Motivation & Direction

[thegentleman1981]

Hi Forum,

Well this is my first post so I want to introduce myself in a short way:

I am 31 old, on the iron since 13 years. Breaks only because of having a flue or sth like that.
I trained myself up from 68kg at 186cm to 98.5kg-but also with 23%BF.
Best lift for bench was a 90kg 10rpm. Dumbbell shoulder Press (full ROM) of 35kg/side 6RPM.
Lat pulldown was in the 90x 6-8 rep range. and my arm measurement increased by 12cm in that time. From 28cm to 40.
Sqats and deads were always a off/on case. I stick to leg presses these days.


I own a MAster Degree in Psychology and have written about the DRIVE FOR MUSCULARITY for my master thesis did a study and graduated in statistics. So i also know a thing or two about study design.

Also I earn a good library on books: Bompa, Siff,Pavel, Stone, Mc.Robert, Christy and so on.

The last year I trained via a HLM template in the sense of Casey butt. like 3x5, 3x10,2x15.
I gained good.
But I jumped on a diet and messed it up (this was my stressfull time during the masters degree) and I lost strength and mass.
Currently I am at 86kg and 18%BF.

So my request here is: Currently-the first time in my training career I am quite unmotivated regarding training and i want to take a new approach.
I know HST but never tried it in my training ages.
So my question is if some more intermediate trainees have tried HST too.

For me HST is linear programming and I am not sure if it is suited for a person with more training years under his belt. Like me, they seem to respond better to HLM, Volume/Intensity approaches like the Texas method or shorter linear cycles like Wendlers 5/3/1.

I like regarding HST, that it is a system with proper directions.
Afer finishing a training cycle of HLM in my case, I was always unsure which step to take next (change volume,reps,just deload etc) and i messed it up.
This would be taken care on HST and also the theory is quite sound.

I need some more guidance know-being his own trainer is the most difficulty of it all.

I appreciate feed back!
TG

 

[grunt11]

First welcome to the forum and for all the background info which makes it much easier to address your questions.

My first suggestion is that at 18% BF you might want to consider doing a cut first. Though not absolutely necessary the lower your BF% generally the better your nutrient partitioning is going to be so you will put on more muscle and less fat for each kg you gain. A good rule of them is to cut down to around 10% and then bulk until up to around 15% then cutting again. This not only should keep your nutrient partitioning more optimal but also keep you from having to do long cuts risking more muscle loss.

IMO the science behind HST including the linear progression is quite solid at producing hypertrophy at any level. However, based on what I’ve read linear progression is not the best for building power though Totentanz seems to be doing quite fine with it.

Since you are a seasoned lifter I wouldn’t suggest the vanilla HST routine but rather adapt the principles to your more advanced needs. To start with I wouldn’t drop the weight down as low say starting out with the 10s rather than 15s or at least cut back to one week of 15s rather than two. You will probably also need more volume per workout so 3 x a week full body workouts might not be enough to stimulate muscle growth unless you could manage to AM/PM splits on those days. A more traditional upper/lower 2x/week split might suit you better. You could also consider using more advanced techniques like myo-reps and/or max-stim reps for certain lifts.

I’ll also throw out the mention of using the conjugate method. While very different from HST and more geared toward strength/power training it actually offer a huge variety of lifts and has you maxing one upper and one lower body lift every week which I’m finding is very motivational and give quick feedback to if I’m gaining power or losing it. I don’t even plan my workouts more than a week ahead of time since that allows me to make immediate changes to address a newly discovered weakness, slight injury, or even schedule disruptions which is actually my biggest problem now with linear progression as my job now has me traveling a lot often spending much of that time in the air with little ground time to fit in a workout.

 

[CDB]

To add to what gentleman wrote, you could also try a higher load approach as I've done in the past. Set your rep ranges as 8/5/3, and add progressively more lighter weight work after your worksets as you progress to keep volume up. What happens is you kind of end up doing two HST macro cycles, one concentrating on progression of a heavy load, the second to keep volume up. So when you hit the 3s you should also be doing some 12 to 15 rep work after your worksets.

I'm also a big fan of MadCow's 5X5 routines. For someone at your level the dual factor routine would be a good starting point.

 

[thegentleman1981]

Dear grunt11 and CDB,

Thank you very much for your both replies and thoughts.
The diet is also sth I think about-its also in the line what lyle mc donald suggests and in my eyes a healthy and solid idea.

I don´t know what you mean with POWER. In proper sense this would mean speed strength. I am not concerned with maximum strength at all. For mass its important to get stronger and achieve a higher workload over time-in general. Others also like to devide between tension and fatigue stimulus-like KElly Baggett.

The conjugate approach could be adapted to a BB like routine, but is generally meant for Powerlifters and aimed to increase the big three. I think for Bodybulding there are more straight forward templates.

Its all a matter of goals.


To lighten things up bout my training a bit:

My HLM workouts were done whole body 2x the week.One exercise per "muscle group" Or one exercise per main movement plane.One HLM rotation last about 10 days.
The parameters were:
3x3-5 reps,3min rest, 3x8-10 reps 2min rest, 2x15 1min rest.
The weight was chosen the way, that the last rep on the last set was near/one rep short of failure. I progressed via reps. When reaching the upper rep limit on all sets, I increased the load. One cylce lasts about 6 rotations (without deload,no ramp up) before stalling.

What didn´t worked for me, was:
-mixing up rep ranges in one wokout. My body seems to respond to one repetiton/loading range in one workout best.
-Repeating the same workout in a row: I did 3x5 2x the week and didn´t progressed at all. Also Lyles generic bulking programm didn´t worked in that sense.

So it seems, that after a heavy workout I need a light workout to spur protein synthesis and hold the frequency up, but not to overdrive myself with another hard stimuli. This is, were I am unsure if HST would work for my type, because the cycle is spread out really long. a heavy workout in hst is followed by another heavy and not light one like in HLM.

SO I know what could work and what not.

SO I also thought of integrating the principles of HST to my HLM routine.

In that sense I could include a 2 week strategic decondition.
Then I could take my maxes from the last cycle, (would you suggest my 15rpm, 10 rpm,5rpm OR my 2x15rpm,3x5rpm etc?) and thake about 6 (?) weeks to work from 75% to 100%, then shoot for new PRS till stalling. Decondition and ramp up again.

I essence its the same game like a 5x5 madcow stuff or something else. Ramp up,break PPs, ramp up again.

Other ideas are heartly welcome.