The Shadow said:
In all seriousness.......if you take 5 days off....and then go to a program of one direct hit per week...I can almost guarantee a jump in strength and size.
I used to train just like you - 2-3 per week...and we have similar pre-workout physiques.
Try it for 4 weeks
Actually, what's going on there is programming and load variation just through a single variable. Typically when someone cuts frequency like that it is almost certain that workload is decreased (think 5x5, no one is doing 15 sets of squats in one day and that's why it gets spread to increase workload). Generally this type of change is made by someone when they reach a plateau and need to change something. What's happened at the plateau is that workload has been held constant but progress has ceased which tends to mean guys are pushing hard for that extra rep or another weight increase and are getting hammered.
All of a sudden they drop workload using simple frequency as a proxy and WHAM - you deload and get the delayed adaptation coming back bigger and stronger. This is exactly the mechanism used by Arthur Jones in the 1970s to promote HIT where he'd take a highly trained bodybuilder, rest him, and switch to a much lower workload for a period. All of a sudden the guy's strength levels shoot up and you start seeing growth. Of course, Jones then takes credit for all the sudden growth but in reality it was the previous higher workload state that was the stimulus and Jones resting them that allowed for adaptation (welcome to dual factor theory in action and the rebound). The point I make is that if you understand the relationships this can be done more intelligently and you understand why this is happening and what changes to make short term (this is periodization) rather than believing you've discovered a supperior long term strategy, changing your workouts and then wondering where those seemingly quick gains went after 4-6 weeks.
Incidentally, this was the same shit Mentzer pointed out and promoted in the early 1990s that got everyone down to 1x per week splits. Previous to that the 3on/1off split with 2x per week frequency (also AM/PM sessions at times for some) were fairly common in BBing. He pointed out what everyone knew, that if you are well trained and take some time off ,you frequently come back stronger and get bigger more easily enjoying a sudden spurt. His answer was that training was too volumous and too frequent so it should be unilaterally reduced at all times for a long sustainable linear model (which was obviously supperior because look at the short term gains people were dependably experienceing after a period of lower volume and frequency). This is when the whole "overtraining" thing really got a kick in the butt and it produced the more common workouts you see today of 1x per week frequency and a tendancy to lower volume and failure (believe me, when HIT came out and argued against Volume or HVT, those workouts looked nothing like today, it's just that modern HITters have no frame of reference for what was going on in the 1970s marathon pump sessions so anything and everything is HVT to them if it isn't stamped as HIT - fucking retarded).
Now in the 1970s, that whole lower frequency, minimal volume, failure as stimulus thing made some scientific sense in the Western 70's understanding of adaptation along with some logic and philosophy (remember great logic can be build off false or misunderstood premises so garbage in = garbage out). But we've known for a long time it's wrong as balls, and better understanding of fitness/fatigue allowed us to explain why that old model broke down so dependably and why delayed adaptation occured. That said, it is freaking criminal that Mentzer was able to come out in the early 1990s and using the same 20 year old retired science pull the wool over the entire commercial fitness community with that crap (this is what total dependence on escalating drug dosages and "it's 90% diet" get you - ignorant). But that's basically what happened as concepts of workload, fatigue, and overtraining are only now starting to be better understood by the public.
EDIT: the periodized 5x5 model on my site is setup specifically to ellicit this response and thereby teach people about workload variation and planning (blocks of higher and lower workload where the fatigue relationship and delayed adaptation are purposedly exploited). This is basically the core mechanism used when basic linear progress in one's lifts becomes a non-reality. It isn't set in stone and certainly there are a lot of ways to do it, but it's a good way and it's intuitively easy to understand and grasp because it has few moving parts (and that's what makes it probably the best template available at teaching this concept - I certainly haven't found any better and it was neither a hasty nor arbitary decision on my part). Even Kelly Baggett used the same example, which incidentally was a word for word copy of one of my old writeups a few years ago (and all are taken directly from Glenn and his work so that's where the credit goes).
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