I think this thread has lead away from the tenets of HST and is mixing in other techniques. That is fine. Let's just not fool ourselves into thinking that that is still HST and then, when you fail, start whining on the other boards that HST does not work. To address this issue, I am putting some quotes below that I lifted verbatim from The HST Handbook. Like them or not. Agree with them or not. Just recognize that a deviation from this disqualifies whatever it is from being along the principles of HST.
As a general rule of thumb, you should increase volume only if you are never sore, you
are never tired after your workouts and you are not growing despite steadily gaining weight.
Obviously if you are not gaining weight at all, that is a diet issue and not an issue of volume.
No routine is going to magically put muscle on you without the necessary calories and protein
to build the muscle. On the other hand, you would want to maintain volume if you are slightly
sore after workouts most of the time, you are tired enough at night to sleep well but not so
tired that you are losing the desire to lift and your muscles are noticeably fuller. Lastly, you
would want to decrease volume if you are tired most of the time but still don't sleep well,
notice any sort of strain in your joints or other over-use pain, strength levels are plummeting
and if you notice your immune system seems very poor.
Overtraining or overreaching is not something that we want to do in HST. This tactic is
one that improves performance, not hypertrophy. As such, be mindful to keep volume low
enough to avoid this. Many people try to increase volume above what they need to grow in
an effort to improve their gains, but the reality is that the minimum volume necessary to grow
is going to be more effective than using the maximum volume you can handle. If you ever get
to the point where you are truly overtrained, a simple nine day SD is not sufficient to alleviate
the symptoms of overtraining.
Totz then has this to say about using lighter weights (typically in the first week of any given rep range cycle.)
Why am I starting out with less in the 10s than I finished with in the 15s? And in the 5s as well, you say?
This is called zig-zag and is totally fine. The main thing here is that we want to be
progressing over the course of the cycle. Just because you lifted 77 kg for 2 sets of 15 reps
on Friday does not mean that 65 kg for 2 sets of 10 on Monday will be totally useless for
hypertrophy. The way that HST is setup, we are staying far enough ahead of the curve that
your muscles will not become conditioned to the loads so fast that this is a problem.
Additionally, this can be beneficial as a brief period of recovery after lifting your RM the
previous Friday.
What about weeks seven and eight? That depends. It is recommended in the original
HST articles to do negatives where possible. For most people who don't have a training
partner, negatives are not feasible for most lifts. So you do have a few options here. You
could keep using your 5 rep max for the next two weeks, as that load is heavy enough that it
will still cause growth for a good couple of weeks.
Or you can attempt to continue incrementing each exercise beyond your 5 rep max
each workout. You will most likely have gained strength over the course of your HST cycle,
unless you are eating like a sparrow, and will now be able to lift more for 5 reps than you were
when you tested your maxes prior to the cycle. So if you have been increasing the load by a
couple kilograms each workout, then the workout after your 5 RM session, you could try
adding another couple kilograms to your lifts and see what happens. In doing this, you will
eventually be unable to increase the load further, which will mean that you just found your
new 5 RM. And that's great since then you can use that new 5 RM to build your next cycle.
The 9 day SD referred to above I personally prefer to call the passive SD. You do nothing. When you are zig-zaging, I refer to this as the active SD. You are lifting enough weight to stimulate growth but also allowing your muscles to recover from lifting at their rep max. Science has proved that there is very little in improved hypertrophy between lifting at 65% of ones 1 rep max and 85% of one's 1 rep max, even when keeping the total reps the same. By lifting less, you are allowing your muscle to recover from a beating but still stimulating growth. In this regard it may seem that HST is closer to taking a page from the HIT method then from the max effort guys. In reality, it is taking the best that science has been able to prove and putting it all together and calling it HST.
