FEDORS Adventure for SIZE

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Fedor

New Member
I have just finished my second day but am a little concerned because I am not getting a great workout leading up to my 15 rep max. This might be because I am not that strong so the weights I use are not a challenge.
I hope my fifth and sixth workouts are a lot better. This post will be a place holder for the first day. My next post will be for second day.
 
Hi Fedor

I struggled getting to grips with the 15s on my first cycle, how many sets of 15s are you doing? I started off doing one set of 15's but then upped it to two sets.

I also arranged the order of my exercises to fatigue the muscle group's quicker and I also took smaller rest periods between sets, so for example I will start my session as follows;

Dips x 15
flat bench x 15
incline bench x 15
decline dumbell presses x 15

If I am wiped out and don't think I could do a second set of the above I will just do another set of dips or I will do two sets of as many of the above exercises as I can, this usually finishes me off. When I move to 10's and 5's I will drop the number of different exercises as fatiugue kicks in, I will usually drop the exercise that I feel is not causing me any discomfort.

I try to order my exercises based on the muscles I want to grow the most first. I am happy with my legs now but not my chest, so I start with chest exercises, then move onto my arms and finally my legs as that is the preference I have in this cycle for growth. My leg workout would look's like this and I will drop eh number of different exercises if I don't have the energy but I will always squat.

split squats' left leg x 15
Lunges left leg x 15
front squat x 15
split squat right leg x 15
Lunges right leg x 15
front squat x 15

I will only take 30 second rest between exercises on 15s, I am trying to get myself as close to failure as I can by my 15th rep. If I cannot do 15 reps for any exercise I will cluster to 20 reps for that exercise so
12 x front squats + 4 + 4 to get me to 20 for example.

I increase the weight only on the front squat for every session, the other exercises become my warm up.


To build strength quickly you could look to concentrate more effort on bodyweight exercises such as Dips, chins, rear pullups and push up's. You don't have much fat on you so you should get to 15 reps pretty qucikly. You will do even better if you can get a weight belt and start adding weight to these same exercises. I find body weight exercises hard and they definately helped me to build strength quickly.

Your diet will also dictate how quickly you develop, if you are nto getting enough calories and protein you will have a lack of energy will not be abel to keep increasign weight at each session and will not grow. You should feel your muscles after each workout as an example I have just started my second cycle of HST and front squats are a new exercise for me, I now have the DOMs from my Wednesday session and the rest of my body is feeling teh effects of tonights session and this is only my second workout for this cycle. If your body is not telling you it hs done a session you need to push yourself more and put more effort into the workout. I would also expect you to suffer a little from teh DOMs if you are just startign out with these exercises. I could barely walk after I first started squatting and my hamstrings really suffered when i started SLDLs.


Dont forget we are all different and what might work for me may not work for you. Play around a little with the volume and weight you are usign and ty to make it fun or you won't want to do it. Use this first HST cycle to learn what works for you and which is the best order for you to do the exercises to get the most out of them.

Good luck and keep posting.
 
Hi,

I found the 15's to not be taxing to begin with. I slowed down the reps and that made it a lot harder. On my 2nd cycle I intend to make things harder again by incorporating a tempo scheme which is what I am using now on my 10's.

Take the bench press as an example. I would unrack the bar and lower it to my chest in 4 seconds (thereabouts) then pause for a second, then press it at a normal pace. Perhaps on the bench you could even forego 'locking out' your elbows thereby keeping more tension on the arms and chest. That would definitely make it a LOT harder.
 
Fedor, in answer to your question (posted in my log)

Thank you. Do you think changing this up will effect my results. Does what you told me defeat the purpose?
Click to expand...

Repeating loads will not adversely affect your progress. Think of load progression over an entire cycle. Usually, you will be able to make multiple increments each mesocycle without too much difficulty but for some exercises, often where dbs are involved, you'll have to repeat loads because it's just not possible to load the db with the load you would like. Even if you only had one increments pre mesocycle that would still give you around four increments over the whole cycle.

Eg.:

15s: 25, 30
10s 30, 35
5s: 35, 40
post-5s: 40, 45

You're going from 25lb dbs to 45lb dbs which is an 80% increase in load. If for squats you went from 200lb to 360lb over a cycle, with all the increments you fancy, you've still increasing the load by 80% over the whole cycle.

Most important thing for steady progress is to keep adding weight to the bar each cycle (or to do more work with the same load). With dbs, if you can't make the jump up to the next db, aim to do more work with the same db. That might be accomplished by adding another set or by adding an extra rep each set.
 
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