An alternate HST routine formulation (theoretical)

O

OgreRaging

New Member
Hello everyone,
I'm looking for some feedback on what I think might be an alternate formulation to standard HST routines. I have not tried this myself, but a close friend of mine has seen significant, long-term gains from it, and I'm curious as to how the HST community thinks it fits in with HST principles, etc. Also, I intend no blaspheme against standard HST routines, as I've seen gains from them. Here is the idea:

First, rep counts change intra-week (this formulation doesn't use mesocycles, though it does use the 8 week macrocycle setup with strategic deconditioning between 8 week periods).

Therefore, if an individual were to work out Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday, Sunday would be a 15 rep day, Tuesday a 10 rep day, and Thursday a 5 rep day.

On any given day, the exercises change. To illustrate, lets say that for 5 or so body part groups (Chest, Back, Shoulders, Abs, Legs, as examples), there are 5 possible exercises each. On a particular day, the individual chooses 2 exercises from each group, for a total of 10 different exercises (set counts at 2, reps dependent upon the day). In practice, this might look like:

Sunday (15 rep day):
C1, C3
B1, B3
S1, S3
A1, A3
L1, L3

Tuesday (10 rep day):
C2, C5
B2, B5
S2, S5
A2, A5
L2, L5

And a similar setup for Thursday. To give a little detail, B1 stands for the first exercise out of the five within the Back group, and so on. You could change the particular exercise selections within each day (ie a given day doesnt have to be all exercises 1 and 3, 2 and 5, etc.). Over the course of about a month, an individual would hit all the exercise combinations, most likely.

Now for weight selection.

Instead of standard HST, where you're looking to hit your max out weight for that rep count at the end of a 2 week mesocycle, every day you're working at your max for that given exercise/rep count combination.

When my friend was describing this to me, this was the point at which I became concerned. How did that mesh with the HST (and science) backed findings that you can only work at your max weight for so long before conditioning sets in and you plateau forever. My friend gave this counterpoint:

A given muscle (lets say the pectoral group) has some voluntary weight/strength threshold, that can't be crossed on any old day without a ton of adrenaline coursing through your veins. An exercise, like the bench press, however, is only activating a certain portion of the pectoral muscle's fibers, etc. By consistently alternating the exercises used to activate the pectoral muscle (and stimulate a higher percentage of the muscle fibers), though you are at "max" weight for that exercise, you dont necessarily hit the "max" for the pectorals as a whole.

My friend has also seen consistent gains that don't seem to plateau (or at least have not for a long time), and he has been lifting for many years. My concern, however, would be that of overtraining. Perhaps my friend has extraordinary genetic potential for strength gains (hes a decent size, but by no means a behemoth); and he just hasnt hit his overtraining/conditioning point yet? Or do you think he is on to something?

Curious to hear any and all feedback; HST is amazing, and any opportunity to further increase its results would be awesome.

Best,
R
 
Sounds like an altered version of DC. Have you looked into DC at all? It sounds like he read DC and then claimed it as his own. It doesn't sound like he is using rest-paused sets, just the rest of DC.

Anyway, even doing his stripped down version of DC, you would basically be following HST principles still... however, a few points of contention:

A given muscle (lets say the pectoral group) has some voluntary weight/strength threshold, that can't be crossed on any old day without a ton of adrenaline coursing through your veins. An exercise, like the bench press, however, is only activating a certain portion of the pectoral muscle's fibers, etc. By consistently alternating the exercises used to activate the pectoral muscle (and stimulate a higher percentage of the muscle fibers), though you are at "max" weight for that exercise, you dont necessarily hit the "max" for the pectorals as a whole.
Click to expand...

Incorrect. Do you really think you can lift a maximal load with your pecs and not activate the entire muscle? You cannot. A maximal load will activate all the fibers, and if it does not then it is not a maximal load.

Now why is he not plateauing forever? Well he is actually alternating exercises so that he can continue progressing through them all even though he is staying near max at all times. Rest assured, he is definitely not hitting his max every workout though. You usually don't when doing DC. You use a weight greater than last time you did that lift and try to get so many reps with it through rest-paused sets, then if you get them all, you increase it next time. If you don't, then you repeat that weight. That means that there will be times that you will be using a load that it turns out is not your maximal load.
Further, most DC trainees will go through "blast" and "cruise" cycles, which basically means that during a cruise, you deload, whereas during the blast you keep trying to best each previous workout until you stall out. Even if you can go much longer before stalling out, your friend eventually will stall out. That's just how it goes. Then he will probably do some kind of a deload and then continue. The thing that is different in standard HST setups is that you plan your deconditioning periods (SD or in some cases a deload) instead of waiting until you plateau to do them.


Bottom line: Will his program work? Yes, it will. Do I personally think it is optimal? Probably not. I think that alternating between 5 exercises per bodypart is too many. I would alternate between 3 different excerises at most per bodypart.
 
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Totentanz,
Thank you for the thorough response! I have not heard of DC (what does it stand for, by the way?) before, so I'll have to check it out either on a comparison thread somewhere in our forums, or elsewhere online. One follow on question: I've found that I can handle standard HST routines while on a cut (at least maintaining my top range max weights and not shooting for outright gains), but DC sounds a bit too intense for anything other than eating at bulk caloric levels. What do you think?

Thanks,
-R
 
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I'm not as well equipped to argue whether or not this sounds like a great idea as some of the other guys here - but I can tell you that I wouldn't want to do this program. I don't have 5 movements for every body part that I think are equally as effective. For calves, how many choices are there? Are there any better options that the calf raise? For lats, I like rows, chins and pullups and do them often - I don't think I'd have another 2 in the arsenal that could or should replace those - and so on...

Plus, working at max every workout (if that is what is really happening) does not appeal to me. After I hit max at the end of two weeks, I feel very greatful for an additional rest day and sometimes I end up taking more rest days as I approach the end of the cycle. And I appreciate zig-zagging as well - which serves as additional recovery. All the built in recovery aspects of HST are part of the genius, imo - it makes it possible for someone to just keep going and going and going.

I really like that HST is almost infinitely customizable and I have dreamed up variations on the vanilla method (many of which I hope to try) - but this one doesn't 'tickle my fancy' so to speak. I have considered and even sort of planned out (when I was bored) a conjugate HST cycle where the exercises change at regular intervals, but it was only 3 variations for most movements and the cycle was otherwise setup like a typical HST routine (except it was 9 weeks long).

Good on your buddy, though for finding something that works great for him! We are all an experiment of 1, after all.
 
OgreRaging said:
Totentanz,
Thank you for the thorough response! I have not heard of DC (what does it stand for, by the way?) before, so I'll have to check it out either on a comparison thread somewhere in our forums, or elsewhere online. One follow on question: I've found that I can handle standard HST routines while on a cut (at least maintaining my top range max weights and not shooting for outright gains), but DC sounds a bit too intense for anything other than eating at bulk caloric levels. What do you think?

Thanks,
-R
Click to expand...

Correct - DC requires high levels of calories, high levels of protein and it would also be helpful to have a good dose of anabolics at the same time. The problem I had with DC is that it eventually caused an overuse injury for me. But it did give me very good results. Which isn't a surprise since it follows all the important parts of the HST philosophy.
 
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