Making progress all the time

Transform

Was in Gym today (westwood leopardstown) and under the bar for my full depth squats

(butt to the floor style with heels elevated due to my tight calves).

So i put on 97.5kg which involves the use of a few different plates and i noticed how many others in the gym NEVER use any fractional or small plates in exercises.

Now i have found these little gems (i have my own 0.25 & 0.5 kg plates i bring with me as most places do not have any) have been instrumental in the progression of my continual progress going from 12stone 12lbs in Feb to 13st 6lbs today - at 5-6% Body Fat (calipers)

This does require that all those that are actually interested in making any sort of progress i.e. all those that post about how they want to gain weight, record and progress slowly every week.

For lower body movements you should be aiming to increase weight by NO MORE THAN 1KG EVERY WEEK. Upper body 0.5kg.

When i have jumped weights quicker than this i have found that clients and myself included hit plateau's sooner.

So get using the little gems today and buy a diary to log your workouts.

p.s. will drop down to about 12st 7lbs for marathon in November so enjoying the summer bulk up while it lasts!

Reyman

1 Kg is apretty small weekly increase for the likes of squats.

If you take your lift weight at 100 Kg and your body weight at 80 Kg. Assume you're squatting up and down with the 100 Kg + 55Kg (2/3 your body weight) =155Kg total.

Then you're only gaining in strength about -0.67% per week.

Is this not less than optimum?

Dragan

What Transform is trying to get across is the bodies ability to make consistent small gains over staggered larger gains ( i.e 2 pounds a week vs 5 pounds every 3 weeks etc ).

And he's spot on, not enough people use the smaller weights, and the don;t progress in any kind of sensible or managed way and in all honesty have no idea how to sustain progress over a LONG period of time.

Most people go to the gym for a year, maybe two or three. I know guys who have trained week in, week out for 10+ years and are still making their gains in the gym.

How?

There not afraid of a half kilo plate.

t-ha

The lack of smaller weight variations is really killing me on dumbell exercises particularly at the moment (smallest jump is 5lbs if you're lucky!). Wind up having to use auxillary exercises or other methods to make the next weight.
I've given serious thought to bringing in small pots of morla to stick to them (they're rubber, not metal so magnets are no good) before!

Any thoughts on smaller incremental weight increases for dumbells Transform (or good ways to achieve it)?

BTW, that's some serious LBM gains. Especially for someone at 5/6% BF who does alot of marathon training. You must have your diet down to a fine art.

Jak

Reyman wrote:

1 Kg is apretty small weekly increase for the likes of squats.

If you take your lift weight at 100 Kg and your body weight at 80 Kg. Assume you're squatting up and down with the 100 Kg + 55Kg (2/3 your body weight) =155Kg total.

Then you're only gaining in strength about -0.67% per week.

Is this not less than optimum?

I don't know exactly where to start ... this statement is far too simplistic, as once again there are a lot of variables to consider.

Maybe for someone who is taking it easy or just starting out regular increases are the norm but whenever I hear people talk about increasing the weight week on week by a few kilos I just assume that they must have been taking the piss in the first few sessions or were just in brutal shape to begin with.

I can assure you that there comes a point in your training when 1kg a week increases are the stuff of dreams. 52kg increase in your max in a given year? That is insane progress. Would you expect the same again next year?

The fact is that aside from 50+kg a year being huge gain to sustain regardless - tiredness, change in diet, change in weight, varying your program splits, varying the excersise focus all contribute to making "progress" a little less 'linear'.

Once you reach a good level of conditioning - your training options are more focused on variety than incremental weight gains for development. If I could add 10kg to my bench in a year I would be thrilled.

In short, tiny plates are hugely important as ironically gains slow down very quick once you get it all right.

JAK.

flywheel

Transform wrote:

i have my own 0.25 & 0.5 kg plates

hi, do you know somewhere in town (dublin) you can find those? smallest the gym i go to have are 1.25 kg

edit:- these look perfect http://www.theplatemate.com/products.htm anyone seen them in available in town (or online where the shipping isn't too bad)?

thanks

Reyman

What you guys are saying is correct, but only partly correct.

If you are a young beginner you can progress your strength at around 4% per week for a limited period --say 6 weeks.

If you're an intermediate lifter your strength gains on a new programme would work out at around 2% per week again for a couple of months.

