48 hour intervals, 7 days a week?

D

Diamyo

New Member
Hi all,

I just started my first HST cycle and its going quite well.  

I was wondering if there were any thoughts on doing HST in a continous cycle of every 48 hours as opposed to the more traditional 3x week?

I'm assuming that most people do the 3x week as mentioned in the HST guide in order to keep their weekends free, but based on what I read in the HST guide about the dropoff in various signals after 48hours, I was thinking it might make more sense (in terms of raw optimization) to just keep looping every 48 hours, irrespective of the day of the week.

Thus, you end up with 4 workouts  1 week, 3 the next
....ie. Mon  Wed  Fri  Sun  / Tues Thu Sat /  Mon, etc.

Anyway, I was just curious if others had tried this type of schedule or had any feedback on it.  I'm planning on doing the 48hours this cycle, and then may consider even doing 36 on the next if that goes well.

Thanks for any input.
 
This has been discussed lots in the past. Do a search. If nothing comes up (and it should) let us know.

Cheers.
 
Thats what I'm doing for this bulk cycle. I skipped the first week of the 15's and I'm only on the third workout of the 10's tomorrow so its early days yet. I'm hoping for some nice results though.
J
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Thanks guys.  

I did do a search and read through some previous threads that indicated 48 hours would be fine before I posted, but what seemed to be missing (and what I was really looking for) were actual comparative results from personal experience between 48 hours vs. 3x week....(i.e. nobody that I saw posted anything like 'I made much better gains using 48 hours vs. 3x week'). In theory, due to summation it should work better but reality and theory don't always jive. 

I saw that some people were using 48 or 36 (or posted that they were going to do it), but then the thread kind of died and they never posted to say whether it worked any better or worse for them...that was why I was soliciting additional feedback.

Jazzer, I would be really interested to hear your results if you previously used the 3x week and are now switching to 48 hours.  

I'm currently doing 48 hours, and next cycle will probably look at the 36 hour option if I don't try Max-Stim then....

thanks
 
Max-stim is only 2 days a week. Dan says even though some indicators of hypertrophy stop after 36 hours, some last longer, over 72 hours. In other words, it doesn't matter, but working each muscle 2 days per week would be min, while every 36 hours would be max. So 3 times per week is in the middle, and is a nice balance of frequency and recovery (extra on the weekends).
 
If you were doing two workouts a week, IMO you should be doing failure training if you want growth. I just don't see how you could do two submax units a week and grow from it, regardless of diet.
 
Not true Quadancer, there have been plenty of experiments to measure muscle hypertrophy and strength gains in both failure and non-failure training.  ALL the experiments I have studied concluded that there was very little, if any difference between 2/week or 3/week training.  Training to failure has nothing to do with hypertrophy...training to failure will help strength endurance only, at the expense of increased CNS fatigue.  I train 3xweek because I want to maximize hypertrophy and my body can handle it.  If I trained 2xweek, I would still grow, but it MAY POSSIBLY be a LITTLE slower.  Other studies have shown that training as little as 1xweek is enough to MAINTAIN muscle gains, but not enough to induce much hypertrophy.

Also I have personally ( and many other people) made significant size and strength gains on 2/week training.
 
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(Peak_Power @ Sep. 28 2006,21:21)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Max-stim is only 2 days a week.</div>
Actually Dan's paper on Max-Stim suggests using an A/B scheme 4x/week, with the A routine done M,Th and the B routine Tu,Fri. He does also give examples of 3x/week and 2x/week, though. I tend to agree with the rest of what you said, just thought I'd point that out.

Generally higher frequency is probably better if you can still do a reasonable amount of work each time and also still recover enough to work hard again the next workout. Those can be big ifs. As I recall, Dan has indicated that he would prefer reduced frequency over reducing work per workout too much.

In other words 20 reps every 48 hours is probably better than 5 reps every 12 hours. There is some minimum below which you shouldn't drop in one workout (but it's hard to say what that minimum is). Once you hit a reasonable amount of work per workout, then the best frequency is probably the highest that you can maintain with progressive loading and still recover sufficiently to maintain that frequency. I suspect that with heavier loads that's probably 2-3x per week for most, if not on gear.
 
Back to the original question. July 8 I weighed 173lbs and had a 13% body fat.

I've done HST and because of my work schedule have to do it every other day - so it's 3x one week 4x the next...just the way you've described.

As of last Friday 9/22 - 7 days ago I'm at 200lbs at 9% body fat and eating 4500 calories/day. It's a bulking diet and some fat gain has happened 2.5lbs according to the calipers, tape, and calculations. Other gains than fat have just been more.

Go ahead, give it a shot, I think you'll like the results.
 
