Hrm, not sure how to even phrase this question?

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Nas Man

New Member
Bear with me everyone bc I think I might have a hard time phrasing this question.

I just finished my first two weeks of 15s and everything went great. Even though I didn't think I would I feel bigger and stronger already. Who woulda thought you could get bigger off of a 15 rep scheme!?

The question is: When I start my tens is the weight supposed to be substantially lower then the weight I ended my 15s at?

For example, I took a look today, it seems like the weight for the start of tens, is about 10lbs lighter or so as the weight at the end of my 15s.

Thanks fellow HST'ers
Nas Man
 
If I'm understanding it right,
I always thought that how you're describing it is how it's supposed to be.
Even though your weight for the start of 10's is lower than the end of 15's your muscles will have to continue their adaptation as you progresivelly increase the load.
 
everything im going to say is based on the fact that this sounds like your 1st HST cycle...ever.

if thats the case, i would recommend staying with the wgts you planned to use to start each rep range (15,10,5). i think it would be more beneficial to add more wgt in the 10's as you move toward your max then to add it in the begining and perhaps have misjudged your strength gains. you will learn so much and gain a good amount of strength on just 1 cycle that #2 will look quite a bit differant. just dont be in too much of a hurry to try and turn 1 into 2 as you go along, you never know how its all going to work out until its done.

if this isnt your 1st cycle then you probably have a good idea of what you can handle so adjusting up a little isnt a big deal.

also 10lbs isnt "substantially" lower unless your talking about dumbell curls.

good luck
 
Its normal, its called zig-zag. Happens in a lot of HST programs, some try to get rid of it, others don't. I think most of us just leave it is.
 
Nas Man: You will find that your muscles will still grow using the same weight for several sessions (perhaps for up to 2 weeks of training) so dropping down for a session or two after a RM session is not going to bring things to a grinding halt, plus it allows your CNS a bit more time for recovery before you start pushing harder again towards the next RM. It works like a charm.

I got yet another PB tonight in my squats hitting 245lb for 15 reps (I think 20 reps was a possibility but I had a second set to do so I racked it). Almost a year ago my 15RM was 165lb and I've just pushed it up a bit each cycle. At that time my 5RM was 235lbs so my 15RM is now higher than that.

Repeat several times before bed: "I don't have to kill myself every workout to grow like a weed!"
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Not to hijack the thread, but, congrats on the PB! Great progress LOL. Sounds like you haven't maxed yet though, keep us informed of your PB's.

I hit another PB today with Pendlay rows, 265 for 3x5 and 265x3.
 
after you have done your 15rm droping down as lol said will allow your CNS to recover,and as omega said you can get rid of it if you like.
if you do your 15rm next workout (10s) you are only doing 10 reps so that will also give your CNS some time to recover
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Eventually you may get to doing sort of a linear progression like I do, where I just keep adding weight regardless of switching mesocycles. This leads to failure on some things when it progresses past the strength curve and I have to repeat a weight until I can get it without failure, before moving on.

I couldn't have done this my first couple cycles. HST is easier than failure training in some ways, harder in others. (whole body!)

But as suggested, do vanilla HST at first to establish your baseline and get familiar with it and your responses to it. Any tweaking too far from the tree and you lose your nuts.
 
lol, quadancer.. Any tweaking too far from the tree and you lose your nuts.

I am staying with the vanilla HST program this time around. I am learning alot about HST and ways to make it better for myself. For example I started with alot of dumbbell exercises and I quickly realized I would be better off with a barbell. With a barbell I can increment smaller weights upwards to my max, but with db's I have to go up 5lbs in each db at a time. The only drawback to barbells is that one arm can be doing more work then the other and lead to bad symmetry. Next HST cycle I will be changing some exercises bc of that. Right now I feel I am working too far away from my max weight (meaning my HST sub-maximal weight) at the beginning of my mini cycles. I also don't think I have the amount of calories I need to gain down yet. I have a feeling I am going to need considerably more then 4300 cals a day. Just for shits and grins how many cals a day do the big mo fo's like Ronni Coleman and such have to eat? I remember reading once that the 'Rock' eats somethink like 3800 cals a day. Isn't that crap! I have to eat more then 600 cals over what a 6'2" 220 lb wrestler eats to gain size. BAH!
 
Having done it both ways, zig-zagging and adjusting so that I did not, for me it seems to work best if I make sure the weight lifted increases regardless of rep range changes. This often means that I use the same weight for 2 or 3 workouts on some exercises, but that does not seem to matter much.
 
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