Western "Weiderism" vs. Eastern theory

[Debaser]

There are a great many people that continue to subscribe to the "blast it, let it recover" once-a-week philosophy. This is an area that I believe that much of the U.S. could learn a thing or two from the Eastern lifters.

If you take a look at the powerlifters and olympic lifters overseas (and to a lesser extent, here), they subscribe to squatting three times a week or even more. They've fine-tuned their loading cycles so that volume, intensity, and load are variables all controlled with precision.

My question is, why does their continue to be such a stigma associated with training a lift or bodypart more than once a week? I suspect that if more trainees distanced themselves from the single-factor, Weider-esque approach, they would see greater success.

 

[WalkingBeast]

Personally I like to hit my chest twice a week. One day to focus on inclines and another for flat bench, with speed bench thrown in on either of those days. Aside from that, I hit deadlifts and other compound movements so hard that it takes a good amount of time for me to recover. I can get a decent amount of recovery by splitting inclines and flats 4 days apart. I dont associate with too many people, so Im not sure about the stigma of training an exercise more then once per week. I do see way too many people who fear overtraining, and dont train nearly hard enough IMO. It seems like it would be a good idea to train an exercise multiple times a week by cycling the intensity and/or volume as you mentioned. I believe its my mental state that largely affects how I train. I need that vent, so its not purely for the results at all. I need to really tear myself apart and move heavy weights to get that satisfaction. But I have been incorporating cycles in my training. Ill do 5X5 sometimes and then switch back to my free-for-all style of training on bench. Also Ill have a Max month where my focus is one rep max on bench, or a Rep week where my focus is rep PR's. On the max month, Ill go for Rep PR's after Ive exhausted all possiblity of a One rep max PR. On Rep month Ill try some max attempts after Ive exhausted my chance for Rep PR's. I feel this gives me the best of both worlds. I also get the entire spectrum of rep ranges in my training (especially when I dont incorporate the 5X5). When I do use the 5X5 I add the necessary extra volume also. But I cant say I really have a light day,heavy day, another day where I give 50% etc. I always give 100% and push to failure (aside from using the 5X5 occasionally). Hope that helps. KEEP KILLING THAT SHIT YOURSELF!!

 

[coolcolj]

hehe there are other ways that fall in neither catergory

take a look at my training journal

 

[Allon]

I think that it is a good way of changing routines. after a few months of about once a week, change the routine to less sets per muscle group and do them three times a week.
Right now I do each muscle group about every 3-5 days. (almost twice a week)

 

[BigBadBootyDaddy29]

As far as bodybuilding goes, I don't know a WHOLE lot about it, but I know you can get away with the famous once a week per muscle training approach. If it is optimal or if there are better methods are an individual matter of preference. "Weider-ism" LOL, has NO business in strength training.

Strength training is a whole different ballgame. People in the west are not JUST stubborn I guess, but grossly underinformed. A lot of guys who are athletes, strength athletes, don't know the difference between what they do and what bodybuilders do. They see Marcus Ruhl or Lee Priest or somebody all jacked up in a magazine and they think what they do is the be all and end all of training because of their appearance. What these pro, college, and even high school football players, wrestlers, track stars, basketball players, baseball players etc. don't realize is that they are better athletes and can probably outperform pro bodybuilders at virtually every sport, except of course posing on-stage. If you're a Linebacker on a football team, you shouldn't be doing cable crossovers....you shouldn't be pre-exhausting....you shouldn't be doing 16 different exercises for legs EXCEPT squats.

The availability of good training literature is also to blame for people's lack of wisdom on strength training. MILO is not available on newsstands anywhere I have been, neither is Jeff Everson's Speed/Strength/Sport. Bill Starr has a small monthly column in Ironman, and CS Sloan will have something published every few months, and that is about it. If you go anywhere, you see FLEX, Musclemag and the like. Bill Starr's book The Strongest Shall Survive is not available anywhere unless you order from the publisher, but walk into any bookstore and you will see dozens of copies of Arnold's useless book(not toally useless, but for strength training you might as well wipe your ass with it). All the kids who grew up watching Terminator and Predator think this is the way to get strong. Guys like Starr, Poliquin, Louie Simmons, etc...their stuff is just not as readily available and mainstream as bodybuilding literature is.

In the past, a "strength" program for a football or wrestling team was usually nothing more than cycling reps on core lifts from 12 to 3 over several weeks, or it would be a typical BB once a week routine, but with a light bench day thrown in with shoulders or cleans thrown in with chest or shoulders. Plyo, speed work, trying to improve the Oly Lifts (not just clean with HORRIBLE form lol) were unheard of. All those guys in the magazines are jacked without that stuff, you don't need it is what echoed through weightrooms.

However, nowadays, I do see a trend in professional and college sports, and that is adaptation of more Eastern-type training philosophies. Like everything sports-related, it starts on top with the pros and trickles on down do D1, D2, and D3, then to the high school level, where hopefully some day in the not too distant furure kids will have a fair chance to learn about strength training and the difference between strength training and bodybuilding.

 

[majutsu]

As a Russian lifter (by blood ) I find this thread fascinating in the extreme. In the media etc, Western means "science"/"cause and effect", where Eastern implies "holism"/"oneness"/images like accupuncture and buddha. What this implies is that Western is supposed to isolate the idea essentia, or one most important variable, the necessary cause of the effect. Ideally the westerner should suck it out of a plant and encapsulate it. The easterner in these sense sees all existent things as contributing to any one cause, some stronger or more proximally than others. So dealing with a chest disease may involve say a needle in the toe, a poultice a dried flowers around the neck and a series of images to meditate upon. In bodybuilding, one sees this a lot, sure.

In the west, or "weider-ism", the pain and effort of that contraction is seen as the essential cause of growth. One is encourage to work "in the pain zone". "No pain, no gain." This leads to the hit-it-then-quit-it approach you speak of. Sometimes, the irrationality of this approach emerges to the extent that the invidual goes day after day to "hit it", leading to complete collapse in overtraining. But either way, the same philosophy is dominant.

The so-called eastern approach is the belief that a new size or strength level represents a new state physiologically. If it is to be maintained, then all the elements that support a body must be in place to do so. So numerous variables are manipulated creatively to build the new state: diet, reps, sets, rest, anabolics, load, tension, . . . The new larger body is built by taking these above variables from their current levels in the current state and incrementally changing them all together over a period of time to reach the desired values of the idealized state. This is very similar to how they try to dial in a communist state. BTW the failure of communism is not because people can't effectively plan (witness the success of russian lifters), but rather that communism ignores the point of the state, which is not to create the highest GNP, but rather to allow individuals to pursue their lives and personal goals in relative safety and security, which requires freedom.

Great thread.