Reviewing 2.5 years doing HST

[mb2]

I just read the thread on "load" in the research section and it prompted me to write some of my own impressions of HST.

Specifically, the thread was like attending a physics class in computation of the exact number of bodybuilders that can dance on the head of a pin. Look, I don't fault people for trying to make bodybuilding an exact science but I doubt it ever will be, given the huge variety in human physiology.

I did HST for about 2.5 years, maybe longer. I really liked it and I recommended it to many friends. They always had the same reaction to reading the site here: that it seemed mind-bogglingly complicated. I reminded them that nerds are everywhere and just to give the program a try without sinking into the black hole of research, most of which is so flawed, it's incredible that it gets published. Most of my friends found the program useful and it became something of an epidemic among them and friends of friends.

However, most everyone reported the same thing. After making gains for two or three cycles, the effect seemed to "wear off," as it does with any other routine. I had this experience but continued using it, primarily for the reason that, at 50, I liked that it goes easy on the joints, even preparing them for the coming torture of lower, heavier reps.

I played with the frequency -- doing split HST routines that amounted to two whole-body workouts a week. I didn't see any change in hypertrophy. Then I decided to just throw away the program and its principles for a while and go back to my early days of just hitting the gym 3 or 4 times a week and blowing it out every workout, not worrying so much about frequency. Mistake: I stuck to really heavy weights -- almost like the 5x5 I did years earlier (and with great success.) This did not significantly increase hypertrophy either but ****ed up my joints.

Now, this is the strange part. Due to some major disruptions in my life, my gym routine got turned upside down. I was lucky if I got in 3 times a week and each time I went, I stuck to a single body part, just as I did for most of my time lifting in the past. I kept a record of my lifts, but I did not try to adhere to strict progression of load. I did probably 20 or 30 sets for each body part every 10 days or so. I also stopped worrying about my damn protein intake and consuming a zillion calories a day.

You know what? My hypertrophy gains resumed. No obsessive attention to increasing load, sometimes doing higher reps, sometimes lower -- never beneath 5. The reduction in protein intake -- which reduced caloric intake too -- lowered my body fat. I got continual comments on how good I was looking

So I've stuck with that and it's worked great. Maybe I need to mention that I've been in gyms since I was 5 years old and began lifting at 13. I never stopped except for a few years when I was doing my PhD. I've tried about every routine there is and I do think HST ranks high, especially for the decrepit like me, but it is over time no more effective than most routines and needs to be alternated every now and then. What I can say categorically is that HST is safer than most routines.

Sorry to go on and on, but I really wanted to provide an anecdotal response to the literature.

 

[Old and Grey]

Sorry to hear you screwed up your joints. Most lifters do as they think more volume and heavier weights is always better. HST certainly has its drawbacks but only because everyone is not looking for the same type of results. For me, going to a style that you described would be very detrimental at age 68 (almost) and over 50 years of lifting. I find plenty of variety within the broad guidelines of HST to keep my body happy and pain free.

However, I do agree with you 100% that there is too much over-thinking being done around here. It has gotten beyond nonsense when increments of small fractions of a pound are being bantied about as well as a thousand other topics. There is no magic pill, it takes hard work and devotion as you certainly know.

Good luck in the future.

O&G

 

[Jester]

The reduction in protein intake -- which reduced caloric intake too -- lowered my body fat.

This has nothing to do w/HST. It just means you weren't managing your diet when training using HST.

I did probably 20 or 30 sets for each body part every 10 days or so.

Kinda sounds like you were doing a workout, then 9 days SD, then a workout, then 9 days SD etc etc ...

My hypertrophy gains resumed.

Any specific measurements available ... ? I'm kinda sceptical about the contradicting claims; losing fat, gaining muscle. If your layoff was quite long before resuming training that doesn't surprise me (you're basically back at 'newbie' level conditioning etc).

 

[mb2]

Hey, O&G. Thanks for commenting. I think the big change for me was finally getting the cliche I'd heard for years: "listen to your body." I can definitely tell now when I hit the gym how much my body can do. I no longer try to push it 2 lbs or whatever heavier, if my body says "not today." I know you can push it more safely when you're young, but I'm not so sure of the cumulative effect even then.

The reality is that guys who get huge are frequently doing steroids. As everyone knows, or should, the drugs often make the muscles stronger than the joints can handle. Some even directly affect the joints. Thus injuries among regular juicers are scarily common. (Yes, I have done a few low-dose cycles myself.)

