what doing after 6 weeks ?

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smartin999

New Member
hi,

i will finish my 6-week-HST-circle this sunday.

i want to start a new one, but i am not sure about the 'days off'. I heard that you should get your maximum weight for 15's,10's and 5's after finishing the 6-week-circle, right ? then there should be a 9-12 days OFF (no workout !). what i don't understand now: how many days i should 'spend' with finding out the maximum weight ? 1 day for 15's, 1 day for 10's and 1 day for 5's ? are the days off included there ?

plz help me, i am a little bit confused about that ;-)

regards, Martin
 
Your SD is consecutive days, 9-14. You're right on finding the maxes, except if you just stalled out on your fives, you KNOW what your 5rep max is. If you haven't stalled out yet, keep doing fives until you can't add any more weight over two workouts for several exersizes and you're done. Also, if you're getting very tired, lethargic, sore, sleepless, having memory/concentration problems, you're probably done with your cycle.
You also can do negatives after the fives if you're working with a partner, or Max-Stim for added strength. After that, you have one workout of tens and one of fifteens and then go fishing for two weeks.
Or better still, spend your usual workout time studying this website, the articles first.
 
thanks a lot !

one thing i don't understand: you mean i should continue with the 5's for some workouts ? just to find out the max, right ? well, on the LAST 5's in the 6-week-cycle i am already VERY close to the maximum. so i can estimate the maximum i think. right ?

BUT: how to find out the max for 10's and 15's ? you are only talking about the 5's.
 
You are supposed to take a week of testing for your 15, 10, and 5 RM's. There are some handy RM calculators for estimation too. After your two weeks of 5's, continue on with your 5RM while slowly adding weight to the load. Instead of doing full range reps, do only the negative portion. If you do not have a spotter, avoid exercises where gravity works against your own safety, such as squats and bench press. Lastly, check out the FAQ's forum which will answer most of the questions you will ever have regarding the HST principals and workout routines.
 
Just to be clear, a 'vanilla' HST cycle would be a minimum of 8 weeks: 2 weeks for 15s, 2 weeks for 10s, 2 weeks for 5s and then 2 weeks for post-5s where you either continue with your 5RM loads or continue to increment the loads a bit and do negatives if possible.

A few other things to try during this final mesocycle are:

1) Continuing to increment the loads a little each session until you find your new 5RMs for each exercise (use these for your next cycle). This is where you can find out how much progress you have made during the cycle (although accumulated fatigue may mean you don't actually find your true, new 5RMs - shouldn't be far off though and will be good enough). You should be able to up the loads at least 5 or 10 lbs per main compound exercise over your previous 5RMs, assuming you have been bulking and getting your calorie consumption right.

2) If you can't do negs you can still increase the loads a little past your 5RMs (perhaps to your 3RM) and use rep clustering. This is where you do only a few reps per set (avoiding failure) but do several sets until you reach your chosen rep total. eg. For 15 reps you might do 3,3,3,2,2,1,1. The idea here is to keep fatigue low but still do enough reps to trigger signalling and get enough work done.

It is quite OK to stretch out the 5s if you are feeling fine and your joints are good to go. When you plateau or just feel ready for a break then SD for a good 9 days. When you start over there is no need to find you RMs again. Just add a few pounds to what you did the previous cycle for 15s and 10s and use your new 5RMs.

HST is not about using the same loads each cycle, even though you can make gains from sub-max loads. You do need to be pushing up your 15, 10 and 5RMs each cycle if at all possible. (NB. This might well not be possible if you are on a calorie deficit unless you have a lot of fat to lose).

Don't forget that, whether you are gaining or losing weight, you need to take this into account for any weighted + bodyweight exercises that you perform (like dips or chins).
 
Thanx Lol, you've completed the picture and said what I was trying to say.

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">one thing i don't understand: you mean i should continue with the 5's for some workouts ? just to find out the max, right ?</div>
Nope, it's to create a NEW 5 rep max! You came here to get bigger and stronger, right? It isn't done until you're done.
 
smartin999

As the guys have put it, if you don't extend your 5's for anolther two weeks you will never know how far you could have &quot;pushed the envelope&quot;.

Traditionally these two weeks are for negatives, but when these cannot be done, 5's are extended and new weights are tried out slowly but surely, at this point repeating a weight twice is nt a problem as it should be higher than the last 5 RM you had previously lifted.
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AS Lol points out, &quot;HST is not about using the same loads each cycle&quot;, but rather to keep on increasing the loads each cycle even if it is by a small margin.

Many of us reserve that last week to attain new personal records which are then used for the next cycle.
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Try this rep max calculators for the other RM's like 10's and 15's.
Rep max calculators
 
Quadancer, I was a little confused by this.

<div>
(quadancer @ Feb. 28 2007,15:56)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">You also can do negatives after the fives if you're working with a partner, or Max-Stim for added strength. After that, you have one workout of tens and one of fifteens and then go fishing for two weeks.</div>


I will be starting my fives next week and after my two weeks of that I was going to try to add weight for a couple of weeks, or longer. When I've maxed out my fives, ie. can't make any more progression, should I then do a workout of tens and a workout of 15's? At my rm's for this cylce of ten's and 15's?

