Want a simple program to get stronger?

Mellor

granty1987 wrote: »

I am in week 2 now of this and am loving it - it is absolutely bossing me, don't think I ever focused that much volume on one muscle group before, I guess all of my old programs were a little weak!

Question though:

For B-E, lets say you go to failure on C and only manage 3x8 and on the fourth set you fail on rep 6. Should you finish the set on 6 reps then go to failure again maintaining the weight on the fifth set - and lets say, only manage 5 this time.

OR should you be looking to hit the rep numbers every time, and if it involves reducing the weight for the remainder of the reps in that set then so be it. eg DB shoulderpress, reps 1-6 at 20kg, then drop to 17.5kg for reps 7 & 8, then start set 5 back up at 20kg, go to failure then reduce the weight again as necessary

Cheers

Choose a weight you can complete all the reps with.
If you fail halfway through a set that's the set over. Drop down a weight for remaining sets if you missed more than 1 rep.
Next week re-attempt the weight if you were close, or drop down if you were way off.

Hanley

Mellor wrote: »

Choose a weight you can complete all the reps with.
If you fail halfway through a set that's the set over. Drop down a weight for remaining sets if you missed more than 1 rep.
Next week re-attempt the weight if you were close, or drop down if you were way off.

This.

granty1987

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

If you're on week 2 and you're not making all the reps on the 4th set of C, then you probably started too heavy or you jumped too much from week 1.

Is it specifically the DB overhead press you're having a problem, with and how did it go on week 1?

ABC for that session is bench, DB shoulder press and incline BB bench. Week 1 was fine with the weight. Failed the set in week 2 as i changed the order and went with incline before shoulder press. My left shoulder was struggling with the volume after incline, the right was fine. (I may have increased the weight in both exercises from last week as well)

My last program would have alternated exercises between push and pull (bench , pull up, shoulder press, row etc) so the muscles were getting a longer break. Now that this one targets the same muscles for the entire session, i have noticed myself reducing weight in a few exercises.

granty1987

Mellor wrote: »

Choose a weight you can complete all the reps with.
If you fail halfway through a set that's the set over. Drop down a weight for remaining sets if you missed more than 1 rep.
Next week re-attempt the weight if you were close, or drop down if you were way off.

Good rule to go by.

I still want to question the rational behind it though, what if you fail at the weight early in the set - like halfway through.

Surely its better to finish that set with a lower weight then continue the next set with that? Just seems if, for example, you fail on set 4 of C at the fifth rep, it would be better to get those last few reps in at a lower weight, than not at all.

I agree that this shouldn't happen as you should choose the correct weight.

Mellor

granty1987 wrote: »

Surely its better to finish that set with a lower weight then continue the next set with that? Just seems if, for example, you fail on set 4 of C at the fifth rep, it would be better to get those last few reps in at a lower weight, than not at all.

You've hit max effort. Grinding out a few more is not necessarily better.
Sure 3 more reps at a lower weight might mean you hit 8 reps total, but it's not an 8rm set, it's more a drop set.

Consider an extreme version of the above. A heavy drop set, starting close your max, able for only 1 or 2 reps at a time until you do 8 reps.
Same as no if reps, but far more stressful.

Alf Veedersane

granty1987 wrote: »

Surely its better to finish that set with a lower weight then continue the next set with that? Just seems if, for example, you fail on set 4 of C at the fifth rep, it would be better to get those last few reps in at a lower weight, than not at all.

Extra reps with lower weight to finish set 4 will probably mean you can do less with the starting weight on set 5.

So if you want to get stronger with the 20s, finishing sets with 17.5s or 15s won't really give any benefit just because it means you've done more volume.

And extra unnecessary volume on a set of B will compromise what you do on C as well.

Don't look at the one exercise in isolation. B-E are there to build elements of A.

jive

People are trying very hard to over complicate this. Honestly even if you made an absolute mess of the rep scheme you'll still progress because of the volume. The difference between 5 reps and 8 reps is like the difference between Pepsi and Coke, not a whole lot.

You should just put it all down in an excel file, pick your weights + exercises and have at it for a few months like a robot. Go in, do what your excel file says and get out. Eat decently and watch the gains roll in.

[in b4 the cola connoisseurs]

Alf Veedersane

When do I start using bands and/or chains?

jive

What tempo should I be doing my A, B+C & D+Es at?

Nate--IRL--

jive wrote: »

What tempo should I be doing my A, B+C & D+Es at?

Slow enough that you aren't bouncing the weight. If you are true to your self it probably means -5/10kg but good form.

