I was just reading the Wernbom paper, and had a few thoughts:
* The paper looked at studies for the quads and elbow flexors, so it's hard to say how much you can extrapolate the results to everything.
* Bryan's review linked earlier is pretty good, but it actually looks like the best results are seen at ~60%+ 1 RM, and the recommendations for heavier are "you are definitely growing about as much as possible here."
* Bryan's view of hypertrophy is still more robust, imo, in terms of the SD->rapidly escalating loading->strength limit->SD model.
* Despite the above, we should probably be honest that we don't actually know if HST is more "scientific" than any other program, as it's a routine that's extrapolated from research but has never, ever been tested head to head against any other training system.
I actually had some thoughts on what a default HST template should probably look like using the current model. I was considering making a thread about it, but I'll share them here.
The cycle should probably be heavier - with something like 75% of your 15 RM as the starting point (day 1 of the 15s) with a "normal" HST cycle, you're looking at loads a little under 50% 1 RM to start. Imo this is pretty clearly suboptimal. If you had to declare an optimal range as per the research, you might say ~60-85% 1 RM, which is something like a ~17-18 to ~5 RM. For what it's worth, I think keeping up reasonably high volumes towards the 5 RM end would become absolutely brutal, though you could do stuff like 7-10 sets of 3, I suppose. Still, I'm not sure I'd have the average trainee venture into this zone. You could probably keep up decent volume up to an ~8 RM or so, at a guess, which is ~80% of 1 RM. The fact that this tracks pretty well with conventional bodybuilding wisdom (the whole 8-12 thing) is kind of interesting. It's also worth noting that I think Dan actually ran Max-stim like this, something like 60-85% 5 RM using max stim reps for a total # of reps.
Well, if you look at the rest recommendations in the Wernbom paper, it doesn't seem to indicate there's much magic to short rest periods, per se. With something like Max-Stim or rest/pause, I think what's happening is that you get a slight amplification in the stimulus such that you get more out of less, as it were. For a practical routine, though, I don't think going down that route is entirely useful, and it leaves some awkward holes in programming for lifts like the squat and deadlift, which are pretty hard to do safely via rest/pause.
On the issue of frequency, as previously discussed, the effects seem to top out at ~twice per week when work-matched against thrice per week training. While Totentanz is right that heavier loads probably elicit slightly greater effect such that you could decrease the volume a bit over the course of a cycle, work-matching the volume across the cycle would pretty much guarantee you maintain the "hypertrophic signal strength" or some such concept as you keep raising the load. This is similar to the 1 set of 15s, 2 set of 10s, 3 set of 5s idea, and the idea is that if you ballpark the volume too low on the heavy end, the latter part of your HST cycle might wind up suboptimal for growth, and be more of a pure strength routine (lower volume, higher frequency, lower rep) at that point.
So, what are we left with?
* Cycles that go from something in the neighborhood of ~60-80% of 1 RM
* Twice per week per muscle group frequency (probably a 4 days per week upper/lower split, though you could technically divide this up however)
* Volume recommendations that scale to training age, something at least in the ballpark of Wernbom's recommendations (30 for upper, 60 for lower) being pretty good. I do agree with Totentanz that there's no reason to add volume too early, though, in that, if lower volumes induce growth, you're just wasting time with higher volumes. As such, it's almost definitely smarter to start on the conservative side and add volume for parts as needed rather than starting too high and needing to subtract.
* The usual SD logic, though I would suspect a deload of 1-2 days during the SD period would work just as well, and given the risks of strength loss in extended SD's for intermediate+ trainees, should probably be the default recommendation.
How I would put that together:
* Upper/lower Split.
Upper = 1 exercise each for chest (e.g. bench), shoulders (e.g. overhead press), lats (e.g. chins or pulldowns), midback/traps (e.g. row variation), biceps (e.g. curls), and triceps (e.g. lying triceps extensions). 6 total exercises.
Lower = 2 exercises each for anterior chain/quads (e.g. squats and leg press or leg extensions), posterior chain (e.g. RDL and leg curls), and calves (e.g. standing and seated calf raises). 6 total exercises.
If we ran conventional HST logic, we'd have two week blocks. This is probably an option, but with a narrower range of intensities, you're looking at a one month cycle, which might be on the low side. If you followed default HST guidelines of 6 sessions per block, you'd have a 6 week cycle to go from 60-80% 1 RM, or two, three-week blocks. Having experimented with this a bit (upper/lower splits with 3 week cycles), it works pretty well.
As for sets/reps, ~70% of 1 RM is about a 12 RM, and 80% of 1 RM is about an 8 RM. Starting at 60% 1 RM, I might do a 3 week block of 12's and follow it with a 3 week block of 8's. So block 1 (3 weeks) = 12s @ 60-70% 1 RM, and block 2 (3 weeks) = 8s @ 70-80% 1 RM. Instead of a number of sets, I'd just declare volume to be a total number of reps. 25 reps per exercise seems like a fair starting point. This would land you at 25 reps per upper body muscle group, and 50 total reps per lower body muscle group (since there are two exercises a piece for each).
The first set can act as your strength barometer (12 or 8 reps), and subsequent sets should probably be terminated when there's a decline in speed/jump in effort (so basically one standard set and then "clustering," though clustering with conventional/longer rest periods). At the beginning of the 12's, that might be 2 sets of 12 (within a rep at 24 total reps, that's fine). At the end of 12's, that might be something like 12 + 8 + 5 (3 sets). At the beginning of the 8's it might be 3 sets of 8, and at the end might be something like 8 + 6 + 6 + 5 (4 sets). The reason, then, I'd avoid that ~80-85% range by default is the practicality - as you approach a true 5 RM, you'd be at something like 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3, or 7 working sets, which is getting somewhat absurd to maintain that higher volume. Also potentially dangerous.
So yah, that's by no means definitive, but I think would jive better with the research and be about as close to optimal as we "know" from the research, which is admittedly limited.