I can't see the logic of forsaking these kind of gains and limiting your increases to around 1% per week when you have a much greater potential in the early stages of lifting.

We all plateau soooner or later and that's the time to start training smarter and using small incremental weights, which are appropriate to the limited gains an experienced lifter can make.


There may be a physiological argument for training below potential to reap better long term gains, but I haven't heard it explained yet

Jak

No, what I posted was entirely correct.

There is actually no real difference in your last post and my original one, other than not using random percentages.

JAK

Dragan

Reyman wrote:

which are appropriate to the limited gains an experienced lifter can make.

That's kind of what we are talking about dude, as a bunch of experienced lifters.

I know that this board has a high percentage of light lifters and first timers, but there are also some pretty experienced people here too, and sometimes it's nice to have a thread thats at that level too, without needing to outline each and every step, and how many grams of protein, or reps per set, or what people need to do to get to the level we're talking about

Transform

Young lifter progressing by 4% per week - yes but for about 3months at most and even then you would be using the small plates and micro loads.

From training clients all the time i find they will stop making progress in terms of weight lifted very quickly and micro loading is easier to encourage gains over the long term.

Physiologically i have found that putting more than 1% increase on any lift encourages poor form and injury.

Yes you will plateau at one point or another but microloading will ensure this does not happen for a very long time.

platemates are best and some work with rubber bells as the bells are usually just encased in rubber.

Finally - RECORD RECORD RECORD. Get a journal and write it all down. Without a journal you are just another hack going through the motions. Its easier to spot causes of injuries and a delight to see where you have come from.

corkrob

t-ha wrote:

The lack of smaller weight variations is really killing me on dumbell exercises particularly at the moment (smallest jump is 5lbs if you're lucky!). Wind up having to use auxillary exercises or other methods to make the next weight.
I've given serious thought to bringing in small pots of morla to stick to them (they're rubber, not metal so magnets are no good) before!

Any thoughts on smaller incremental weight increases for dumbells Transform (or good ways to achieve it)?

BTW, that's some serious LBM gains. Especially for someone at 5/6% BF who does alot of marathon training. You must have your diet down to a fine art.

so you're back to monotonous loading again t-ha! What exactly are you training for? size or strength. Because if it's size your on the wrong track buddy. You should learn how to implement change into your workout. All you seem to be worrying about is numbers. so what happens when you get to lift the biggest dumbells in the gym? Are you going to have the biggest build? doubtfull. Minute changes as you suggest arent going to build mass. To build mass you need extreme and varied demands, something I'm not sure you are geared towards

Dragan

Actually, no, it's not my place to answer.

Mr E

Deep breaths, Dragan.....

Reyman

Meditation I'd say or lots of prayer!

t-ha

corkrob wrote:

so you're back to monotonous loading again t-ha! What exactly are you training for? size or strength. Because if it's size your on the wrong track buddy. You should learn how to implement change into your workout. All you seem to be worrying about is numbers. so what happens when you get to lift the biggest dumbells in the gym? Are you going to have the biggest build? doubtfull. Minute changes as you suggest arent going to build mass. To build mass you need extreme and varied demands, something I'm not sure you are geared towards

I usually train for strength, but lately have been training to achieve a particular aesthetic I wanted (which I am very close to, and will subsequently return to strength training). Progressing the weights/intensity is only one technique I've been using to go forward, in fact lately, since I'm doing physio on my back & shoulders, hard work, good food and workout variation are probably the only things that have allowed me to keep gaining LBM!

I think you maybe infer too much from my posts, I'm not suggesting that upping weight is always the answer, but I do think that forcing people to make 10lb jumps (5lbs each dumbell) in weight is not helpful during an intensification training mesocycle. I stand over that comment.

Edit: Corkrob I feel that this needs to be said, so before this thread is locked I'd like to say it. When you first arrived on the board I knew nothing about you. You could have been the world's top trainer, or an 11 year old that found a physiology text-book. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the internet and although your posts (going back to the 'lower pecs' thread) mentioned some advanced material, that same material could have been ripped word for word off of another site. Like I say, that is the nature of the internet and for that reason I like to either deal with someone enough that I know they are the real deal (good posts consistently), or be told who they are and given the page of their website or something. Although I now believe you have studied this area extensively, in those first posts I was still trying to work out where you were coming from & you didn't make that any easier by being very sparse with your replies.

