight you use , this may be enough to keep your muscles guessing and keep them growing ? Or maybe just alter the order that you do your routine ?
Can you use the same routine forever as long as you keep incresing the weights ? or as long as you keep changing the routine order ? ( I mean instead of starting with flat bench then go for the incline bench , do the other way around .... )

Some guys here that know their shit told me that I should stick to one program for 2 months , just increasing weight , nothing more , than change it to a completly new one ......but they said I must give it time for the muscle to adapt because if I keep changing every week the muscle will not adapt and therefore , will not GROW ...

OK , now your thoughts

Victor

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

Mine's kinda complicated because it's more instinctive than anything. Alot of guys will say that instictive training is garbage, and that if man lived off instinct alone he'd just rather not workout or some other horse shit. I personally think instinctive training is the highest form of training because it's basically you training your body the way that's best for it, best for YOU. I don't have a specific number of sets. I don't have an exact order of exercises. I do have different rep ranges for different muscles because I have found that all of my muscles respond better to different rep ranges. I do have set days for bodyparts. I don't train to failure purposely as it tends to tax me too much. I do have a specific set and rep order for squats which I like multiple submaximal singles, bench multiple sets of 3-5 reps, barbell press ascending singles to a peak lift, but not quite max as well as multipe sets of 2, and stiff legged deadlift for 1 hard set of 15, but every thing else has it's own rep range, but no specified number of sets. I generally tend to do several different exercises per bodypart for 1 or 2 hard sets, but I may do 1 exercise for 5 sets. Who knows, depends on what I feel like doing. Sometimes I'll do supersets, drop sets, 21's, pre-exhaustion, whatever. I may switch the order of the exercises every couple of workouts or every workout. I may drop an exercise entirely for awhile and throw a comparable 1 in its place. Some bodyparts I like to train fast with little rest between sets like arms, and some I like to take plenty of rest between sets like legs. Some I use an inbetween amount of rest like chest and back. I like to concentrate on the muscle while working it. I try to get better and better at feeling it contract and try to contract it harder. Some exercises I like to go slow, with a pause at the bottom of the rep, some I like to go fast and jerky with a quick hard contraction, some I like to go smooth and nonstop with constant tension, some I like to use a little body momentum to help get a stronger contraction. I like to use a little thrust with form as Dave Draper puts it on some exercises. I've probably got other variables that I can't think of right now, but that's how "I" train. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else because this is how I like to train. This works for me. It's always changing. My body constantly has to adapt to the demands placed on it. I am always looking to lift heavier weights in the exercises, but that comes secondary to mastering the weight and getting the muscle to pump, contract hard and burn. I generally train a muscle until it either won't pump up anymore, or won't pump up better, or won't contract hard, or I feel like I've done enough or start feeling a little spent. These are all signs my body gives me to tell me when it's time to quit, when I've done enough for the day. Some may not agree, but this works for me. I've been training off and on for 10 years, but my total training time is around 4.5-5 years, but I have learned enough in that time to know what does and doesn't work for me for the most part and I don't need anyone's advice on how to train my body because it tells me what to do. I know that probably sounds like gibberish and bullshit, but it's true for me. That's how "I" train. Probably didn't help much huh?

Also, as for the muscle not adapting unless you stick with the same routine for a month or more, that's just dumb. The body is a highly efficient and complex organism. If you do a certain workout today, I can tell you with utmost certainty that it will most defintiely have adapted to it to a certain degree by the next time you do it. Sure, if you want to see consistent gains in strength in an exercise then you're gonna have to do it consistently for awhile, but even that's not totally true. You say your goal is purely hypertrophy, well you should know that just lifting heavier weights is not what hypertrophy is only about. It is an important part of the equation, but only a part in a much larger and more complex scheme. Here's a scenario. You train 1 workout with 3 different exercises for 3 sets each for 8-12 reps. You train hard, but within your specific intensity threshold. you have stimulated growth. Given proper nutrition and rest, your body adapts and grows new msucle tissue. Now you could stay with this same workout over an over and over, but pretty soon your body will adapt, and you'll keep getting stronger, but not much bigger. This is do to neuromuscular efficiency. Your CNS simply gets better at firing the fibers harder or more fibers, but your muscle isn't gonna grow as much because it's adapted to this specific loading. Your muscle needs a change so that the CNS gets tricked sorta and your muscle has to grow bigger to adapt to the new stimulus before the the CNS decides to take over the adaptation part of it. That's why you can keep getting stronger and stronger while remaining the same size or weight. It's because your neural efficiency is getting better. You kinda want to be inefficient when training your muscles. you don't want them to adapt too much because you want them to be constantly exposed to different stimulus so that they will grow bigger as a defense to future microtrauma. You can still get stronger and stronger in exercises if you change the order you do them in, the number of sets an reps you do for them, or switch exercises out for similar ones. This way you keep making your muscles adapt to new stimuli, and at the same time you keep getting consistently stronger in all the movements. I have seen many very muscular guys do alternate dumbell curls with 45's even though they look like they could curl 75's, and maybe they can, but it won't necessarily make their muscle grow better than the 45's will. It all depends. That's why bodybuilding is such an individual thing. This is why you have to pay attention to your body and learn how to train it, not train it according to what others say you should do. Maybe this helps a little?