Here's another danger I like to tell people about. I blew out both my knees 7 years ago. I'm not talking sprains. I'm talking major emergency surgery to re-attach the patellar tendons in each leg. Six weeks in leg braces. I was lifting very heavy at the time, working hard to build my legs. The doctors blamed my decades of lifting for what happened.

Several years after the surgery, a client told me he'd just gotten back from Chile where he developed a serious gastro-intestinal problem. His doctor, he said, prescribed him Cipro and he was reluctant to take it even for 10 days because of a warning label that it could cause tendon rupture. Yep, I had been on a mega dose of Cipro for nearly two months -- before the FDA made Cipro's makers employ a black-box warning. So that almost certainly caused the rupture. (This was actually well known before the black box came along.)

Did I mention they botched the surgery? I never regained fully normal use of my knees.

 

[Totentanz]

Weird, I've been doing HST for over 8 years and keep making progress. My experience is that the people who stop making gains are the people who are doing something wrong with their routine.

You say that after a few cycles it stops working. I made steady progress for two years straight on HST before I started experimenting with other routines and started making piss poor progress. Every time I would return to HST, I'd magically start making steady gains again.

 

[mb2]

Alex:

I know the protein issue has nothing to do with HST specifically. But extremely high protein ingestion is another example of a practice popularly believed to be necessary to muscle development but has been debunked by recent research. (I read about the research via a link somewhere here. I have no idea what HST in particular recommends in this respect.) I eat mainly clean but it's hard to ingest 420 grams of protein without gaining fat.

I've wondered exactly the same thing about whether going back to one body part every 7-10 days wasn't like increasing SD -- something maybe beneficial because of my age. I don't know. But it's essentially the same program I did frequently in my 30s (with less intensity now) and is, as you know, common.

There was no extended layoff when my schedule became so disrupted a year ago. I just couldn't get to the gym as often, as regularly, or stay as long when I got there.

No, I don't have specific measurements for my gains, but they're not a fantasy. Nor are they gigantic, although I've heard over and over that I've "blowed up." I'm just surprised I didn't lose muscle.

My point is that the effectiveness of HST varies among people, even when they follow it strictly as recommended. I can't explain why this is so but it's hubristic to assume that a plateau points to a failure in the lifter.

 

[mb2]

Weird, I've been doing HST for over 8 years and keep making progress. My experience is that the people who stop making gains are the people who are doing something wrong with their routine.

You say that after a few cycles it stops working. I made steady progress for two years straight on HST before I started experimenting with other routines and started making piss poor progress. Every time I would return to HST, I'd magically start making steady gains again.

No, I didn't say it stops working for everyone. I said it stopped adding muscle for me and my friends after a few cycles. I continued it, though, because it's a safe workout. Then I switched up things while staying with the basic HST protocol. Then I returned to my long-ago routine of one body part every week to 10 days, and my gains resumed. I'm not trying to get huge, btw.

Out of curiosity, if the program continued to work for you, why did you decide to try some new routines? And does leaving and coming back to HST amount to SD too? And is what I've done different from the bromide that you have to mix things up to keep making gains? Is that false?

I would love to find a good reason to return to HST. I've been thinking about it.

 

[mikeynov]

No, I didn't say it stops working for everyone. I said it stopped adding muscle for me and my friends after a few cycles. I continued it, though, because it's a safe workout. Then I switched up things while staying with the basic HST protocol. Then I returned to my long-ago routine of one body part every week to 10 days, and my gains resumed. I'm not trying to get huge, btw.

Out of curiosity, if the program continued to work for you, why did you decide to try some new routines? And does leaving and coming back to HST amount to SD too? And is what I've done different from the bromide that you have to mix things up to keep making gains? Is that false?

I would love to find a good reason to return to HST. I've been thinking about it.

I can see arguments for bro routines working well for people. Growth happens when you provide a sufficient stimulus to muscle tissue in respect to its present level of conditioning, I think we can all agree to that concept.

HST approaches this by preceding cycles with SD (to decondition the tissue, helping re-sensitize it to the stimulus) and then frequently training the muscle with somewhat rapidly incrementing loads. If all goes as planned, you will grow as frequently as possible, and this should obviously work rather well.

