Viable?

[kortisol]

Haha is it possible that you just don't want to be the guy at the gym being seen lifting light ass weight?

To be honest I was initially extremely attracted to the concept of supercompensation from the beginning. Thinking it over, I realize that the concept could be best utilized if I had a much stronger base to work from. I see that now. Your persistance in pointing me in the right direction is very obvious, and I bet that you know more about game in general than I do. I'd shake your hand if you were here in front of me. I can't allow my own selfish attraction to what is only a piece of the puzzle prevent me from excelling. As strange as it sounds, I must listen to your advice in order to become better than you in the long run. I must do what is best for myself and I assume you do the same for yourself. I also assume at one point you used a program like stronglifts otherwise you wouldn't have recommended it for me. You seem to be a helpful person, and I thank you for bothering with me.

 

[lweaver]

Light weights are necessary . They are necessary for assistance lifts, dynamic work, targeting small muscle groups and prehab. It's important to lift heavy shit as well as light shit though if you want to keep progressing. But no, when it comes to working sets on my main lifts anything below 70% or my 1RM will either be a warmup set, a dynamic set or high rep. It has nothing to do with ego and everything to do with getting stronger in order to work injury free, hit harder and feel better.

 

[kortisol]

It has everything to do with ego. Thats why we lift weights. Being attractive, strong, and big is one of the best ego fuels we have at our disposal. I want to be strong all the time. I want to outlast everyone else. I want to be bigger than you. =) I want strength, power, endurance, size, everything. I'll be damned if I can't have these things.

 

[_cato_]

To reply to your earlier comments, I think that 20k lbs per workout is a huge amount per workout for a beginner. I personally barely do that much on a "volume" day. And you are proposing to do that 3+ times a week. Also, it's highly unnecessary to add days to your workout at such a rapid pace. Usually an extra day is only required after maybe 6 months of training. (obviously here I'm referring to a situation where you are doing something other than body part splits, in which case different rules would apply)

The thing you have to keep in mind is that your body can only get bigger or stronger at so fast a rate. The numbers tossed around are that best case scenario, you can gain ~26 pounds in 1 year of working out. Every year after that, the rate is cut in half. The exception to this would be if you are starting out in some kind of undernourished/undersized state. If you ate correctly and did everything right and worked out 3-4 days a week for a year, you might be able to hit that 26 pounds, as a best case scenario. Adding 2-3 more days of workouts isn't going increase your gains to 30 or 40 pounds in 1 year. It's just going to significantly increase the amount of food you'll need to even hit the same numbers, since each day you do heavy resistance training, you're significantly boosting your caloric needs. Going from 3 days a week to 6 days a week is boosting your metabolism up by something like 800 a day or 5600 a week! And that's just to maintain. By extension, you could also work out 3x PER DAY and that isn't going to help you gain any faster either.

Supercompensation is a important, but what you're failing to take into account is that for a beginner supercompensation can occur within 24-48 hours. That is in fact what makes this person a beginner. As you progress into the intermediate range supercompensation starts to take longer, perhaps one week. As you progress into the advanced range, which is what you are talking about, then supercompensation might take 1-2 months. In an advanced training block you might intentionally overtrain for 4 weeks doing very high volume and then cut it back and do a 4 week intensity phase to allow supercompensation to occur. This is called periodization. At you're level, you don't require monthly or bimonthly planning. You're at a point where you can supercompensate within a day, or at worst a few days. If you're doing something like SL5x5 and can't progress workout to workout anymore, despite having your non-gym affairs in order, then you know you are no longer a beginner and require some kind of extended periodization (probably weekly).

 

[kortisol]

I dunno if those rules always apply. My brother gained 50 lbs in one year when he turned 15, and he's still 15 and strong as fuck. I'll never be able to grow that fast, but I can grow pretty damn fast. At any rate, I'll take the 26 lbs a year. My overall goal is to get to 300 lbs and then cut. It's gonna take years and years but I'm sure I can do it.

How long does the beginner stage usually last? It seems the longer I can ride the newbie train , the better. If it takes only a day or two for supercompensation to occur, then wouldn't the shcedule I had originally posted work as it hits the same muscle groups every two days? Wouldn't it be wiser to increase frequency as much a spossible to take full advantage of this stage of lifting?

20,000 isn't really that much bro. Being affraid of high numbers is kind of self limiting.

 

[lweaver]

I don't believe it's the overtraining aspect that's going to impede you at such a high amount of volume, it's the fact that your sessions are difficult but not in the most ideal manner. You training sessions are lengthy and occur often I assume...you would probably get bigger and stronger by cutting the volume and training days per week, increasing the weights, and using the gained time to boil eggs and cook chicken.