 

[Tom Treutlein]

Hst.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

That hst program looks good albeit basic, I'd probably use it once every 6 months for like 6 weeks to hit the muscles with more frequency, then take a week off and go back to my normal 4 day split.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

Point of that would be?

Don't even tell me 'to shock the muscle'.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

The point would be to train the muscles with higher than once a week frequency every once in awhile and thus probably cause some good hypertrophy in a short period of time before the muscles and CNS adapt to the routine.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

You don't need to "switch things up" to stop the muscle from growing. The muscle adapts to the load and you can't continually push it higher due to strength limits. The way to fix this is with strategic deconditioning. You can use the same routine forever and infinitely grow, so long as you decondition at some point to avoid the RBE.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

I have no clue as to what you mean by "switching things up" to stop the muscle from growing. I certainly don't want to stop the muscle from growing.

As for strategic deconditioning, ya, if you mean taking a week off every 4-6 months, sure, I already do that.

You seem to think HST is the best thing going. Maybe it is, for you. No program other than the one I tailor to MY needs will ever give me as much growth and strength increases overall. I'm only interested in HST from a frequency point of view. I could just as well design my own program based on higher frequency of bodypart training with less volume per workout, but that ends up similar in volume by the third workout each week. That's easy.

As for using the same routine forever, and growing infinitely , um, I hope that works out for you. What you forget to mention is that your body gets neurologically efficient at doing the same exercises over and over again, so you get less growth stimulus from it. That is the whole point of changing exercises let alone rep and set schemes which your body also adapts to. From what I can see HST does take that into account, but forgets exercise variance.

What's the RBE?

As for not being able to push it higher, well that sounds incorrect to me. Alot of powerlifters/weightlifters stay in the same weight class while getting continually stronger due to CNS adaptations, not so much muscular adaptation. You can make your muscle stronger without making it bigger, and you can make it bigger without making it much stronger. It depends on how you train. If you train predominatly low rep, then your strength increases will be greater than your size increases and if you train higher rep you gain more size than strength. This is a simple way of putting it, and there are exceptions.

Btw, what have your results been so far as muscular growth is concerned while using HST? I'd be interested to know.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

I trust in HST because I've seen and heard great things about it, and experienced them before as well. The science based around it makes sense, and it surpasses all other programs in my eye due to the research behind it and now the typical bodybuilding lore.

You don't need to change exercises to continue to grow in terms of size. Strength, yes. That's where those neurological adaptations interfere and you need to switch it up roughly every 1-3 weeks (Westside advocates this) but the CNS adaptation has nothing to do with the muscle growing.

RBE - Repeated Bout Effect.

By SD I don't mean every 4-6 months a week off. I mean every 5-8 weeks, after you push your strength to the limits, breaking for 9-14 days, coming back, hitting lower weights than you left off with (repeating many old ones) and pushing the bar slightly higher each time to continually cause hypertropic occurrances in the muscle.

HST cycle awhile ago, in about a five week cycle, net me around 13 lbs. Most seemed to be muscle. I was doing vacuums, so the waist actually stayed the same, and I seemed to lean up (goal was to bulk) and definitely add some mass to my body. I can find the measurements in my logbook somewhere hopefully. I had them on my computer but I had been going through stuff a few months ago and ended up losing the file. I might've even moved it into some random folder, but search never found it.

