Dropping weight moving into 5's? Question

C

charr

Member
Hello.

I'm new to HST and I'm on my first cycle. I'm coming to the end of the 10's but haven't seen any gains yet.

Question is as I move in to 5's I will have to drop the weight from my max 10.

For example.

My max 10 bench press is 220 pound and my max 5 is 240 pound. Once i have completed my my max 10 I will have to drop the weight back down to 215 in order to complete the 5's

So

Fri: max 10 220 pound.

Mon: 215 * 5
Wed: 220 * 5
Fri: 225 * 5

Mon: 230 * 5
Wed: 235 * 5
Fri: max 240 * 5

Is it ok to do this?

Thanks
 
I think he's concerned about zigzagging or stair-stepping the weight from 220x10 to 215x5 going from 10s to 5s. OP, that is not a problem with the weights, but in order to make gains you must be eating at a surplus. If the scale isn't moving higher, then as the guys said, you aren't eating enough.
 
If your overly concerned at dropping too low on a zig-zag plan then repeating the same weight for an extra session shouldn't hurt too much. I often have to with my light weights else I really don't get any gains.
 
In a six week cycle, you can gain up to 12 pounds. Some will be fat of course at that speed, but if you eat enough protein and calories, and have accurate rep maxes figured, and ramp the loads up over the cycle, after a proper Sd, you can gain a couple pounds of muscle in that time. After 6 months of training, you can build an appreciable, visible amount of muscle mass, if calories are high enough, and training is good.
In just a couple of weeks, you are not going to "SEE" gains visibly, unless you are eating a truckload of food and taking a bunch of anabolic drugs on top of it.
 
Thanks people. So how does one eat to gain muscle. Every time I have ate and trained I just seem to get fat. I followed stronglifts for a while along with other strength programs and drank lots of milk etc. I went from 13.11 stone to 15.10 stone. However it all seemed to be fat and even though i'm stronger than I've ever been I seemed to have gained little muscle. I've spent alot of time shedding the weight now so I'm wary about eating to gain weight.

Another question. What happens if I don't hit maxes? My last work out I really struggled to hit all reps on some exercises and I'm concerned that on my last session of 10's I may not hit them.

Thanks
 
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Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, eat enough calories to gain 1-2 pounds/ week, gain muscle, get fat, then cut back down to reveal the muscle later.
 
My body doesn't seem to react that way. I either seem to gain fat or lose fat with out gaining muscle or being lean. Strangely when I went up to 15.10 stone. It was on less than 3000 calories. Odd considering i'm 6ft and hardly ate any fat. I was eating oats skimmed milk chicken rice and low fat cottage cheese.
 
If you get the training right, then you'll gain muscle along with the fat. It sounds like you were training improperly if you didn't gain any muscle.
 
Sci said:
If you get the training right, then you'll gain muscle along with the fat. It sounds like you were training improperly if you didn't gain any muscle.
Click to expand...


I was strength training. I did around 4 months of stonglifts and then another 10 months of another strength program. I was basically picking a weight where I could do 6 reps and building to 8 reps followed by another back off set.
I generally improved on at least a few exercises every workout. These are the exercises I was using.

Squat
Deadlift
Bench press
Dips
Over head press
pendlay barbel row.
wide grip pull ups
close grip pullups
Chins
Tri press
Barbell curl
 
Well, I don't see how else you are going to gain muscle, without gaining weight???
 
I did gain weight. About 2 stone in a year. Only thing is hardly any of it was muscle. I've been trying to find something that will finally build muscle. So giving hst a go
 