Thanks
 
That was a suggestion to find your new 10 and 15 rm's. You could skip it and use a calculator instead, or do what some of us do: just add weight to the first workout of your last cycle (I just add ten lbs to everything) and start again. We don't all progress the same, but you have to add something to each cycle for hypertrophy. You may find that at the end of your 15's you've come up 10 more lbs in one exersize and 20 in another similar one. Of course, arms and legs come up in entirely different increments, which is why I said &quot;similar&quot; exersizes. What would be best for you might be to just add the increments you used if they're big enough. I wouldn't expect to grow much at 2-1/2lbs a cycle!
The thing I've found is that after the fives, my 10 and 15 rm is usually a bit MORE than it was coming up through the cycle, but that may not be so for everyone. That's the hard part of this stuff: we have to get to know our bodies and find how it responds. It just takes time. I don't grow in the 15's, but my joints heal. Some guys really respond hypertrophically in them.
You don't have to fool with negs or singles or 3's or anything after all the fives. It's just if you're not feeling cooked yet and want to develop more strength, you do them.

Hope I made more sense this time. I'm doing that a lot lately; expecting you guys to read my mind...
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That makes sense, thanks.

Would that also be a good time to find rep maxs for new exercises? Or should I SD then find rm's, do a small SD and then start my next cycle?

I want to see if I can handle dips and a few different exercises next time around.
 
What do you think about this kind of cycle :
2 weeks of 14's
2 weeks of 11's
2 weeks of 8's
2 weeks of 5's
1 week to find my new max's
14 days SD
3 sets for back and chest, and 2 sets for the other muscles each practice.
So, what do you say?
 
Not to be  
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an @ss but everytime I read this thread title &quot;What doing after 6 weeks&quot;.....it just irks me with the english.....ahhhhhh
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<div>
(Avi1985 @ Mar. 02 2007,16:53)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">What do you think about this kind of cycle :
2 weeks of 14's
2 weeks of 11's
2 weeks of 8's
2 weeks of 5's
1 week to find my new max's
14 days SD
3 sets for back and chest, and 2 sets for the other muscles each practice.
So, what do you say?</div>
Avi1985: I know this kind of setup has been done many times before. I think Quad has done something similar? For me it's not ideal because you are working closer to failure for much of the time which means that you will be building up more fatigue over the course of the cycle and therefore performance will inevitably suffer during the 5s and post-5s, right when you really need to be pushing hardest before SD.

No need to spend a week finding new maxes. You will know your new 5RMs by then and the 15s and 10s you can just push up a bit based on how hard (or easy) they were to get last time.

Up to you of course, but I reckon the basic HST set-up with zig-zagging can work just fine for many cycles. Volume is a different matter and will depend on where you are at in your training. Have a look at some other threads to get a few opinions and pointers on how much to do.
 
So on the last week instead of checking my new rm's Ill do an extra week of 5's.
And if i understand you right you recommend me to build up the no. of sets?
About the fatigue. I dont think i should be worry about it, because i used to suffer from lack of information about training, and got to failure every training. And even then i didnt notice any kind of fatigue. But thnx for warning me.
 
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(Lol @ Mar. 02 2007,12:36)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">&quot;urks!&quot; Now that's really irksome!  
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<div>
(Avi1985 @ Mar. 02 2007,18:25)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">So on the last week instead of checking my new rm's Ill do an extra week of 5's.
And if i understand you right you recommend me to build up the no. of sets?
About the fatigue. I dont think i should be worry about it, because i used to suffer from lack of information about training, and got to failure every training. And even then i didnt notice any kind of fatigue. But thnx for warning me.</div>
Have you ever noticed that if you take about 3 or 4 days off from training (or deload for a few sessions) after a month or so of consistent hard and heavy training, you are actually stronger when you get back to lifting heavy, even though you think you might be weaker from missing a few sessions? If you have, then you have experienced what happens when your body recovers from the accumulated effects of fatigue.

If you have never experienced this then it may still be the case for you without you realising it. Or, up to this point, you may not have made that much of an inroad into your body's ability to recover from each session. Still, it is something to be aware of. I still maintain that you will make better progress just sticking to the basic HST format of 15s, 10s and 5s. A surprising amount of thought has gone into this even though it seems really simple in practice.

How much volume is such a difficult question to answer. All I can say is that in my case I am now pushing the volume up after 15 months of steady training. However, I have dropped the total number of exercises down from about 7 each session to 4. This is allowing me to get more heavy work sets done in the same time.

For my first few cycles I was doing about 15 reps a session per exercise, 3 x weekly making 7 x 15 x 3 = 315 total reps a week. Now I am doing (up to) 4 x 30 x 3 = 360 total reps a week but with higher loads than before so I'm doing a fair bit more work overall. As I am cutting at the moment I am doing less volume but trying to keep to about 300 reps per week in total for all exercises.

If you have done 5 or so cycles already then I will shut up now.  
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 You will have a good idea about what is working for you. But if you are new to HST my advice would be not to mess with the basic set-up until you have experienced at least a few cycles.

All the best.
 
Thnx for your comments. I finnished my first cycle and now im on the sd. Im changing the format because on my first cycle i gain only 5 lbs, 60%-70% of it is fat. So im trying to change the format to see better results. About the volume. Shouldnt i give more volume to the bigger muscles ( legs, chest and back) then the smaller muscles (shoulders, and arms)? What do you think about giving the bigger muscles 4 sets each workout and the smaller 2 sets? Sounds ok?
 
Absolutely, you should be focussing on your main compounds. How you decide to change up the volume is up to you but do take my previous thoughts into consideration. If you are doing a lot of exercises each session your volume for each will be lower than if you are doing just a few exercises. Just be sure to focus on the heavy compounds where most of the work is done.

How do you know that of the 5lbs you gained 60-70% of it is fat? I would wait until you have completed a few cycles before worrying about composition. Just try to gain 4 or 5 lbs each cycle for now and keep your top lifts increasing each cycle.
 
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