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(quadancer @ Jan. 06 2008,08:24)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Four times a day goes back to my anabolism questions; that no one has satisfactorily answered yet.
And we consider: are you using the same weight? That would seem to lend itself to neural conditioning up to a point, where it no longer constitutes exersize and needs more intensity (weight, range, less rest or more speed)
I've always said this to the couch potatoes:
If you walk after laying around; that's exersizes. Walking consistently will be training.
When used to walking, fast walking is needed.
After that, a trot, or more distance, or incline.
After that, a jog, or same as above.
After that, sprints.
After that, a rest period (SD).
Exersize is useless. Consistent exersize is training, which forces the body to adapt. If our couch potatoe continues to walk, he may lose some fat, but will not progress in strength or muscle. He MUST increase the load/duration/intensity in some way, in a consistent manner. If he walks four times a day, is he gonna get bigger? No, smaller, unless I've missed something really important these last few years.</div>
quadancer, I agree with what you say about needing to change the demand with adaptation. There was an article on T-Nation recently where the author talked about increasing frequency to stimulate hypertrophy and suggested adding another "session" a week, then after a few weeks resetting (with more weight presumably), and then building up the frequency again.
jwbond, you're right about the effectiveness of compounds for building size. I'm just impatient and looking for something that'll do the job quicker.
It is funny that you mention pull-ups, since my post was partially inspired by a DragonDoor.com article addressing how to increase max reps on pull-ups. The answer was very high frequency, according to the author.