However, I can see a scenario in which a person is not able to provide a sufficient acute stimulus (in respect to the conditioning of the muscle tissue) by training frequently such that, despite the frequent training, you're never doing enough "right now" to actually drive hypertrophy.

So another way of stating this is that, if you manage to get things right with HST, it should be the fastest possible way to grow. However, "bro" style, ~once per week style training approaches this in a better safe than sorry sort of way. You're providing a very large acute stimulus to a muscle (multiple exercises per "part," multiple sets per exercise) and then giving it a week of SD. This combination, very high acute stimulus and enough rest to allow it to restore sensitivity, may not be optimal for growth, like the scenario above for HST. However, it should almost guarantee that you grow SOMEWHAT over time, even if the absolute rate is less than it theoretically could be compared to something like an HST cycle in which everything goes right.

That said, it would seem to make sense to still use load progression, even when doing a body part split, i.e. starting with comparatively higher reps at the start of a cycle and, a couple/few months down the line, finishing up with heavier sets more in the ~5-8 range or something.

Anyways, just some thoughts.

 

[jeremyx]

You went from low volume - high frequency to high volume low frequency which is a very common periodization set up. Drastic increase in volume often leads to more glycogen and water uptake. How much real growth did that cause ? Not so much IMO

 

[Sci]

I have tried all kinds of frequencies and volume, 2-3 times/week per muscle has always worked best, and moderate volume. Low frequency never worked well for me.

 

[Totentanz]

No, I didn't say it stops working for everyone. I said it stopped adding muscle for me and my friends after a few cycles. I continued it, though, because it's a safe workout. Then I switched up things while staying with the basic HST protocol. Then I returned to my long-ago routine of one body part every week to 10 days, and my gains resumed. I'm not trying to get huge, btw.

Did you SD for 9 days minimum between cycles? SD is a crucial part of the program. At the very least, you need to take an SD after a plateau. But I'm curious as to why it stopped working. Pretty much any sane, reasonable program out there is similar to HST. Were you refiguring your maxes after each cycle? If so, and you kept getting stronger (which you should have been if diet was adequate) then your maxes should have kept going up. That's progression. If you can still progress, then you have not plateaued.

I'm not really sure how people judge muscle gains over the course of only one cycle anyway. I'm not sure how people judge the effectiveness of a routine after only a few cycles either. It takes several to properly judge a routine. A standard HST cycle is six to eight weeks, if you gain a pound a week and 75% of that is muscle (we are assuming the ratio is favorable for you) then that is only 6 lbs of muscle gained over the course of one cycle assuming everything works great. Have you ever seen a six pound cut of meat? Imagine that distributed all over your body, it amounts to very little.

Out of curiosity, if the program continued to work for you, why did you decide to try some new routines?

Because I was being retarded. I wanted to try new things even though HST was working.

And does leaving and coming back to HST amount to SD too? And is what I've done different from the bromide that you have to mix things up to keep making gains? Is that false?

An SD entails completely removing the training stimulus for an extended period as to decondition the muscles to the loads used. If you simply do another routine, that will not decondition the muscles. Also, the other factors that come into play after some time away from training such as an increased pool of sattelite cells won't happen when you simply change routines.

I'm curious though... as mikey pointed out, any non-retarded routine is going to use load progression and most routines use at least twice a week frequency. So... what exactly do you think HST is?

To me, HST is lifting frequency, starting out lighter at the beginning of the cycle and progressing toward heavy weights at the end of the cycle, using the load as the driver for the whole cycle rather than fatigue and taking an SD when I am no longer making progress. There are a myriad of ways to implement this.

 

[Old and Grey]

To me, HST is lifting frequency, starting out lighter at the beginning of the cycle and progressing toward heavy weights at the end of the cycle, using the load as the driver for the whole cycle rather than fatigue and taking an SD when I am no longer making progress.

Probably the best one-sentence defining statement on HST I have heard.

 

[mb2]

Ditto what O&G said about Totentanz's def of HST. I'm gonna give my friends that statement when they ask me about the routine again.

The conclusion I came to about HST is that it doesn't offer anything particularly new, but it does provide structure in the application of the usual principles, and it's safe. I think the emphasis on SD is different in degree from the usual advice to take a day off here and there. (And yes, my layoffs were at least 9 days.)

