Beginners questions

**timfranco** · 07-09-2012, 10:26 AM

Hi,

I work at a gym in Portugal and I would like to start prescribing HST for some of our members but I still have the following doubts:

- Is one exercise per muscle group enough?
- How much rest time between sets and exercises?
- How long should a whole training session last?
- After the 1st 8 week cycle, should I change exercises for each muscle group or just keep doing the same but use more weight?
- How do you manage doing only 2 sets and only 15, 10 and 5 reps of abs?
- Is the minimum weight you should start out with for the 1st session 75% RM? Won't that make the first few sessions quite ineffective?

Sorry for all the questions but I've been checking out the forums and I still haven't figured all this out.

Cheers!
Tim

**CDB** · 07-09-2012, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by timfranco

Hi,

I work at a gym in Portugal and I would like to start prescribing HST for some of our members but I still have the following doubts:

- Is one exercise per muscle group enough?

Yes.

- How much rest time between sets and exercises?

Whatever seems reasonable.

- How long should a whole training session last?

About 45-60 minutes.

- After the 1st 8 week cycle, should I change exercises for each muscle group or just keep doing the same but use more weight?

Doesn't really matter in the end.

- How do you manage doing only 2 sets and only 15, 10 and 5 reps of abs?

No idea where you're getting this from.

- Is the minimum weight you should start out with for the 1st session 75% RM? Won't that make the first few sessions quite ineffective?

No.

**timfranco** · 07-09-2012, 10:55 AM

Thanks for the really quick reply!

Concerning the abs, I got it off the HST webpage, from the sample HST workout... So how many reps/sets of abs do you do?

**CDB** · 07-09-2012, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by timfranco

Thanks for the really quick reply!

Concerning the abs, I got it off the HST webpage, from the sample HST workout... So how many reps/sets of abs do you do?

As many as I want. I mean, it's not a muscle that you tend to think of in terms of hypertrophy, you know? When doing weighted sets, I follow HST guidelines and try to up it 5 pounds every workout, but that can get kind of ridiculous when training at home so I stop at the 35 pound plate and just use that for the remainder of the workout. When I workout in the gym and have access to machines, I use their incremented weight stacks the same way.