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(vagrant @ Sep. 29 2006,02:22)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Back to the original question.  July 8 I weighed 173lbs and had a 13% body fat.

I've done HST and because of my work schedule have to do it every other day - so it's 3x one week 4x the next...just the way you've described.

As of last Friday 9/22 - 7 days ago I'm at 200lbs at 9% body fat and eating 4500 calories/day.  It's a bulking diet and some fat gain has happened 2.5lbs according to the calipers, tape, and calculations.  Other gains than fat have just been more.

Go ahead, give it a shot, I think you'll like the results.</div>
Wow, thats really great to hear - thanks Vagrant and congrats on your results.
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">(i.e. nobody that I saw posted anything like 'I made much better gains using 48 hours vs. 3x week').</div>

Don't know if you will see a marked difference between the two, but haven't not seen comparative results myself.

Your best bet...do it...post the results...maybe do it as we do with the weekend rest and we will have a comparison!
 
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(scientific muscle @ Sep. 28 2006,23:24)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">ALL the experiments I have studied concluded that there was very little, if any difference between 2/week or 3/week training.  </div>
can you give me pointers to those studies sm?

i've read the ones dan links to on his frequency doc on the max stim website, but i am interested in any others you have read.

thanks.
 
Well, for ME, two times a week seems to stall me out, but then again, I'm 53 with low test and possibly some other problems. I hate missing workouts, and since I do an irregular work schedule, (construction) I deemed it best to just try to get every other day in, so when I miss one, it's not as bad and I often still get 3 in a week.

I see where the discussion begins though, as in the other thread: if the HST science is true, then it stands to reason that the two days off are unecessary, and you should have more growing time with 48 hr. alternates.
 
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(DRAGON @ Sep. 29 2006,06:23)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"><div>
(scientific muscle @ Sep. 28 2006,23:24)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">ALL the experiments I have studied concluded that there was very little, if any difference between 2/week or 3/week training.  </div>
can you give me pointers to those studies sm?

i've read the ones dan links to on his frequency doc on the max stim website, but i am interested in any others you have read.

thanks.</div>
I don't have links to those studies saved, virtually all the studies you need are at hypertrophy-research.com. If you can't find them there, there are links to pub-med and other scientific research sites, which have search engines, etc.

Hypertrophy Research

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(quadancer @ Sep. 29 2006,11:20)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Well, for ME, two times a week seems to stall me out, but then again, I'm 53 with low test and possibly some other problems. I hate missing workouts, and since I do an irregular work schedule, (construction) I deemed it best to just try to get every other day in, so when I miss one, it's not as bad and I often still get 3 in a week.

I see where the discussion begins though, as in the other thread: if the HST science is true, then it stands to reason that the two days off are unecessary, and you should have more growing time with 48 hr. alternates.</div>
I agree Quadancer, I believe 3/week is slightly superior to 2/week. Also I am busy like you in my job and occasionally I have to miss a workout, which is not so bad when hitting the weights 3/week.
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(Fausto @ Sep. 29 2006,04:45)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"> <div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">(i.e. nobody that I saw posted anything like 'I made much better gains using 48 hours vs. 3x week').</div>

Don't know if you will see a marked difference between the two, but haven't not seen comparative results myself.

Your best bet...do it...post the results...maybe do it as we do with the weekend rest and we will have a comparison!</div>
Yeah, thats what I was thinking too...unfortunately I'm pretty intense so until I start back with kickboxing  I doubt I would be able to mentally handle the drop back to only 3x week to make that comparison.

I am planning to try 36 hours next cycle so at least I hope to offer people a 48 hours vs. 36 hour comparison.  

The best bodybuilding results I have had before (except for now perhaps as I'm already growing like a weed after the first week of HST) was with the Bulgarian Burst split system, in which you worked out 2x day on a split system.

I was doing Xreps this summer and certainly made myself really sore, but I didn't feel the results were in line with the amount of effort I was using (I did grow though), which was why I started researching higher frequency systems and happened across HST and everything started clicking based on my comparing past training and the logic behind HST.  

We don't have a tape measure here, but my wife is going to get one this afternoon on her shopping trip so I can start tracking the results...visually though its already obvious after just the first week.  I took pictures last weekend and also weighed myself, so I do have some form of baseline to track things.

Thanks again for everyone's input!
 
As an update, I weighed myself today and I'm 197 pounds so I've put on around 5 pounds and I'm ten days into this bulk with no noticeable fat gain.
This is my first proper bulk watching my diet closely so I can't compare it to a 3 * week one but this feels good. Every few days I get a 'this shirt feels tighter' or similar experience. Also because the training is every other day its keeping me on my toes getting enough calories in. I never go below 3500 and its usually around 4000.
J
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