poliquin pontificates

[big_willy_williams]

Saw this on T-mag and had to post it. Poliquin wrote this.
If this guy is so successful why is what he's saying so contrary to what we re doing with HST.

The Shock Effect

Q: Can you really "shock" muscles into growing? The old school bodybuilders used to use that term a lot, but is it true?

A: Yes, I think it's still true. In fact, if something doesn't grow, you can train it three days in a row.

I had a national caliber bodybuilder who couldn't put legs on. At his height he should've weighed 240, not 210. I made him do legs nine times a week and four months later he weighed 242.

One of my old mentors used to say to me, "If you're not making progress, overtrain until you're depressed, then take five days off. Then you'll grow."

So let's say you're a guy who has no lats — you're as wide as a fucking pencil. Train your lats three days in a row. The reps might look like this:

Day #1: 6-8 reps

Day #2: 10-12 reps

Day #3: 20-25 reps

Then take a day off and train the rest of your body parts for the week. As for exercises, you'll change the lat exercise each of the three days.

Remember, hypertrophy is a biological adaptation to a biological stress. If something doesn't kill you, then the more you put stress on it the more it will adapt. If the .22 caliber doesn't work, use a .50 caliber.

It's backed up in the scientific literature that you can train a muscle up to nine times a week, as long as you give it some time after to rest. In other words, if you don't train to the point of depression, it doesn't really work.

Keep the rule of 20% in mind. Let's say you can bench press 300 pounds for sets of five. Train until you can only do 240 for sets of five. Controlled overtraining in other words. Take five days off and when you come back you'll bench 330.

Another way that works well for strength is to train with singles (10-12) five days in a row for the same lift. Take two days off, you get a personal best.

The problem is that most people don't have the balls to do this. They won't overtrain to that point and will panic when they drop just five pounds on their bench. They need a slave driver coach to make them do it. You have to reach that 20% drop. When you show up at the gym and start crying for no reason, you're there.

I used to do this to the alpine ski teams. These are some of the strongest athletes around because they use their legs every day when skiing, then I'd get them into the gym and say, "Okay, pillow biters, you have to squat this morning and deadlift this afternoon!" They'd get no time off. Then we'd take them to the beach for five days and they'd come back able to squat a house. It works.

 

[Ruthenian]

It looks to me like he is mixing some truth with some conjecture.
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">It's backed up in the scientific literature that you can train a muscle up to nine times a week, as long as you give it some time after to rest. In other words, if you don't train to the point of depression, it doesn't really work. </div>
For instance, basically the first part of this statement is to train frequently -- not many here would argue with that.  While most of us don't have the time, or wouldn't want to train 9x/wk, general HST principles encourage frequent training.  Thus, occasional efforts at training as much as 2x/day, 6 days a week.  The problem is with the second part of the statement.  I would guess that the improvements he is citing are a result of the frequent training, regardless of the other stuff.  Remember, nearly everything works for awhile.

Of course, there is a limit to how frequently you should work out.  A few people here have commented on Poliquin's &quot;One day arm cure&quot; routine that seems to take this same &quot;shock the muscle&quot; approach.  I can't locate the thread right now, but as I recall, Quad tried this and his arms were actually smaller (weaker?) a week later.

The other problem here is that he doesn't cite anything you can check on.  Further, he starts by talking about hypertrophy, but then his emphasis switches to strength.  For instance, the ski team story doesn't reference hypertrophy results, he talks about strength increases.  This switch in emphasis leaves you with nothing concrete to evaluate -- just stories and vague references to the &quot;scientific literature.&quot;

Actually, some of Poliquin's stuff is good, so I don't mean to diss him completely.  It is just there is very little here to work with other than a vote of confidence for frequent training -- and that is clearly a part of HST already.

 

[bluejacket]

im not even sure what to say about it.
im no scientist, sports med or exer. phys. guy so i cant &quot;prove&quot; or &quot;disprove&quot; any thing hes saying but it all seems very short term oriented as well as reckless.

ive heard of various programs that overtrain/shock the muscles for short term growth but thats just it....its all short term. sure you can put a 1/2 inch on your arms in 10 days (just like some program will promise) but the tendon/muscle/mental/body recovery from the effort will most likely cost you the whole 1/2 inch and maybe more.

by his own admission folks trying controlled overtraining without a &quot;slave driver&quot; coach will most likely fail.........so where does that leave everyone reading the article. prepared for failure and probably burn out and possibly injury.

