training with half your bodyweight

[spk55]

talking with a guy at the gym and he says once a month he shocks his body, by doing as many reps as possible with half his bodyweight.
this 200# guy benches 100# squats 100# and does all his training with half his bodyweight for as many reps in one set as possible. he says its a killer workout. i always thought if you shock your body, you still keep it in the 5-12 rep range, but just change up the exercises. is what he's doing a good way to train? and if he is getting a super hard workout doing this , why dosent he do this once-twice a week then?

 

[RottenWillow]

talking with a guy at the gym and he says once a month he shocks his body, by doing as many reps as possible with half his bodyweight.
this 200# guy benches 100# squats 100# and does all his training with half his bodyweight for as many reps in one set as possible. he says its a killer workout. i always thought if you shock your body, you still keep it in the 5-12 rep range, but just change up the exercises. is what he's doing a good way to train? and if he is getting a super hard workout doing this , why dosent he do this once-twice a week then?

I think we often forget that so much of what we read regarding strength or hypertrophy training are general guidelines, not law. Remember if it works for you, or the other guy, or whomever, then it's a sound training regime, right?

As for the rep range, again the 4-8 for strength and the 8-12 for muscle growth is just a general guideline. A lot of people making stunning size gains by going way above that 12 rep threshold. I've known several guys that built very impressive front delts, tris, and pecs from doing 50 rep sets of pushups, and my husband's skinny thighs never really grew until he started doing squat sets of 20-25 reps.

In theory, doing something really different on an intermittent schedule could keep your body from acclimating and keep the gains coming. If your friend is making gains, then he's hit on the frequency that's effective for his body. Could be you would need to do something novel like that more frequently to see similar gains. Just experiment.

 

[gstacker]

Half your bw 5-7 reps won't do a damn thing
when you train to hit a certain amount of reps it should be done with a weight heavy enough to keep you from exceeding the reps your targeting....
So half your body weight should be alot of reps.

 

[future]

It's an option. But nothing I would be interested in personally.