HST cycle question, need advice!

[666seth]

Hi everybody,

I have been weight training for several years now when I recently stumbled over HST.
I started getting my first cycle ready (finding maxes , excersises etc.) when I realized that th 15s cycle for some excersises (etc isolation excersises) would start extremely low to cover the 2 week cycle. I mean even done very slow I don't think I would even break a sweat.
So I was wondering if it would make sense to shorten the micro cycles from 2 weeks to one were you reach your Rmax at the end of the week.
So like:
1 week 15s
1 week 10s
1 week 5s
1 week neg or 5s
1 week off

It would still foloow the frequency, progressive load and SD principle but in an condensed version.
Does this make sense or is there something magical behind the 2 week cylce that even a experienced weight lifter should follow.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[baby a]

You could set up a schedule like the one you prescribed.....some have approached their routines in this fashion.  But, also remeber, that as long as you are progressing load over TIME, you will be achieving your goal.  This means that some weights where increments can't be increased each training session, can be repeated once or maybe twice to achieve the same overall effect.
I think the reason the minicycles are set at 2 weeks instead of one is so that one can get a longer growth response from each rep range.

 

[Bryan Haycock]

Quote[/b] (666seth @ Mar. 23 2005,10:28)]Does this make sense or is there something magical behind the 2 week cylce that even a experienced weight lifter should follow.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

There is nothing magical about changing target rep ranges every two weeks. The two week thing is more of a way to "think" about organizing your training. After all, there needs to be some order to all of this.

There is nothing magic about the number of reps a person does. As long as the weight is heavy enough, and the tissue is responsive enough, the muscle will be stimulated to grow.

But because you must train in a progressive manner, you need always to know what you did before so you have some idea whether the weight is indeed heavy enough and whether the tissue "should be" responsive enough. Otherwise you're just guessing whether each succesive workout will provide a sufficient stimulus or not.

 

[666seth]

Well, I was just wondering if the 2 week cycle is a better way of priming your body for the heavy load on the last day of that micro-cycle or if the same can be accomplished in a 1 week cycle (if experienced in weight training).
Since this is more a scientific approach to weight training I want to make sure I set up the program in a way that would be optimum for my training goals.

I guess another way would be to just start with the two week cycle and see how it suits me.

 

[Totentanz]

I think the only reason really to stick to an 8 week scheme rather than a 4 week scheme is because you will be anabolic longer. I read that some effects don't show up until the 3rd or 4th week (or something like that) but I'm not really into this area of science...

Alternatively, for isolations, you could just wait to add them until the 10s, that way it is easier to increment them.

Anyway, I don't think there would be anything wrong with a 4 week cycle. After my next cycle, I was thinking about doing a 4 week cycle, since I'll have some stuff going on around that time that will make it hard to keep to a workout plan after the 4 weeks are up...

So if you want to do it, go ahead and try, but make sure you let us know how it goes. I'm interested to see how it works for you.