Hey Dan
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Bryan has mentioned many times that a weight may be effective at producing some stimulus for a number of weeks, now with this in mind I have noticed, by the posts here, that many aren't taking this into account and simply work the 8 week cycle, which in and of itself is fine but, to get the most from each loading increase and I feel that it should be used until it is no longer effective.
I've thought of that as well, and considered a lot of times to actually repeat a weight two or three times intentionally, thereby significantly extending the length of each RM phase. But never though of using a weight for more than a week, though. The thing is, the weight load most probably will still be good for a couple of times after the first loading... but we can never be sure how long it will actually take. It's going to be a nightmare. We have no way to measure the effectiveness of a load for each workout, and assessing it by our strength increase (if at all) wouldn't be that accurate - I think it is actually possible for a muscle to adapt to a load completely before we get a significant strength gain because the stregnth gain is "delayed" by other factors, like daily stress, rest, etc.. If we went by that strictly (that is, using the weight until we feel it isn't effective anymore by waiting for a gain in strength to happen), it might end up like instinctive training. Some weights will be used 3 or 4 times, others may end up getting used 6 or more times, depending on how we "feel" the weight... this is just my personal view of it of course, it scares me because it might make the training instinctive, whereas now, I know exactly what to do for pratically the entire cycle, even when I repeate a weight 2 or 3 times, because it's all done by design before the cycle starts. Of course, if you can assure that a strength gain will definitely happen as soon as the muscles adpat or as the muscles fully adpat to the load making it ineffective, then this concern is effetively nullified.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Incrementation in all actuality would be large, just not as frequent simply because you are using the same load for an extended period but causing larger degrees of stretch over a larger period of time. Assuming there is a realtionship between degree of damage and magnitude of RBE response this may be one way to attenuate the response allowing longer loading periods. So back to incrementation, once you have used the full ROM, and using reps to monitor the strength response (adaptation) you would increase the load, I am assuming a 15% increase in load could be used, thus quite large to again get back to your strongest LT curve and start again.
Yes, exactly what I meant. We'll be using a weight several times before increasing the load, because we wait until a ROM is ineffective before moving on to another ROM until we make the full ROM ineffetive, for maybe a set or a few sets.
But wouldn't that make arranging (and maintaining) the workouts difficult?
1). First, not all exercises have the luxury of a good ROM for us to play with. Some exercises might get at least 3 ROM increments (for example, we start with 40%, then move to 80%, then move to a fulll ROM), while some may get only 2 (we start with the strongest ROM, but the next effective increment is already the full ROM). This might make the workout a little confusing as some exercises will get progressively loaded before others, like for day 9 we add 15% to exercise #4, then on day 11 we add 15% to exercise #7 and #9, then on day 12 we add 15% to exercise #1... see what I mean?
2) Also, given a heck of a lot of exercises we deal with per workout (6 or 8 at least), incrementing the ROM itself can also turn out to be confusing. Since we wait for a strength increase per exercise to determine if the muscle has fully adapted, each exercise will increment its ROM independent of each other. Just like the situation above, exercise#1 might be increased to 80% ROM on day3, exercise#2 on day4, then exercise#3 on day7.... etc...
There is no way for us to plot in advance before we increment
either the ROM or the load... all we know is to wait for a strength increase that allows us to life the weights over a given number of reps/sets for that ROM, and when we go over the full ROM, increase the load to come back to a minimum effective ROM again. The exercises won't increment at the same time at all, others will lag behind while some lead.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]
Anyway I will continue to explore this idea and others further on my forum as not to interfere or detract from Bryan's work.
Well, I'm sure Bryan won't mind, after all, HST is HST as long as its principles are applied, and I don't think we are going against any HST principles here. But yeah, I guess better discuss it in your forum, at least until Bryan explicitly gives the go signal to freely discuss here.
This is really pretty exciting Dan! The way I see it, if we can just workout the logistical problem of the exercises not getting incremented at the same time (perhaps by finding a more uniform way of incrementing both ROM and load), this kind of training atually rocks.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Assuming there is a realtionship between degree of damage and magnitude of RBE response this may be one way to attenuate the response allowing longer loading periods.
Yes, I do believe so. Even after you SD enough, RBE will quickly catch up with your max weights if you train immediately with your max... but by starting with the minimum effective weight and slowly and gradually incrementing towards the max, RBE is effectively managed and the cycle goes 8+ weeks. Had we immediately started with max weights, the cycle would at best only be 2 or 3 weeks. Clearly, the RBE magnitude depends on the degree of damage.
Well, I'll just finish all my piled up work (I'm not getting anything done!!!! ), then I'll join you in your discussion of this in your forum.
Regards!

-JV