You're not a beginner anymore when you see that your lifts begin to stall and you start to require more time and recovery to make gains (given your lifts are trained properly). A respecdtable amount of strength will also begin to come about. As far as time who knows. I've see people progress to an intermediate level within a year with good training. There are also people I've seen at the gym for years doing high volume bodybuilding magazine workouts year in and year out...still beginners and still weak.

You're on the right track with the lifts you're focusing on. In my opinion you need to push the weight a little more, it's necessary for your neurological system to be taxed with heavier weights. I also firmly believe that you will need a squat rack. Deads are great, but they won't provide all of the benefits that as grinding squats will.

Also check out coreygb's log in the weight lifting forums. He went from being untrained to putting up some respectable lifts in a short amount of time using stronglifts. Just heavy weights, a good diet and lits of progress.

 

[_cato_]

I dunno if those rules always apply. My brother gained 50 lbs in one year when he turned 15, and he's still 15 and strong as fuck.

Going through puberty and things like that are another obvious exception; obviously you'd gain muscle and size under those circumstance without even weight training at all. It's not a hard and fast "rule," but it's a pretty safe bet for anyone under normal circumstances: ie 20 something year old male unassisted.

How long does the beginner stage usually last?

3-9 months would be pretty standard if someone is doing a non-retarded routine.

It seems the longer I can ride the newbie train , the better. If it takes only a day or two for supercompensation to occur, then wouldn't the shcedule I had originally posted work as it hits the same muscle groups every two days? Wouldn't it be wiser to increase frequency as much a spossible to take full advantage of this stage of lifting?

If you can do your workout 6 days a week and add weight to every lift every time that you do the workout, ie. every 48 hours when you repeat the workout, then ya you could do it that way to take advantage. I still think its unnecessary and won't really get you anywhere faster. I actually think the volume aspect of your workout is the worst part, not so much the frequency, though I think it's unnecessary and I doubt you can sustain it to be honest. It's like weaver said, you're doing a ton of reps with relatively low % of your 1RM. And again, whenever you increase frequency, you have to eat significantly more to counterbalance it, just to get the same results, so keep that in mind.

20,000 isn't really that much bro. Being affraid of high numbers is kind of self limiting.

Whether it's a lot or not is relative to how strong you are and what intensity you're using to get the reps. It's pretty easy to do, for example, 200 reps (say 10 sets of 20) of bench press with 100 pounds on the bar in one workout, especially if your max is somewhere in the ~300 range. On the other hand, that same person trying to do 16 sets of 5 with 250 would be pretty freaking hard even though its the same total volume technically.

So it's not a question of easy/hard or being afraid of "large numbers." It's a question of what's the appropriate volume for your goals and relative to the rep range you are going to use. If you're shooting for 5 reps per set, already you are going to have a 10-20% drop in relative intensity because people can usually only do 80-90% of their 5RM for 5x5. So in effect, if your 5RM is 85% of your 1RM and you're now going to do 5x5 instead of ramping to 1 top set of 5, then you're now using only 76.5% of your 1RM, at best. If you move that up to 10 sets of 5, then you're probably losing another 10% relative intensity or maybe more I dont know. Now we are talking about using weights which are around 60-70% of your 1RM, which coincidentally is also the weights recommended for hypertrophy. Except at that point, why not just do 5 sets of 10 and get the workout done twice as fast if you're using the same weights anyways?

Anyway, I'm somewhat rambling, the main point is I dont know where you got this 20k lbs number from, but I wouldn't be focused on any specific volume number really. It's going to vary based on your rep scheme, strength level, volume tolerance, etc.

 

[miked8c]

So for dead lifts I read heavy singles, doubles and triples are the way to go.


Cato you have already learned me a few things about DL loading, however I am going to start dead lifting again and I need a program that won't hinder my other lifts.

The Coan Phillippi was a little too much for me, although I think Speed sets on the DL are a brilliant idea.

How many sets of single, double, triples should I look for? I always thought for dead lift you could do a heavy triple and call it a day, just from the sheer weight you used you would elicit gains.

 

[kortisol]

I did stronglifts today and felt like a bitch. 75 reps is just bleh. I can't stick with one little program like that. Even if I move up in strength, it's just the pussy amount of work that bothers me. I didn't even feel anything from it, especially after doing 150 reps plus over the previous weeks' sessions. If I wanted a deload, this would be a good idea.

haha i got the 20k number from myself. I feel accomplished when I ATLEAST reach 20k. before i was doing between 17k and 35k on average and I decided 20k was my satisfactory minumum. Maybe I'm better off just doing what I was doing before.

 

[_cato_]

Out of curiosity, how long does it normally take for you to complete your 20k+ workouts?