Nate

Hanley

jive wrote: »

People are trying very hard to over complicate this. Honestly even if you made an absolute mess of the rep scheme you'll still progress because of the volume. The difference between 5 reps and 8 reps is like the difference between Pepsi and Coke, not a whole lot.

You should just put it all down in an excel file, pick your weights + exercises and have at it for a few months like a robot. Go in, do what your excel file says and get out. Eat decently and watch the gains roll in.

[in b4 the cola connoisseurs]

The difference between 5 and 8 is fairly substantial in my opinion.

The whole point of 5x8 at a straight weight anyway is that you can complete all 5 sets at the same weight. So you're only REALLY working hard for the last 2 sets or so, and the rest are just contributing to increased volume.

Look at how Sheiko's programs are set up - average intensity is usually around 70%, which definitely isn't enough to get strong on right?

...but somehow, thru the magic of volume and accumulation, people get stronger.

jive

Hanley wrote: »

The difference between 5 and 8 is fairly substantial in my opinion.

I disagree, for your average Joe doing this 3 days a week the difference is going to be negligible. If someone is aiming for 8 reps and instead gets 5 (wut r u doing to miss by that many anyway) for 1 exercise and all sets its not really going to make much difference.

I agree if we're talking about someone on the more advanced end of the spectrum who has everything nailed down but for 95% of the lifting population it really won't matter a toss.

People would be better served working on their flexibility so they stay injury free rather than stressing over a couple of reps when it's neither here nor there.

Mellor

jive wrote: »

If someone is aiming for 8 reps and instead gets 5 (wut r u doing to miss by that many anyway) for 1 exercise and all sets its not really going to make much difference.

In one random workout/set its gonna make little difference long term.
But the point of the program is volume over a longer period. If you are only scraping 5 reps by the third set, you are using a weight that is too heavy and doing a completely program.
Will you get stronger, maybe for a week or two. But you've already done your 5RM heavy sets. Trying to power on with the same intensity for the whole workout is a recipe for burnout.

Hanley

jive wrote: »

I disagree, for your average Joe doing this 3 days a week the difference is going to be negligible. If someone is aiming for 8 reps and instead gets 5 (wut r u doing to miss by that many anyway) for 1 exercise and all sets its not really going to make much difference.

I agree if we're talking about someone on the more advanced end of the spectrum who has everything nailed down but for 95% of the lifting population it really won't matter a toss.

People would be better served working on their flexibility so they stay injury free rather than stressing over a couple of reps when it's neither here nor there.

Assuming 8-12 is good for hypertrophy and 3-6 is good for strength (it's not, but I'm drawing an absolute example for illustrative purposes) - by hitting sets of hard 5s instead of moderate 8s you change the assistance work from hypertrophy based to strength based.

Which isn't bad in and of itself, but it's not great from a long term development standpoint for a novice lifter, which is how the program is pitched and created.

The biggest problem most people face in the pursuit of strength is that they're just too skinny and don't have enough muscle to move heavy weights.

If all you do is smash your body with heavy weights without having enough of a stimulus for hypertrophy, you've completely changed the point of the way the training is set up in this program to the point where you're not doing the same program anymore.

jive

Mellor wrote: »

In one random workout/set its gonna make little difference long term.
But the point of the program is volume over a longer period. If you are only scraping 5 reps by the third set, you are using a weight that is too heavy and doing a completely program.
Will you get stronger, maybe for a week or two. But you've already done your 5RM heavy sets. Trying to power on with the same intensity for the whole workout is a recipe for burnout.

Hanley wrote: »

Assuming 8-12 is good for hypertrophy and 3-6 is good for strength (it's not, but I'm drawing an absolute example for illustrative purposes) - by hitting sets of hard 5s instead of moderate 8s you change the assistance work from hypertrophy based to strength based.

Which isn't bad in and of itself, but it's not great from a long term development standpoint for a novice lifter, which is how the program is pitched and created.

The biggest problem most people face in the pursuit of strength is that they're just too skinny and don't have enough muscle to move heavy weights.

If all you do is smash your body with heavy weights without having enough of a stimulus for hypertrophy, you've completely changed the point of the way the training is set up in this program to the point where you're not doing the same program anymore.

Yeah but in isolation it's talking about a workout or couple of workouts where someone doesn't hit their 8 reps not changing the programme to 5 reps entirely instead of 8. I agree that more reps is better for all the reasons listed above but also because you get away with a ****tier technique when doing more reps.

Just for the record I'm only saying that people shouldn't question a very straight forward programme to such a degree, not every workout will be exactly in the rep scheme described, even for the main lifts you'll have bad days where you won't hit the reps and you'll have good days where you'll have a mega 5th set with additional reps tacked on. I'm not arguing the for the inclusion of lower rep schemes just saying it won't matter one iota if you miss reps on a workout or a few workouts.