im and old track and field runner/coach from years gone by and this reminds me way too much of a training style popularized back in the 50's. it consisted of track/speed work everyday, every week leading up to competition. no distance days, no recovery workouts, no time off for a break, nothing. just work, work, work until 3-4 days before a comp. then you rested. produced some amazing runners doing amazing times but a funny thing happened. each yr it was differant runners doing amazing things b/c the burn out rate was so high. monotenous, grinding training day in and out produced natl and world records but usually wrecked the body of the performer. many were out of running completely within a year or 2 of their &quot;amazing&quot; feats.

notice all of poliquins examples never have names. im fairly certain he can achieve what he claims, but at what cost and do these folks ever build on their &quot;short term&quot; gains.........who knows, its not important, whats important is the success of the trainer and his method. i wonder sometimes how many un-mentioned failures ther are for every success that is mentioned in these articles.

hes successful for a reason but this type of training approach (if you were interested) would require serious amounts of &quot;hands on&quot; coaching to be effective so to propose it as an option to folks who have no such coaching seems reckless to me.

 

[Totentanz]

<div>
(big_willy_williams @ Apr. 11 2007,11:46)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I had a national caliber bodybuilder who couldn't put legs on. At his height he should've weighed 240, not 210. I made him do legs nine times a week and four months later he weighed 242.</div>
Wow, so training legs nine times a week allows you to violate the laws of physics and put on weight without eating more?

If you only weigh 210 and you want to weigh 240, you have to eat more. By the way, 32 lb weight gain in four months? Not a big deal for a newbie, but a national caliber bber? Yeah, that's obviously not natural, unless a good deal of that was fat. People at that level cannot put on muscle that fast, I don't care what obscure made up anecdotes or examples you come up with.

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">
It's backed up in the scientific literature that you can train a muscle up to nine times a week, as long as you give it some time after to rest. In other words, if you don't train to the point of depression, it doesn't really work.
</div>

I don't even understand what he is saying in the second sentence. But the first one? Uh... no. Literature does NOT say &quot;you can train up to nine times a week, as long as you give the muscles time to rest.&quot;
Read around on this site, or on Dan's site. I've never seen a study that concluded what he says.


Remember, most of the old farts like this guy know a lot of the right stuff, but they are also stuck in their rut of old ideas that are completely retarded. So, you have to learn what you can from them, keep what is useful and toss out the stupid crap.
See, you've got an advantage in that you can continue to learn new stuff and keep an open mind. The person who can adapt to new ideas and replace outdated dumb stuff will always have the advantage.

 

[Morgoth the Dark Enemy]

Actually, I think Poliquin is a very very smart dude, and one of the best in the field. The catch is he`s a major hippie prick currently, in order to attract attention and create hype with **** like the Yin-Yang balance, removing your fillings to add mass, getting to a physically impossible 3.48% BF by using Vitamin C IVs and so on.

And that`s how he writes most of his crap currently, in order to cater to the &quot;T-Mag generation&quot;:all of his athletes add hundreds of pounds of mass by doing the most outrageous **** immaginable. Does he believe in this stuff?I really doubt it, but his income is great, so he keeps doing this crap as it`s great in this ****-filled business. At least IMO.

 

[Slapshotz]

I have the same opinion as you guys.  I really don't know what to think about what poloquin wrote.

I agree with Morgoth, that all these guys (poloquin, staley, etc.) are in a battle for their financial lives to create the most off-the-wall &amp; unique programs in order to gain attention for their various side projects &amp; services.  

In other words, whatever T-nation is paying them, it ain't covering their mortgage.  I'll bet they write most of their stuff for free, or at the very least for a nominal fee, because they get to plug their websites at the end (and, of course, it's always essential that you take a Biotest supp or two along the way to achieve maximal results

)

The net result is that, for the typical T-nation reader, for example, he ends up getting confused &amp; overwhelmed very quickly because every week there is another scheme promoted as the &quot;new holy grail&quot; to achieve physical perfection.  It's not a total knock on T-nation, though.  

They have a tremendous amount of info on their site, but it's not likely that anyone is actually using any of these training methods.  Why start a new routine when there will be a brand new and better routine next Friday?

With regard to Poloquin's writings mentioned above, I can honestly say I've never tried anything remotely close to it.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll try it for my arms after my cut is over.

 

[quadancer]

Not much I can add to this thread, save for this. I don't believe that shock training has much place in an HST cycle. BUT, if you're doing failure training, and stalling out on your gains, I think that certain shock techniques under certain conditions can cause a temporary growth spurt, and even strength gains.
However, if conditions are not right, such as FOOD intake, the timing, the right technique for the right muscle, you may very well go backwards OVERNIGHT!!!
Could shock techniques be necessary? Not ever.
Can they be beneficial? See the above.
Can you do them continuously? At your peril.
Nothing replaces lifting bigass weights.

 

[scientific muscle]

He has SOME good ideas, but mainly he is an idiot, don't listen to his crap.