[b said:
Quote[/b] (wwewrestlingguy @ Oct. 31 2005,10:40)]I'm a bit confused... I bought the 'setting up an hst cycle' by Charles Ridgely and I believe he states that it's best to keep reps constant throughout the cycle, but I see that most people just keep their SETS constant instead. Which is better. Is it true that if you keep sets constant, the reps will decline too much? I'm confused... my routine is gonna be something similar to one that I saw onemorerep post up once.
AM:
Squats
Dips
Bent-Over Rows
Military Press
PM:
Squats
Incline Press
One-Arm DB Rows
Upright Rows
This will be performed 3 times per week... I just don't know what kind of volume I should have. Any advice??
The easiest way to understand the whole reps versus sets thing is to think in terms of "total reps per bout of exercise." For instance, if you do 3 sets of 5 reps of bench press, then the total reps per bout of bench press is 15 reps. Now, if you were to perform 3 sets of 5 reps of dips and then perform 3 sets of 5 reps of bench, then your chest would be worked with a total of 30 reps during that workout. It's just the number of reps in each set multipled by the number of sets.
Related to HST, the ebook is pointing out that if you keep the number of sets the same throughout the cycle, then since the number of reps drops from the 15s, to the 10s, to the 5s, the total amount of poundage lifted (i.e., the work) drops, too. This drop occurs even though the loads lifted go up as the cycle progresses.
Does all this mean that your cycle will be useless? No. Does this mean that you won't gain if you don't use 3 sets of 5 reps for each exercise in the 5s? Not at all. Many on this board have reported good gains by using 1 or 2 sets throughout the HST cycle. But a plummeting workload may be less than optimal. That's all the ebook is saying--keeping the total volume constant or increasing is just one way to tweak your HST cycle. There are other ways, too, such as those discussed in Vicious' Pimping HST ebook, as mentioned above by Fausto.
Now then, the easiest way to set up the volume of your cycle is to determine how much volume you want to be performing with your 5RM weights at the end of the 5s. Once you figure out how many total reps of each exercise you'll be performing in the 5s, you can adjust the volume of your 10s and 15s accordingly. For example, suppose you decide to perform 4 sets of 5 reps for each exercise throughout the 5s. Then, you can use 2 sets during the 10s and 1 set during the 15s.
Of course, if you are new to HST, you probably don't know how much volume to use during the 5s. And in that case, I wholeheartedly recommend that you stick with the level of volume prescribed in Bryan's Official HST Method for at least your first cycle.
Hope that helps you out, wwewrestlingguy.
Cheers.