All of that said, the routine did not continue to increase my or my friends' hypertrophy after the first few cycles. (I talked with one of my friends since putting this post up and he says everyone did at least 4 cycles -- more than I remembered.) I have no idea what that's about. In my case, my first thought was that it was my age. Maybe it was boredom affecting effort. Maybe it was miscalculation of RMs. Maybe finding a new routine and getting more results is a placebo effect. I have no idea.

This conversation has convinced me, however, to give it another try. I really appreciate people's feedback.

 

[mikeynov]

Ditto what O&G said about Totentanz's def of HST. I'm gonna give my friends that statement when they ask me about the routine again.

The conclusion I came to about HST is that it doesn't offer anything particularly new, but it does provide structure in the application of the usual principles, and it's safe. I think the emphasis on SD is different in degree from the usual advice to take a day off here and there. (And yes, my layoffs were at least 9 days.)

All of that said, the routine did not continue to increase my or my friends' hypertrophy after the first few cycles. (I talked with one of my friends since putting this post up and he says everyone did at least 4 cycles -- more than I remembered.) I have no idea what that's about. In my case, my first thought was that it was my age. Maybe it was boredom affecting effort. Maybe it was miscalculation of RMs. Maybe finding a new routine and getting more results is a placebo effect. I have no idea.

This conversation has convinced me, however, to give it another try. I really appreciate people's feedback.

I think one of the primary questions was how you were eating, and how you "know" whether you were growing. Stated differently, at some point (past novice gains), you more or less have to eat hypercalorically to gain muscle, i.e. you have to eat enough to gain weight in general. Hopefully, then, most of that weight gained will be muscle (or more muscle than fat, anyways).

As such, did you eat to grow? If you didn't gain any weight, why would you expect to grow in the absence of overall weight gain? If you were gaining weight, and are convinced you weren't growing, I am assuming you were getting no stronger, measurements of stuff like arms/chest/etc weren't budging much, and you seemed to gain mostly fat (which is what would happen if you ate appropriately but the routine, itself, was not providing an adequate stimulus). To be honest, I have a hard time believing that was the case, and would be inclined to think that you were expecting to grow without an appreciable change in body weight. I could, of course, be mistaken.

 

[mb2]

Believe me. I. Eat. A. Lot. In fact, my livelihood in part derives from eating. Yes, really. What I did is stop worrying about the inflated protein numbers you read everywhere. I ASSUME my overall caloric intake was thereby reduced. I didn't measure.

My observations here are anecdotal, experiential. They are not the result of scientific research. The impression of my increased muscle gain on the one-body-part-a-week routine relies on what I've heard repeatedly from people and the way my clothes fit. I did not take a tape measure to every part of my body. I did measure my chest and it increased about an inch. Meanwhile, I traded in a bunch of 34-waist pants for 32s. (Check out Bonobos.com. They actually let you do that, even after a few years.) My weight has remained what it's been most of the last 8 years, 205-210 at 6'.

I don't know the experience of my friends in detail. Maybe they were screwing up their routines. I don't know. They hit plateaus, changed their routines and started gaining again. The one I mentioned above said he was likely going to do another cycle of HST. So it's not like anyone began a campaign against the program.

The account of my experience is not meant to diminish HST's value. I'm not trying to pass off my subjectivity as science. I really think part of the deal for my friends (and for me to a lesser extent) was boredom with the program. Maybe when we changed routines, we started lifting with renewed enthusiasm. But I do think an aging body like mine appreciates a longer recovery time.

 

[mikeynov]

Believe me. I. Eat. A. Lot. In fact, my livelihood in part derives from eating. Yes, really. What I did is stop worrying about the inflated protein numbers you read everywhere. I ASSUME my overall caloric intake was thereby reduced. I didn't measure.

My observations here are anecdotal, experiential. They are not the result of scientific research. The impression of my increased muscle gain on the one-body-part-a-week routine relies on what I've heard repeatedly from people and the way my clothes fit. I did not take a tape measure to every part of my body. I did measure my chest and it increased about an inch. Meanwhile, I traded in a bunch of 34-waist pants for 32s. (Check out Bonobos.com. They actually let you do that, even after a few years.) My weight has remained what it's been most of the last 8 years, 205-210 at 6'.

I don't know the experience of my friends in detail. Maybe they were screwing up their routines. I don't know. They hit plateaus, changed their routines and started gaining again. The one I mentioned above said he was likely going to do another cycle of HST. So it's not like anyone began a campaign against the program.