I honestly think I just didn't gain size on my waist due to the vacuums, and probably had a good deal of muscle with a couple pounds of fat.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

Sounds like a fancy way to call "periodization". That's just what it sounds like to me from your description.

Everyone has their own opinion on what is best, and there are many types of lifting routines with solid scientific support, but the thing to always remember is that there is no one size fits all routine. This routine cannot possible take into account all the factors that affect each persons response to a particular training protocol.

Recovery ability, adaptation response, neurological efficiency, specific tolerances to volume, intensity, duration of exercise.

The best program anyone can use is one they designed for themselves through years of trial and effort as to what works best for them.

HST does not take into account that most peoples muscles are not the same. Every muscle on each persons body is not the same and each muscle group generally has a certain rep range it likes to be trained at. Doing a certain rep range for a particular bodypart may cause the body serious fatigue, while another rep range causes little fatigue overall, but causes great strength and size increases. Some rep ranges may cause great fatigue, but give a great response to, while others cause little fatigue, but give you a crappy response. Me for example, high rep squats just blast me. Yet low rep singles make me feel strong ,and they make me strong. Some people get strained real fast by doing singles all the time. Not me, but that's just how my body responds to squats, and that particular rep range doesn't work for any other exercise or bodypart the way it does for squats and me. Not that singles don't work for other exercises and me, but that I get strained doing them with other exercises. This is something only you can learn about yourself through constant trial and error.

HST does not take this into account from what I see.

I'll say it again, there is no one size fits all program and the best program is the one you design for YOUR body through experimentation, and trail and error as to what works best for YOU.

That's just my opinion.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

That's not true. People who are extremely tolerant to volume need to take a long time off and leave their muscles resistant to lower volumes again. The principles of HST are the reasons the muscle grows on any program, and those principles apply to any and all persons. Obviously some people can't have a higher frequency due to age or their recuperative capabilities, which is why you'd lower the number of exercises and focus on heavier compound moves.

Anyone can do HST and next to any of the programs listed on this board, all other things being equal (rest, nutrition, muscle's susceptibility to damage) they will grow more on HST.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

Those are some pretty bold statements you are making about HST.

How much training experience do you have?

Are you natural or not?

As for anyone growing more on HST than any other method, well I doubt that. Simply becasue everyone is physiologically different. I think genetics proves this.

I've been to the HST website and at first glance, the basic program looks sorta like an old Arthur Jones 3X a week full body program with periodization principles added in. That's kinda what I see, which is a good idea, although I don't really see anything that hasn't been done before.

I'm not bashing HST, as it looks like a good training method for short stints, 4-6 weeks here and there.

But I don't agree on it being the end all be all of training programs. NOTHING, works better than knowing your body and what it likes best, and NO training program no matter how well designed and scientifically researched it is can change that fact.

I think many would agree with me on that.

Once again, there is no one size fits all in bodybuilding.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

Whatever, I'm done trying to convince you. It's useless anyway.

Good luck on your training man, as long as it works, it don't matter. Just figured I'd try a little recruiting for HST. It's all good. The issue has been exhausted.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

It's useless huh? I agree.

I just don't buy into any program being "THE BEST". There is no such thing in bodybuilding or any form of muscle/strength/power building type training.

Sorry if we don't see eye to eye, but you're limiting yourself, not me. I said I believe it would be an effective program, but like anything, it's not the Holy Grail of training programs. Everyone says there program is the best, and then site numerous reasons why. Lifters that periodize think their way is best. Guys that do only 1 set to failure think their way is best. Guys that do high volume think their way is the best. Guys that do HST think their way is the best. Some guys think that training more than 2 days a week is too much. Some guys think training less than 6 days a week is too little. Everyone has reasons they believe makes their method the best. Everyone that does this limits their possible progress at least a little, and in some cases ALOT.

Once again, the best program is the one you design through trial and error for yourself because only you know what works best for your body, not some lifting GURU.

Sorry if you can't understand that.

Now I agree, this issue is exhausted.

Oh ,and btw, I hope your training goes well too.

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

I'd like to add that I'm all for trying different programs out. Anywhere from 4 weeks to 3 months on any program should show results and whether or not it does anything for you. Some will build more muscle then strength and some will build more strength than muscle. It's part of the process of seeing what works for you. The end goal after years of training is the ability to design your own programs knowing what has or has not worked for you in the past. Trial and error is the only way to find what works best for your body.