Hey my friend, I hope that you start seeings gains. My advice would be to reevaluate things. First off, I hope you aren't like my friends who try to take fat burners while bulking because they are afraid they will get fat. Second, if you follow the principles of HST correctly, your body has to grow. The only way it would not grow is if you are dead or on the verge of death or if you are at such an an old age that your body is starting to shut down some of its metabolic processes. With that out of the way, HST forces your body to adapt. It boils down to stimulus > threshold and has a consistent way of keeping that premise true. Continue this HST cycle until it is done. I personally would take off 9 days after completing it. Then, get super serious and find all your new maxes again since this cycle seems to not forced your body to adapt. When getting your maxes, bust your ass as hard as possible because the time you spend getting your maxes is the most important. If you do it wrong, the whole entire cycle is wrong. Also I believe you understand that strength does not equal size. Strength is more neurological in nature. Your reps should NOT be explosive like strength training. I recommend at least 2-3 seconds on the concentric motion and 3-4 on the eccentric motion. Like everyone else said, make sure calories are high, protein is high and meal timing is taken into account. Taking whey isolate or something similar 20-30 mins before training followed by a large insulin spike DIRECTLY AFTER TRAINING (probably 80g of simple carbs is what I shoot for, grape juice and creatine mix) then about 20-30 after that, take like 50g of protein preferably a mix of fast and slow digesting proteins. And then the only thing left to do is grow. I know it may sound weird but a very helpful tip is to meditate and keep your mind positive. There is such a strong relation between the mind and body and your thoughts really do influence your physical body. So what I am saying is to BELIEVE you are getting that God-like body you want. I hope I didn't talk your ear off haha, and once again, goodluck buddy!
 
dax07 said:
Hey my friend, I hope that you start seeings gains. My advice would be to reevaluate things. First off, I hope you aren't like my friends who try to take fat burners while bulking because they are afraid they will get fat. Second, if you follow the principles of HST correctly, your body has to grow. The only way it would not grow is if you are dead or on the verge of death or if you are at such an an old age that your body is starting to shut down some of its metabolic processes. With that out of the way, HST forces your body to adapt. It boils down to stimulus > threshold and has a consistent way of keeping that premise true. Continue this HST cycle until it is done. I personally would take off 9 days after completing it. Then, get super serious and find all your new maxes again since this cycle seems to not forced your body to adapt. When getting your maxes, bust your ass as hard as possible because the time you spend getting your maxes is the most important. If you do it wrong, the whole entire cycle is wrong. Also I believe you understand that strength does not equal size. Strength is more neurological in nature. Your reps should NOT be explosive like strength training. I recommend at least 2-3 seconds on the concentric motion and 3-4 on the eccentric motion. Like everyone else said, make sure calories are high, protein is high and meal timing is taken into account. Taking whey isolate or something similar 20-30 mins before training followed by a large insulin spike DIRECTLY AFTER TRAINING (probably 80g of simple carbs is what I shoot for, grape juice and creatine mix) then about 20-30 after that, take like 50g of protein preferably a mix of fast and slow digesting proteins. And then the only thing left to do is grow. I know it may sound weird but a very helpful tip is to meditate and keep your mind positive. There is such a strong relation between the mind and body and your thoughts really do influence your physical body. So what I am saying is to BELIEVE you are getting that God-like body you want. I hope I didn't talk your ear off haha, and once again, goodluck buddy!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed response. I wasn't afraid of getting fat when bulking but unfortunately thats all I got. Actually I really bought into the Strength = size after reading stronglifts and some of Jason ferruggia's writings.

When you say 2 - 3 seconds positive and 3-4 on eccentric. Is that the same when finding your maxes? Obviously the maxes will be different depending on how you perform the rep.

So far i've been using 2 sets on the first week when the weights are light. I've been performing the reps explosively on the concentric to keep gaining strength and slow on the eccentric. Slow enough so that it's still a struggle to complete the set with the light weight. As I move in to the second week I dropped the sets down to 1 per exercise as Bryan suggests and the sets are getting quicker to the point where I will be going all out on my max set of 10.
 
charr said:
So how does one eat to gain muscle. Every time I have ate and trained I just seem to get fat. I followed stronglifts for a while along with other strength programs and drank lots of milk etc. I went from 13.11 stone to 15.10 stone. However it all seemed to be fat and even though i'm stronger than I've ever been I seemed to have gained little muscle. I've spent alot of time shedding the weight now so I'm wary about eating to gain weight.
Click to expand...