Those short questions you asked, now in hindsight, make sense. However if you look at them from my point of view, at the time when you were asking them - you still hadn't given me any context with which to answer those questions. "Why are muscles shaped the way they are?" You could have been referring to the mechanical stress field during contraction inherent to the shape, how/where sarcomeres are added, anything basically! Without the context, which you eventually gave in your last post on that thread, your questions were too ambiguous to be the basis of any intelligent discussion. If you re-read that whole thread, from my point of view, keeping in mind that you had not yet given any information to prove who you were, or why I should accept your opinions without question (something I don't afford anyone), or even given me a rough idea where you were coming from, I think it's understandable that I started to think you were a troll who had no intention of helping anyone or being involved in intelligent discussion - so I ripped the piss instead.

Obviously you didn't like having the piss ripped out of you but DO notice that the instant you posted a longer, more comprehensive reply, ignoring the fact that you slighted me a few times in that reply, I wrote a post attempting to start a proper discussion with you (on the thread 'attn corkrob'). As it turned out, once you actually got around to saying what it was you were talking about I agreed with some of your opinions and was already using some of the techniques you were talking about in my own training. I know you read this post because you replied to another post on the same thread.

Your response to my invitation to discuss things maturely was, dissapointing basically. Since then, I've been waiting for you to start posting with a progressive attitude, but you seem to prefer to follow me around the internet making negatively toned posts about everything I write. I'm open to having anything I say questioned, but I do resent the tone of your posting. I know from the content of PMs that you regard this board and its users with contempt. I also know that you genuinely believed that that was a picture of me squatting & you were having a genuine dig, as opposed to just joking around (which would have shown a sense of humour & probably endeared you to me a little more). You say you wish everyone would be more questioning, but you don't seem too impressed when someone questions you?

As always, I'm still open to discussion, and as always, I'll keep my mind open - but not so much that my brain falls out.

Dragan

Now I'll make my comment, which was that T-ha has one of the most varied workout plans of pretty much anyone I know.

Rob, while your input once again was making sense I would also say that you can't judge someones workout routine based
Only on a couple of posts that you may have read.

Mickk

I am the complete opposite but I might try your way. For example when I hit 10 on 100kg bench the next session I jumped up to 120kg and got 4 reps. On average with good diet I go up one rep every two weeks. Last week I got 7 and soon as I hit 10 (5 weeks hopefully) on 120kg I will bump it up to 140kg.

BrianD3

t-ha wrote:

Edit: Corkrob I feel that this needs to be said, so before this thread is locked I'd like to say it. When you first arrived on the board I knew nothing about you. You could have been the world's top trainer, or an 11 year old that found a physiology text-book. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the internet and although your posts (going back to the 'lower pecs' thread) mentioned some advanced material, that same material could have been ripped word for word off of another site. Like I say, that is the nature of the internet and for that reason I like to either deal with someone enough that I know they are the real deal (good posts consistently), or be told who they are and given the page of their website or something. Although I now believe you have studied this area extensively, in those first posts I was still trying to work out where you were coming from & you didn't make that any easier by being very sparse with your replies.

I've been following corkrob's posts myself, one thing I noticed early on was that his views on training seem extremely similar to those of Ken Mannie, a strength coach in the US. Don't know whether that is a good or bad thing but I know that Mannie is something of a controversial figure. I suggest that people google for Ken Mannie to find out more.

In any case corkrob lost all credibility in this forum when he started his ridiculous attacks (eg the T-Spa thread) The guy comes across as a nutjob TBH.

Dragan

BrianD3 wrote:

I've been following corkrob's posts myself, one thing I noticed early on was that his views on training seem extremely similar to those of Ken Mannie, a strength coach in the US. Don't know whether that is a good or bad thing but I know that Mannie is something of a controversial figure. I suggest that people google for Ken Mannie to find out more.

In any case corkrob lost all credibility in this forum when he started his ridiculous attacks (eg the T-Spa thread) The guy comes across as a nutjob TBH.

Yeah but tbh controversy is not in and of itself a bad thing i suppose!!!

For me it's just the fact that nothing is really new.

Different muscle groups and different athletes respond better to different rep ranges/stimulus etc?

Wow.

Mind blowing. :eek: