[b said:
Quote[/b] (Jonny @ Nov. 19 2005,8:15)]I no HST is the way to go. and asked the question... which hasnt been answerd.... maybe by the first reply.. if any1 thinks tht by doing heavy duty after a cycle of HST, as it is likely to make you stronger, it will produce more hypertophy within the nxt HSt cycle.
To answer your first question:
HD and HIT were good attempts to figure out the best way to train your muscles back when the muscle was still a "black box." The muscle was a mysterious thing and people couldn't explain exactly what happened inside, nor why.
If you read Mentzer and Jones, you will see statements like "nobody knows for sure why. . . " and "even the scientist can't tell you why. . ." Well, today we DO know the answers to all or most of those questions. But the answers are not usually in body-buidling books, are almost never in body-building mags. They are usually in scientific journals for people who study protein cycles, or muscle atrophy and regrowth in injured people, etc.
Then you have someone like Bryan go through all the modern research and read all the scientific journals and apply the science to develop a set of principles to guide trainees in designing programs to help them grow muscle. The result, HST, is far more effective at producing growth than HIT or HD were, and it's neither a surprise nor an insult to Jones or Mentzer!
There's no need to train HD cycles between HST cycles. You'll find, after trying an HST cycle, that you build up tremendous strength over the course of the cycle. . . and your strength will peak at the end of the cycle, when you need it most. Strength gains from training HD would be many, many weeks old before you use them in your HST cycle, so there will be little carryover.
There's one reason to train HD, though, and you mention it in your initial post: you love training HD. There's a lot to be said for that, and if you don't do it any more, you'll miss it.
I would suggest doing a couple of weeks of HD as the end of your HST cycle. The weight progression of HST kind of leaves you in HD land at the end of it, anyway. Every HD lover who does HST craves the final weeks of the HST cycle and wishes it would never end.
And, in a sense, HIT and HD are both efforts to apply what Jones and Mentzer learned through intuition and observation; that you must lift heavier and heavier to grow. Logically, to lift heavier, you try harder and make it more intense. It didn't occur to them that part of the recipe would be to DECREASE the muscles resistance to growth (by forcing it to decondition) rather than simply working it harder.
Mentzer stumbled into an inefficient sort of deconditioning, actually; for advanced subjects who were unresponsive to the very heavy workouts, he advocated longer and longer rest periods -- up to seven days. This helped, but he didn't understand why. He thought the muscles needed all that time to fully recover. The truth was that the muscles would finally decondition somewhat, so the next workout could have an effect. But when you're working out as infrequently as once a week, you don't spend much time growing, and you lose the benefits of chronic loading (the compounding effect caused by having the muscle in Grow Mode all the time from working it many times per week.)
I guess what I'm saying is that HIT and HD were developed as best efforts by people stumbling around a muscular system they didn't fully understand. Today, things are different. You can do the old things because you enjoy them, and there's nothing wrong with that; just don't expect doing things the old way to improve the newer methods. But you don't need an excuse to do some HD; just enjoy doing what you love to do! Turn the end of your HST cycle into a bunch of HD workouts, and you'll have a blast while having the best growth you've seen in years.