Here is what happened on the training side: you trained with stronglifts and strength programs: these are good programs for overall strength, and they will put muscle on you generally in a caloric surplus. The truth is, any non-retarded training program will have some hypertrophic effects, as long as there is adequate protein and calories. The only problem with stronglifts, is that you are training only a few base moves, which is fine, and even recommended in the HST "simplify & win" thread, but Bryan cautions to alternate exercises in such a simplified program, so as to develop more of the body, if you are training for bodybuilding.

HST generally recommends somewhere in the area of 6-12 exercises for the whole body. Most guys who have HST training logs here seem to develop fine with around 6-10 exercises. So there is no need to do a million exercises, on the one extreme, but if you want to build overall muscle mass, you will need more than three exercises, at least once you get beyond a beginner. I think strength programs are great for novice bodybuilders, but after that stage, more movements are generally needed, to move into intermediate and onto advanced levels.

Here is what happened on the diet side... you may have gained too much weight, too fast. We recommend counting calories and aiming for a steady weight gain over time...something like 1-3 pounds/week. Not too much, not too little. Now, even then, when you "BULK", you are going to gain muscle and fat, but if you go too fast, you may just look in the mirror and see "FAT". Now, it sounds like you cut back down, and are afraid to get fat again, but you SURELY MUST have gained SOME muscle since you started??? I find it very hard to believe that you made significant Strength increases, over a period of time that you were gaining weight, but you did not make ANY gains in muscle size? Come on!
charr said:
Another question. What happens if I don't hit maxes? My last work out I really struggled to hit all reps on some exercises and I'm concerned that on my last session of 10's I may not hit them.
Click to expand...

You can hit them. If you don't hit them, don;t worry about it, just keep on progressing loads with the program. You can spend some time once you get to the 5s, and just go for strength increases fora few weeks, before you SD. Don;t worry about your strength, you will get plenty of heavy lifting once you get too the 5s, and feel free to extend the 5s for as long as you can, until you stall out.
 
Sci said:
Here is what happened on the training side: you trained with stronglifts and strength programs: these are good programs for overall strength, and they will put muscle on you generally in a caloric surplus. The truth is, any non-retarded training program will have some hypertrophic effects, as long as there is adequate protein and calories. The only problem with stronglifts, is that you are training only a few base moves, which is fine, and even recommended in the HST "simplify & win" thread, but Bryan cautions to alternate exercises in such a simplified program, so as to develop more of the body, if you are training for bodybuilding.

HST generally recommends somewhere in the area of 6-12 exercises for the whole body. Most guys who have HST training logs here seem to develop fine with around 6-10 exercises. So there is no need to do a million exercises, on the one extreme, but if you want to build overall muscle mass, you will need more than three exercises, at least once you get beyond a beginner. I think strength programs are great for novice bodybuilders, but after that stage, more movements are generally needed, to move into intermediate and onto advanced levels.

Here is what happened on the diet side... you may have gained too much weight, too fast. We recommend counting calories and aiming for a steady weight gain over time...something like 1-3 pounds/week. Not too much, not too little. Now, even then, when you "BULK", you are going to gain muscle and fat, but if you go too fast, you may just look in the mirror and see "FAT". Now, it sounds like you cut back down, and are afraid to get fat again, but you SURELY MUST have gained SOME muscle since you started??? I find it very hard to believe that you made significant Strength increases, over a period of time that you were gaining weight, but you did not make ANY gains in muscle size? Come on!


You can hit them. If you don't hit them, don;t worry about it, just keep on progressing loads with the program. You can spend some time once you get to the 5s, and just go for strength increases fora few weeks, before you SD. Don;t worry about your strength, you will get plenty of heavy lifting once you get too the 5s, and feel free to extend the 5s for as long as you can, until you stall out.
Click to expand...

Thanks Sci. I don't seem to have gained much muscle. My arms don't seem to have changed size at all. I was doing stronglifts for 4 months but the other 10 months or so I have been using many more exercises including regular chins and barbell curls.

Anyway I'm committed to HST. Will go for a few cycles and see what happens. Is it also your opinion that you need to perform the reps slow? 2-3 seconds concentric and 3-4 on the eccentric?
 
I don't count, I just do controlled Reps and try to maintain good form. I let the load dictate the rep speed.
 
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