Max load increase: too slow?

[_.Andrew._]

Hi!

I'm an Italian bber, and a HST fan.

I have a simple question for you, HST crew: I was debating with a friend of mine, an old-school bber (McRobert, HIT and stuff), and he pointed out that the HST routine has a big problem: the maximum-load increase is too slow.(I hope this is the right translation of the Italian term)

In other words, the HST requires 4 weeks of increasing load, based on your 15, 10 and 5 RM, right?

Weel, this means that you will increase your 1RM only....every 4 weeks! 2 months! (not to mention the DS time)

Isn't it too slow?

Hope this makes sense.

 

[colby2152]

You have progressions to your max load for each rep scheme that take two weeks. Overall, if you were to progress to your 1RM in negs, it would ideally take 8 weeks. I don't see how this is bad at all that it takes this long. The longer time it take to progress, the more muscle you should gain. As long as you keep on increasing the load, then you should have hypertrophy. I'm sure an expert will come in and answer your question.

-Colby

 

[_.Andrew._]

Quote[/b] (colby2152 @ Dec. 05 2005,3:02)]You have progressions to your max load for each rep scheme that take two weeks. Overall, if you were to progress to your 1RM in negs, it would ideally take 8 weeks. I don't see how this is bad at all that it takes this long. The longer time it take to progress, the more muscle you should gain. As long as you keep on increasing the load, then you should have hypertrophy. I'm sure an expert will come in and answer your question.
-Colby

Thank you for your reply, colby.

The main problem is that you increase the load you lift, but you don't increase your maximum load.

It's set for the entire 4 weeks period.

 

[Lol]

Andrew, I am very new to HST (I'm on my first cycle) so I don't have anywhere near the experience of some of the others here.

However, I have already found that what had been my 15 RMs and 10 RMs prior to SD, for all my exercises, were definitely not my RMs by the time I reached the end of the 15s and the end of the 10s. I don't yet know how much more I could have lifted as I won't be retesting my RMs until I have finished the 5s and negs.

All I can say is that I am getting steadily stronger (even though that is not my primary motive) as I go through my first cycle. This is in line with what HST principles explain should happen if you SD properly prior to starting, pick a good solid base of compound exercises, keep your training frequency high enough, keep your total volume for each week at a sensible level for your body and eat in line with HSN recommendations (ie. a good balance of protein, carbs and fats and enough total calories daily).

The 15, 10 and 5 rep ranges allow for a decent amount of weight progression over the full 8 week period (even if there is a bit of zigzagging) which is enough for me to add at least 5lbs (often 10lbs) to all my compound exercises each workout. It would seem that I have been able to stay ahead of my body's resistance to the stimulus using these increments, as I have made good gains, even before the heavy 5s and negs.

Don't forget that HST is not about increasing your 1 RM! It will happen but it is not the primary goal. If you just want to focus on strength gains you might want to do a lot more training to failure or other techniques that focus on "activating" motor units. Do read the stuff that Bryan has written as it explains all this in much more depth.

I'm after hypertrophy and HST is working just great!

 

[imported_domineaux]

I remember starting on HST and I had the same thoughts. I was into my first cycle in the 5s when everything began to fall in place. In the 5s you get to really push the envelope. Then when you start your next cycle you'll have a solid handle on the HST.

Read all the articles on this site, HST FAQ and articles from users on these forums. They'll help a lot, but beware many of them you'll have to read several times to understand them. LOL

 

[liegelord]

You'll definitely increase your 1RM if you do the neg's right.

 

[Conciliator]

Two points, both of which were mentioned by Lol:
1) HST is not about increasing your 1RM. It's about hypertrophy. Since size is a component of strength, however, you should experience strength gains as you grow.
2) Just because you're not lifting your 1RM does not mean your 1RM is not going up. In other words, just because you're not lifting your maximum load does not mean that your maximum load capacity is not increasing. You'll find that as you approach the end of the 5's that you can probably do more than 5 reps with your old 5RM. (On my first HST cycle I was doing 8 reps with my old 5RM).  Similarly, you'll probably also find that your new 5RM is heavier. Both of these improvements suggest that your 1RM has gone up as well.  The difference is that you're not training with singles and the exact improvement in your 1RM is unknown. But do a 1RM test before and after a cycle of HST and see the improvement, even without doing any 1RM training!

 

[_.Andrew._]

Quote[/b] (liegelord @ Dec. 05 2005,11:26)]You'll definitely increase your 1RM if you do the neg's right.

But, what about if you train yourself alone at home?

Will the drop sets help in this way?

 

[Fausto]

Andrew

Bienvenuto

Quote[/b] ]But, what about if you train yourself alone at home?

Yep, I do! Use a partner when he is available or not sick, and in fact I work my program to reach 1 RM and even surpass it!

But only for the negative's! So if you can;t do them, just work an extra week with your 5 rep maxes and add weight slowly every other day if you can!

Believe me it works, the only thing you have to do is to eat BIG!

