I guess I was just thinking unplanned all the way around, no set cycle length, no formal pre-calculated RM's, no set RM goals, just as long as the muscles see a load increase over time, physiologically it would be the same for stimulation.
Like lets say your 15 RM for bench is 100 to make it easy.
just start with 75x15, then 80x15 then 85x15 etc. when you hit 100x15 it's hard, so next time you do 105x12 110x12 115x12, hard, next time 120x10 125x10...
OR what if you just totally skipped set rep ranges and just added a little and used the RPE feel and just did reps till you were short of failure but added weight every time, or once a week, maybe make Monday easier RPE, Wednesday harder, Friday just about failure, next week, add weight do that again, repeat every week, keep going until you have a Friday where 5-6 reps is almost full effort?
I guess that's what i mean, force a small load increase, and auto-regulate 'what you do with that load', as long as the RM increases over time, all would be just like if you planned increments.
Yeah to be honest this makes total sense to me... And I'd make sure that I don't always train too close to failure too much of the time, I think that's why I like the 15s 10s and 5s as reps to go with, as you're still able to progress in load but have a slight break in 'intensity' or 'exertion' moreso.
Just went through the FAQ and found this little gem of a section that's relevant here. So it's definitely not so much about reps and sets as it is understanding the function of muscle and how it grows. I think it's then moreso a matter of convenience that 15/10/5 were chosen, not because they had a magical property. But I still think important to approach or train to/with your RM a few times in the cycle, although I haven't found yet if that's stated in the FAQ... :
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"But why is HST organized into 2 week blocks and the 15/10/5 rep ranges - I don't understand it...
Keep in mind that you have to consider the tensile strength of the tissue itself. Lifting weights to induce hypertrophy is a very much a mechanical process. You are causing physical stress to the protein structures of the muscle tissue. A given amount of load is going to be required regardless of the number of repetitions, to induce hypertrophy.
So, please try to think outside of reps and sets. The purpose of every workout is simply to apply an effective stimulus by providing an incremental increase in tension from the last workout. Just arbitrarily picking a certain number of workouts before you change isn’t going to ensure you are applying an effective stimulus. That’s more akin to periodization, rather than hypertrophy-specific progressions.
Muscle tissue does not distinguish between rep ranges. There is not a special number of contractions that "triggers" a hypertrophic response. The only thing that triggers hypertrophy is sarcolemma distortion and subsequent microtrauma and to a MUCH lesser extent, metabolic activity. Metabolic activity is more anticatabolic, then anabolic. These pathways of mechanotransduction have been mapped and are not in question. Yes, there are always more details to be ironed out, but the pathways are now established that go from mechanical load to muscle cell growth.
In order to adhere to the principles of training induced muscle hypertrophy we must have progressive load. Progressive load sufficient to cause hypertrophy will limit the number of times the muscle can successfully contract against the resistance. There are several old studies that narrowed it down to a range of perhaps 20 reps (if the muscle is deconditioned) all the way up to 120% of your 1RM. So, depending on how conditioned the muscle is, you can use any rep range between 20 reps and negatives.
While using HST, your reps decrease over time simply because the load is constantly increasing. It's that simple. There is no magic number, though others might have you believe there is.
Why 6 workouts in 2 week blocks? Because it takes about that long using decent increments to reach your specified RM.
The whole purpose of HST’s organization is to give you some idea of what that stimulus needs to be on that day’s workout.
SD is kind of like a reset button. It gives you some place to start, where you are pretty sure about the condition of the tissue when you begin. Because you can’t see what is actually happening inside the microscopic world of your muscles, you can only get an idea of what kind of stimulus is required by knowing what the tissue has recently undergone. Even then, all you really know is that the tension applied has to be either greater in amplitude, duration, or some combination of the two, with amplitude being the most effective of the two.
All of this methodology (for lack of a better word) is based on tangible yet invisible things like heat shock proteins, microscopically thin connective tissue, kinase-type signaling proteins, and all the protein synthetic machinery and all the genes that regulate them.
Now, it isn’t necessary to become an expert on the details of each of these cellular components, but it does become necessary to have a basic understanding of “what it all means” if you really want to understand HST.
Without this understanding, HST will appear to be no better or worse than any other routine. This is the trap that many experienced lifters fall into. They been around the block, they’ve seen it all before, but they fail to understand that there is an underlying truth about how muscle works that the previous routines weren’t able to pattern themselves after. They were in the general vicinity, through trial an error, but there just wasn’t enough research available to reduce the uncertainty that drives the endless variation in strategy and method.
So you aren't going to understand HST by studying its sets, reps, and workouts. You can only understand HST by studying how muscle tissue works. I can't emphasize this enough. HST is not about sets and reps, it is about getting people to change the way they think about training for size. It is about introducing demonstrable physiological concepts into a culture dominated by marketing hype, tradition and regurgitation of every single BB myth ever known."