The account of my experience is not meant to diminish HST's value. I'm not trying to pass off my subjectivity as science. I really think part of the deal for my friends (and for me to a lesser extent) was boredom with the program. Maybe when we changed routines, we started lifting with renewed enthusiasm. But I do think an aging body like mine appreciates a longer recovery time.

Bear in mind I'm not questioning you to be negative, I was genuinely curious, in this case about your HST experience. I.e. I was wondering what your expectations were, or how HST plateaued for you. "Eating a lot" is fine and well, ditto for protein, but as I said, I think it's safe to say that in order to gain an appreciable amount of muscle mass, we have to eat in a way that has us (slowly) gaining weight over time, and then hopefully most of that weight gained is muscle. So in this case, I was asking you how HST plateaued, with the idea that, if you weren't actually monitoring your weight, and you weren't sure whether you were gaining weight or not, it's pretty easy to point at that and simply say "you weren't eating enough to grow."

As for your split routine experience with clothes fitting differently, I do think that's a good sign of recomposition, and I do think that can happen to a limited degree, probably even without major changes in weight. I'm not doubting your story.

I think there are two main things, if nothing else, worth monitoring while lifting - scale weight and waist circumference (assuming we're talking about dudes). Obviously both will go up if you're eating appropriately, but the idea is to get the scale weight to go up while minimizing the waist circumference increase. If you're doing that, odds are pretty good you're putting on muscle.

 

[Totentanz]

If you really are going to give HST another shot, I think you'd be better off posting what specific routine you plan to use here so we can check it out and make sure you've got all your bases covered. In addition, I'm troubled that you can't seem to give a real answer about diet and weight gain. Simply saying "I eat a lot" is the response I've heard from a lot of people who experienced inadequate gains and blamed the routine for it. Saying you eat a lot is entirely an opinion. Tracking calories in this day and age is so absurdly easy with sites like myfitnesspal.com and apps for your phone, so there is no real reason not to spend the 5 minutes a day it takes to figure out calorie intake. Not tracking weight or body measurements takes maybe ten minutes a week. You can't judge progress by feel, you need to take consistent measurements over time if you want to know for sure.
If you maintained weight, you weren't eating enough.

 

[Jester]

If you maintained weight, you weren't eating enough.

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[mb2]

If you really are going to give HST another shot, I think you'd be better off posting what specific routine you plan to use here so we can check it out and make sure you've got all your bases covered. In addition, I'm troubled that you can't seem to give a real answer about diet and weight gain. Simply saying "I eat a lot" is the response I've heard from a lot of people who experienced inadequate gains and blamed the routine for it. Saying you eat a lot is entirely an opinion. Tracking calories in this day and age is so absurdly easy with sites like myfitnesspal.com and apps for your phone, so there is no real reason not to spend the 5 minutes a day it takes to figure out calorie intake. Not tracking weight or body measurements takes maybe ten minutes a week. You can't judge progress by feel, you need to take consistent measurements over time if you want to know for sure.
If you maintained weight, you weren't eating enough.

I'll def post my routine when I start it. I appreciate your offer to evaluate it.

I cannot even get my mind around the idea of tracking calories. I eat in restaurants every night of the week and it's something of a miracle I don't weigh 315 lbs. I did, intentionally, get to 230 maybe five years back and, while my bodybuilder friends were impressed, I felt like crap. I have no desire to get that big again.

I don't know the ages of you guys, but visting a few profiles shows that you're significantly younger than me. You don't as easily gain muscle when you hit 50 and beyond. And going super-heavy is dangerous, as I've learned firsthand. In fact, yesterday I ended up at the doctor thinking I was having a heart attack or something because I woke up in the middle of the night with throbbing pains in my chest. It almost certainly was from overdoing it in the gym (very heavy db flies), since most of the pain disappeared in a day.

When you age, your muscles typically have greater strength than your tendons. This is a huge problem for me and is one reason I started HST in the first place. It is far safer than most other routines and is why I should return to it, whether I get big muscle gains or not. As I think I said before, I've been in gyms since I was 5 and began lifting at 13. I have done it consistently with only two years off when I was doing my PhD. (That was my midlife crisis; I suggest you buy a car instead.) So, I've banged my body up.

My body retains water easily, so my weight can vary over 7 lbs in a few days. My average weight is 205, according to my doc.