Ciao

 

[_.Andrew._]

Quote[/b] (Fausto @ Dec. 06 2005,1:24)]Andrew
Bienvenuto

Quote[/b] ]But, what about if you train yourself alone at home?

Yep, I do! Use a partner when he is available or not sick, and in fact I work my program to reach 1 RM and even surpass it!
But only for the negative's! So if you can;t do them, just work an extra week with your 5 rep maxes and add weight slowly every other day if you can!
Believe me it works, the only thing you have to do is to eat BIG!
Ciao

Ciao Fausto!

Another week with 5 RM pattern?

What about the drop sets?

 

[Fausto]

Quote[/b] ]Another week with 5 RM pattern?

What about the drop sets?

Well, if you cannot do negatives that is your best 2nd choice, you can perhaps get down to about a 3RM or so alone.

Dropsets, of course throw them in, that is another way of getting teh job done.

HST is not restrictive, signore

You do what suits you best as long as follow the principles.

I suggest you read boith teh FAQ and the pimp my HST
e-books as it sounds to me like you're no novice to the BB game, in theer you will find a lot of tweaking techniques, specially the pimp.....e-book, try it!

Ciao, buona siera!

 

[_.Andrew._]

Quote[/b] (Fausto @ Dec. 06 2005,3:40)]

Quote[/b] ]Another week with 5 RM pattern?
What about the drop sets?

Well, if you cannot do negatives that is your best 2nd choice, you can perhaps get down to about a 3RM or so alone.
Dropsets, of course throw them in, that is another way of getting teh job done.
HST is not restrictive, signore

You do what suits you best as long as follow the principles.
I suggest you read boith teh FAQ and the pimp my HST
e-books as it sounds to me like you're no novice to the BB game, in theer you will find a lot of tweaking techniques, specially the pimp.....e-book, try it!
Ciao, buona siera!

Ok, I'm going to check them out.

Thanks for your replies.

 

[liegelord]

Quote[/b] (_.Andrew._ @ Dec. 06 2005,12:55)]

Quote[/b] (liegelord @ Dec. 05 2005,11:26)]You'll definitely increase your 1RM if you do the neg's right.

But, what about if you train yourself alone at home?
Will the drop sets help in this way?

Negatives with chins and dips are easy.

I train alone so the only other exercise I can do neg's with are standing military presses. You just do power presses to a lock out and then do your negative rep.

 

[9to5lifter]

Just wanted to remind that drops sets are used to bring up metabolic work and are not the primary stimulus for growth, so that nobody gets the wrong impression here. They are used IN ADDITION to the heavy loads, when the number of reps is low.

 

[Fausto]

Dimitris has an important point, drops sets do not in any way substitute the load as a stimulus to provide growth!

As I said before they are an Add-on.

 

[jvroig]

Hey

Is the maximum load increase too slow? Depends on where you compare it.

Compare it to westside or some other strength-training routine, then yeah, you can say it is too slow. If you simply want to increase your strength (1RM), then HST may not be your best option.

But if you are after hypertrophy, is this a problem, as your friend pointed out?

Not at all. Hypertrophy does not require using your maximum load all the time, or increasing it all the time before you experience growth. What does hypertrophy require?

In broad strokes and simplified, you can say hypertrophy starts when a significant strain is registered in the strain-sensing pathways of the muscles. How significant this needs to be depends on your level of conditioning at that time (possibly a combination of neural efficiency for fiber recruitment and amount of connective tissue present; this also means it DOESN'T have to be your super-heavy max load at all). After such a bout, satellite cells are differentiated, but not necessarily proliferated (you need both differentiation and proliferation to get growth), satellite cell proliferation requires a more chronic application of the stimulus (hence we train more frequently than just once a week, or only when we have the time). Mechanical stress (that is transmitted to the sarcolemma and sarcomeres) triggers focal adhesion kinases which start signaling events that lead to an increase in protein synthesis. You would already be growing as those events keep happening, but if oxidative/hypoxic stress is also present, you can grow faster. Bottom line, all these result in hypertrophy. Nowhere in the requirements of hypertrophy does it state "must lift max load most often or increase max load rapidly to initiate growth".

Why not max loads all the time? Because we SD, and our conditioning lowers, allowing lower weights to be effective again. So we start with a submaximal weight, we use those weights to get all the hypetrophy we can from them then move on... so we only end up using our max weights at the end of the cycle, not because max weights are magical but because that's the amount of load we need by that time to realistically be able to create a significant strain without frying your CNS (or simply overfatiguing yourself and draining you completely) due to tremendous numbers of reps. As that max load becomes ineffective, we simply SD again (of course, negatives if you wish, but you still have to SD eventually) to lower the conditioning and make lower weights effective again. Of course, as we grow bigger, we get stronger, and your 1RM will keep on increasing, even though you spend a lot of your time lifting lower weights.

If you take those things in mind, you'll realize working with your max weights isn't a necessity, or rapidly increasing your 1RM for that matter, in order to experience rapid hypertrophy. If your friend understands that and still thinks HST has a problem, perhaps he is after strength instead of size.