Also thanks for this programme don't know if I said thanks already but I'm still doing it. Mine is a bit of a bastardised version at times because of using hotel gyms on the road where dumbbells never exceed 20kg and a barbell is a pipedream. I usually turn those into solely hypertrophy workouts because i've no choice ~_~

granty1987

Question!

Is it feasible to do this with Pull Up's as the A lift?
Find out what your 1rm is with weighted pull ups (body weight + additional plates) and work from there.

At present i do not know what my 1rm is as i have never really done a huge amount of weighted pull ups but want to start. I do know that I am able to do 5x8 of my body weight - which kind of equates* to your formula at the starting 70%. It would mean that in week 6, I'd be targeting an additional 30kg on me for 5x2+

For an exercise like this, should the %'s be tapered slightly? And would you apply the additional 5kg to the second 6 weeks also or scale it a bit?

Cheers, Im really enjoying this btw

*this is a pure guesstimate.

Dtp1979

granty1987 wrote: »

Question!

Is it feasible to do this with Pull Up's as the A lift?
Find out what your 1rm is with weighted pull ups (body weight + additional plates) and work from there.

At present i do not know what my 1rm is as i have never really done a huge amount of weighted pull ups but want to start. I do know that I am able to do 5x8 of my body weight - which kind of equates* to your formula at the starting 70%. It would mean that in week 6, I'd be targeting an additional 30kg on me for 5x2+

For an exercise like this, should the %'s be tapered slightly? And would you apply the additional 5kg to the second 6 weeks also or scale it a bit?

Cheers, Im really enjoying this btw

*this is a pure guesstimate.

I'm currently doing the program and I added a pull up day. It's basically upper back/bicep day. I Increase the amount of reps on A each session. The plan is to be able to do 5 sets of 8-10 reps at the end

Hanley

granty1987 wrote: »

Question!

Is it feasible to do this with Pull Up's as the A lift?
Find out what your 1rm is with weighted pull ups (body weight + additional plates) and work from there.

At present i do not know what my 1rm is as i have never really done a huge amount of weighted pull ups but want to start. I do know that I am able to do 5x8 of my body weight - which kind of equates* to your formula at the starting 70%. It would mean that in week 6, I'd be targeting an additional 30kg on me for 5x2+

For an exercise like this, should the %'s be tapered slightly? And would you apply the additional 5kg to the second 6 weeks also or scale it a bit?

Cheers, Im really enjoying this btw

*this is a pure guesstimate.

You assume 5x8 @ 70% is a maximum effort. It is not.

Taken another way...

If you're a 200kg squatting, 140kg 5x8 won't be that hard.

You could certainly do 150-160kg 5x8, but it would probably kill you. That's more like where your pull up effort would be I suspect?

So in your case I'd just go and do a pull up 1RM and see what happens.

If you do one and your "70%" ends up being lower than your bodyweight, just use some band assistance.

But remember - the assistance work is really what drives the program so unless you're doing some movements that are designed to increase pull ups in the Bs and Cs I don't think you'll see the success you would when squatting or deadlifting.

...would love to hear back tho.

granty1987

Hanley wrote: »

You assume 5x8 @ 70% is a maximum effort. It is not.

Taken another way...

If you're a 200kg squatting, 140kg 5x8 won't be that hard.

You could certainly do 150-160kg 5x8, but it would probably kill you. That's more like where your pull up effort would be I suspect?

So in your case I'd just go and do a pull up 1RM and see what happens.

If you do one and your "70%" ends up being lower than your bodyweight, just use some band assistance.

But remember - the assistance work is really what drives the program so unless you're doing some movements that are designed to increase pull ups in the Bs and Cs I don't think you'll see the success you would when squatting or deadlifting.

...would love to hear back tho.

Let's say my 1RM turns out to be 100kg. At a body weight of 82.5kg, the first 3 weeks would have me doing assisted pull ups @ 70x8, 75x6 & 80x5. I wouldn't be gaining anything by doing this as at present i can do 5x8 easily enough.

Noted that the assistance work is key here, just curious to know your thoughts on what to do in this example. I think it would be more beneficial to change it so that I am increasing the weight from 82.5 - 100 over the 6 weeks vs 70 - 100, where for the first 3 weeks i wouldn't be working hard for A.

Cheers!

Mellor

granty1987 wrote: »

Let's say my 1RM turns out to be 100kg. At a body weight of 82.5kg, the first 3 weeks would have me doing assisted pull ups @ 70x8, 75x6 & 80x5. I wouldn't be gaining anything by doing this as at present i can do 5x8 easily enough.

