Steroids Source Talk | Anabolic Steroid Forum - View Single Post - A Training Philosophy For Solid Mass Gain

Cornish_Celt · #4 (**permalink**) 07-08-2010, 02:59 PM

30. So, what is the optimal training frequency?

If training a muscle group once per week is too infrequent and training a muscle group every other day is too frequent, then what’s the solution? Well, research investigating training frequency has found that, in all but beginners, twice per week training for a muscle group works just as well for size gains and tends to give better strength gains then 3 times per week training for a body-part.

31. The Most Important Thing When It Comes To Setting Up A Routine

First of all, set your training up so that you can make progressive bar weight increases over time. That’s the most important thing you do. A routine should be set up so that the weight on compound movements increases consistently on a weekly basis first and foremost. Set your training up in whatever manner best allows you to do that. Even if you can only tolerate one hardcore set per week or whatever, if, over a 5 year period, you take your squat from 150 pounds to 600 pounds and you eat, you’re gonna have some big thighs, regardless of whether you trained with 1 set per week or 50 sets per week to make those strength gains.

32. Make Strength Gains First - Then Worry About the Rest

Once you’ve demonstrated the ability to make continual bar weight increases in strength, then you can add frequency and volume to enable you to get a more rapid muscle building stimulus and also tap into that extra 10% or so growth that you get from fatigue stimulation.

33. Taking a Look at a Pro Bodybuilder's Routine

Let’s take a look at a typical pro bodybuilder and see how we might optimize the training process. Let’s say just for illustrative purposes that our bodybuilder is a shredded 300 pounds. That means he probably has about 280 pounds of “tension” related muscle and 20 pounds of “pump” related muscle. We could eliminate 80% of the volume and fatigue and just put him on a powerlifting heavy diet of nothing but singles and doubles at low volume and he’d still carry 280 pounds of muscle. Yes, he probably would shrink a bit. The 20 or so pounds he’d lose would mainly be glycogen storage and “pump”, related to the “fatigue” and “volume” of his bodybuilding training. Now, let’s take a look at one of his typical “bodybuilding” leg workouts.

34. The Bodybuilder's Workout

He has a 700 pound maximum squat and routinely works quads once per week for a total of 16 hardcore sets. He does 4 sets of squats, 4 sets of leg presses, 4 sets of hack squats, and 4 sets of leg extensions with reps running from 6 all the way up to 20. Most of his sets are in the 8-12 rep bracket. All sets are performed with a hardcore mindset and taken balls to the wall. Now, ask yourself this. How many of those total sets that he does for quads a contributing to his ability to squat 700 pounds? Do the hack squats and leg extensions he does at the end of his workout do much for his strength? Hardly. How about the leg presses? Well, 700 pound squatting powerlifters don’t do leg presses and it doesn’t seem to negatively affect their strength. So all that we’re left with is the squats.

35. What's Creating His Squatting Strength?

Therefore, it’s safe to deduce that this bodybuilder could reduce his leg workout to 4 sets of heavy squats and still maintain his ability to squat 700 pounds. Now, remember that “tension” related growth at a given volume is responsible for around 90% of muscle mass increases. Also remember that the bar weight on an exercise like the squat is a prime example of “tension”. So what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that he’s using 75% of his training volume to get maybe 10% of his growth. In other words, if the 4 sets of 8 reps squats are all that he needs for his 700 pound squat and ability to develop “tension” (responsible for 90% of his growth), all that the other 12 hardcore sets of leg presses, hacks, and leg extensions are really doing is contributing to fatigue, total work and giving him that extra 10% pump related growth.

36. Is He Getting a Good Bang For his Training Buck?

Now let’s ask another question. Could he get that extra 10% growth more economically then busting his ass for it with 12 hardcore sets of leg presses, hacks, and leg extensions? Sure he could. All he really needs to do is generate some tension in whatever parts of his quads weren’t fully stimulated by the squats and, for the fatigue, he could just get a good “pump” with a fairly decent load. He could actually do both at the same time. What does it take to get a good pump? Well, after his heavy sets, he could simply knock out a couple of sets of 12-20 reps on the leg press or hack squat with a good load. He could also do a quick drop set, a rest pause set, a strip set, or anything similar really. My favorite is to take one exercise after the heavy sets and either knock out a couple of sets of 12-20 reps in standard straight set fashion, or do a modified rest-pause/drop set. Simply knock out a quick 3-5 sets of 5-10 reps with 15-30 second rest intervals. Pick a movement and knock out a set of 10 reps. Rest 20-30 seconds and repeat 3-4 times. If you can’t get at least 5 reps reduce the load. Try that for just one movement and tell me you need more exercises for “fatigue”.

37. His Training Would Be More Efficient

An approach like that would still enable the above bodybuilder to stimulate his legs optimally and also give him the added benefit of being able to train more frequently. He wouldn’t have to wait so long to recover from the training sessions he’s doing since he’s no longer thrashing the muscle into oblivion each and every workout. So now instead of training quads once per week he could probably train quads twice per week and make more rapid gains. That’s the basic tenet.