20 Breathing Reps For All Exercises

M

Mojo77

Member
hello all,

I al becomming more and more a fan of the 20 rep breathing squats, or even the 30 rep as per Dan John. For those who wouldn’t know, you basically increase your weight 5 to 10 pounds each training and you cranck out 20 reps no matter what. Brutal!

Now i wonder about using this 20 rep method also for your bench, row and press. Hell, even for your curls and tricep pushdowns. The TUT would be amazing.

Thoughts? Anyone ever experimented with this?
 
Mojo77 said:
hello all,

I al becomming more and more a fan of the 20 rep breathing squats, or even the 30 rep as per Dan John. For those who wouldn’t know, you basically increase your weight 5 to 10 pounds each training and you cranck out 20 reps no matter what. Brutal!

Now i wonder about using this 20 rep method also for your bench, row and press. Hell, even for your curls and tricep pushdowns. The TUT would be amazing.

Thoughts? Anyone ever experimented with this?
Click to expand...

Don’t love it for pressing.
 
20 reps (and the very similar "Max Stim") is great for large muscle groups but I find I can get the same result more efficiently and for even smaller muscle groups using "Myo Reps" . I am somewhat biased toward Myo Reps because it is easier on my old joints.
 
How would you use max stim on something like squats? Racking the weight after every rep, really? I dont have all day for this.
 
NWlifter said:
20 rep squats for 'all moves' is pretty much what inspired Karsten Pfuetzenreuter to come up with PITT-Force training, which is very similar to max stim.
I bet it's killer on recovery though, since doing just one exercise (20 rep squats) is enough to wipe a person out big time.

https://emerging-athlete.com/pitt-force-training/
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Basically identical to max-atom, although the suggested weekly programming varies from memory.

Generally I find these protocols serve strength first (not that hypertrophy is separable in the long term).

Would not do it for deadlifts. Pull-ups/chin-ups and bench would be ideal. OHP nope. Squats? Maybe.
 
I wonder if these rest pause systems dont take away from the necessary tut?
I found that I need sufficiënt tut in order to grow optimally.

I used to do 3 sets, each 40 seconds long with 20 seconds rest. Weight fixed for the entire exercise.
 
Rest pause systems like Myo Reps are designed to get more TUT on close to maximum effort repetitions and less TUT on ineffective reps. Not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart lifters.
 
In max stim you put the weight down after every rep and relax completely. Ok you can lift more weight but tut is only a few seconds every time which might not lead to growth, just improved strength.

Seen a couple of YouTube clips of this Pitt force guy and I haven’t seen him put down the weight after each rep as he promotes...
 
I consider max-stim an extreme variant of rest pause but you are also using roughly a 10 rep max weight and doing 20 reps. Your rest time is only enough to allow you to do 1 more rep as you go past your 10th rep. It is not using your 20 rep max and doing 20 reps with intra rep rest periods. Your comment about strength vs hypertrophy is probably valid to some extent with max-stim but not, for instance, with Myo Reps, at least in my opinion (and yes, I have one of those also ;)). I do not know who this Pitt guy is.
 
Old and Grey said:
I consider max-stim an extreme variant of rest pause but you are also using roughly a 10 rep max weight and doing 20 reps. Your rest time is only enough to allow you to do 1 more rep as you go past your 10th rep. It is not using your 20 rep max and doing 20 reps with intra rep rest periods. Your comment about strength vs hypertrophy is probably valid to some extent with max-stim but not, for instance, with Myo Reps, at least in my opinion (and yes, I have one of those also ;)). I do not know who this Pitt guy is.
Click to expand...

I don’t consider myo-reps to be ‘part of the group’ in this discussion; it’s very different to anything single rep, rest-pause-ish. Fantastic hypertrophy tool of course.
 
Mojo77 said:
I wonder if these rest pause systems dont take away from the necessary tut?
I found that I need sufficiënt tut in order to grow optimally.

I used to do 3 sets, each 40 seconds long with 20 seconds rest. Weight fixed for the entire exercise.
Click to expand...
Old and Grey said:
Rest pause systems like Myo Reps are designed to get more TUT on close to maximum effort repetitions and less TUT on ineffective reps. Not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart lifters.
Click to expand...
This is something I've always wondered as well, but that makes sense what O&G said.

To me TUT used to be about constant tension on the muscle (the ol 40-70s), but I guess what principles like myoreps employ is that the overall time under tension occurs with a higher percentage of them being done with the so-called more effective reps, and while the muscle is in a pretty occluded state too.

So I guess as those reps are more effective reps (due to the state of the muscle at the time), it counts under total time under tension.

Compare this to doing a few reps no way near to failure, resting for 20 minutes, and then a few more. In no way is the QUALITY of time under tension the same. So I think that's where the TUT issue lies, within the QUALITY of that time under tension.

Cool! Please anyone feel free to correct if this isn't quite it, but it makes sense to me now I think :)
 
Honestly, worrying about TUT is pointless for 90% of lifters. Most guys fussing about things like that are small dudes who have made no gains because they fuss about things like TUT and change routines too much instead of picking a plan and sticking to it.

I have to have the brutally honest "you still look like shit after months of fucking around so maybe its time to stick to my plan for you instead of constantly worrying about what is optimal" talk at least a few times a year with various people because most guys practice this form of self-sabotage if someone doesn't keep them on track.

Not saying this applies to anyone here. But everything discussed in this thread so far would give similar results in most lifters (assuming proper diet) as long as they stuck with it for months/a year rather than changing it up when they don't perceive results quickly enough.

Talking about what is optimal is all well and good. Those kinds of topics are important. Just realize that unless you are already quite advanced, the differences in your results over the course of a year will likely be negligible. And may be not worth the effort compared to keeping things a bit simpler.
And realistically, your diet is going to have a much larger impact on your results.
 
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