What if your 1RM ends up being 140kg and week 1 has you doing almost 100kg x 8.
That's considerable harder than you current workouts.

So that's unlikely to be the case. But you see my point. The only reason you aren't working hard in your example is because you picked an arbitrary 100kg as your 1RM. I expect it will be more 115-120kg.

As Hanley said;

Hanley wrote: »

So in your case I'd just go and do a pull up 1RM and see what happens.

Hanley

granty1987 wrote: »

Let's say my 1RM turns out to be 100kg. At a body weight of 82.5kg, the first 3 weeks would have me doing assisted pull ups @ 70x8, 75x6 & 80x5. I wouldn't be gaining anything by doing this as at present i can do 5x8 easily enough.

Noted that the assistance work is key here, just curious to know your thoughts on what to do in this example. I think it would be more beneficial to change it so that I am increasing the weight from 82.5 - 100 over the 6 weeks vs 70 - 100, where for the first 3 weeks i wouldn't be working hard for A.

Cheers!

Any discussion is meaningless without actual numbers to work off of. You're creating a false dichotomy to try and prove a point you already believe. You're not actually discussing anything at this point.

The only way to know, is to test your numbers and go from there.

Using your own figures - 5x8 is probably a 12-14RM number. Lets call it 12 to be conservative.

You're 82.5kg. Using 82.5kg as a 12RM predicts approx 115kg as a 1RM.

Bodyweight +32.5kg as a 1RM.

Which means you'd start on 81kg (aka bodyweight) in week 1 and add from there.

And regardless of ALL of that, any training that starts you almost at your limit of what you can do (either as a % of 1RM, or as a RPE of rep max capacity) will leave you burned out with nowhere to go very quickly.

A good program starts you a little bit below what you can do strength wise, blasts you with volume and then lets the latter carry the former as the weeks go on.

The program is written the way its written for a very specific reason. No rules change just because you're using your lats and biceps instead of your legs or chest.

Dtp1979

My pull up is weak enough. Would you see any benefit to the way I described up above or should I do it like you suggested for granty1987?. I'd like to get up to 5 sets of 10reps or close to it in a few weeks

Hanley

Dtp1979 wrote: »

My pull up is weak enough. Would you see any benefit to the way I described up above or should I do it like you suggested for granty1987?. I'd like to get up to 5 sets of 10reps or close to it in a few weeks

Pretty sure I posted a "do this to get better at pull ups if you suck at them" thread a while back.

If search doesn't return anything maybe someone can post a link?

I'l dig it up if not.

guil

Hanley wrote: »

Pretty sure I posted a "do this to get better at pull ups if you suck at them" thread a while back.

If search doesn't return anything maybe someone can post a link?

I'l dig it up if not.

Little longer than a while lol

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057383712

Dtp1979

Right so I'm shortly coming up to the end of phase 2.
I had started phase 2 and was in week 2 when I had to stop when work commitments/holidays took over for a few weeks. When I got back to the program I stepped it back a little and just restarted phase 2 from the start.
I'm currently on a slow deficit, prob another 2 months to get down to 10-12% bf.
So, would it be ok to do a phase 3 perhaps and use a combination of all the hardest B-E?
Or is it time to go onto a more volume based program?
Orrrrr, do phase 3 and instead of 8 reps, just drop the weight a little and do 10-12 reps instead?

Dtp1979

Anyone?

Alf Veedersane

What is it you want to do with the next phase of your training?

Dtp1979

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

What is it you want to do with the next phase of your training?

Well eventually i want to go on a slow bulk and try keep fat gain to a minimum. What I want to do is continue with the program as I quite like the structure of it and I'm used to it now. But what I want might not be what's best as I don't really have the experience or knowledge yet.

Edit.
So should I stay on a more strength based program for the rest of the deficit or start a more body buildery type program

Alf Veedersane

Dtp1979 wrote: »

Well eventually i want to go on a slow bulk and try keep fat gain to a minimum. What I want to do is continue with the program as I quite like the structure of it and I'm used to it now. But what I want might not be what's best as I don't really have the experience or knowledge yet.

If the program is getting results, then go again. Maybe vary the exercises though.

You'll need to be doing more volume for bulking though, I'd have thought

Dtp1979

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

If the program is getting results, then go again. Maybe vary the exercises though.

You'll need to be doing more volume for bulking though, I'd have thought

Yes I'm Definatley getting much stronger, but didn't want to fall into the trap of overdoing a program and not having the experience to know when to move on to something different. I'll be varying B-E. I was thinking of doing the excersises I found the hardest over the first 2 phases or maybe try get a whole new set of excersises to try.