nutting out frequency

B

brisbanemick

New Member
I have been through a few HST cycles and follow the principles to a T from start to finish.
I love it. It makes complete sence and my strength and size results are a clear indication of smart training.
Now, I understand the principle of frequency, hitting the same body part 3 X a week to accomodate for a more positive training environment so long as we save CNS fatigue.
I have tried one cycle in the past where I took every set to muscular failure as an experiment and found mid 10's that this was disaster. I had to SD again, plus the shooting pains were incredible!
...never again!
But, this is the question. If we continue to train without hitting muscular failure, hence, saving CNS fatigue, wouldn't that produce even better results?
I know there are some fellas here who hit the same muscle group more than 3X a week. How do you view your results by upping the frequency?
I have decided to mix my next cycle up a little for another experimental factor.
This time I plan on doing my compound lifts only twice a week, and my compounds have always been a basic combo of;
squat
bench
supinated grip lat pulls
bent over rows
I am going to keep these compounds for my coming cycle, but the change I am incorporating is an upper body isolation system consisting of very strict, slow movement only working in 15's and 10's.
The exercises I have chosen here are EZ bar curls followed by tri extensions followed by decline flys followed by lat raises. All these 4 exercises are to be suppersetted of up to 4 sets in the 15's and 5 sets in the 10's.
I plan on doing this routine twice a week also.
BUT!...as I have the facility to do my Iso training at home, I was thinking about doing this routine 3 or 4 times a week, keeping in mind that muscular failure is never met and periodic increments are still met.
Now, the reason I inquire about frequency to this level is because a certain friend of mine was released from prison a while back after doing a nine and a half year term. That's not important, but this is...all he did was train. He is a true ectomorph in structure and trained sometimes up to 3 hours a day because he "felt" his body needed the extra work.
From being a skinny little runt, he was able to transform himself into a 97kg, 8% B/F machine.
It makes me wonder about the "paranoier" of "overtraining"
He mentioned the same to me, that he was just carefull of never hitting muscular failure.
Also, look at that Tookie Williams they executed in the states a couple of weeks back. How's the size of him. You can't say he had the best facilities to maintain that type of physique being on death row for 24 years.
As my mate told me, they had taken away all their weight, but they still found ways to train. These guys have not got the best diets or are available to protein supplement etc but still achieve awesome results.
Just got me thinking that's all.
What are your views as opossed to frequency?
 
yes the more frequent you train the better results you would get from the higher anabolic state. But what you have to be careful is calories. With such high freq traininger 12-15x a week( I've tried it) it is REALLY hard to eat enough to grow. I found a sweet spot of 5x week with around 3500cals a day that i can grow optimally on. If your stomach can handle all the food needed for super sick high freq training then go for it, otherwise try to find a sweetspot

pzhang
 
Great Post!!!!!

These are great real world examples of questions that I have also wondered as well. Like you said earlier. These guys in prison are great example of how not eating a lot of calories, not enought protein and from what we would think is overtraining and still grow???

I would love to see the rational or science behind this!

It just goes to show you that you dont have to have 1 to 1.5 grams of protein like FLEX mag or others say you need!
 
yes very interesting i train with my brother-in-law he eats hardly any protein(perhaps one meat portion per day),mainly carbs and fats,and hes packing on the muscle(naturally),i know theres genetics but if theres little protein available how does he grow so well,i tell you what it stinks i eat verywell for the most part and train equally as hard but i gain very slowly compared to him,son of a b~@#/. :D

i must admit if you train more often you do get better results
i just couldnt do it with my job the calorie expenditure would make it prohibitive
 
In response to Noobie's comments that you need to eat a lot of calories to gain weight when training full body 5 times per week, conversely can you expect to lean up fairly well by training this way and consuming around maintenance level calories?
 
Yeah, I just started my 8x/wk cycle today, and I plan on eating around maintenance for the 15's and 10's and then bulking for 5's and post-5's... I expect some decent results.
 
Colby, do you think you'll be able to handle 8 weeks of that?

somewhere on the board there was a long discussion that leanning out works well with high freq training, but the best way to get those results were to avoid CNS fatigue while keeping the freq high and medium volume, which means it'd be more beneficial to lean towards the end of an HST cycle with some addition cardio work while eating maintenance to slight calorie deficit.

Kiwi yup, cutting works with high freq while eating on maintenance, but just as i mentioned to colby, depending on your conditioning, it'd be better to train with higher loads/less reps to lessen CNS fatigue so you can train more often to burn more calories.


there were a lot more things that Dkm and Jules had mentioned to me that pertained to nutrition for cutting, so remember that it's not only about calories used vs calorie intake, it's also about the type and the timing of calories combined with HST styleish training that will give you the best results for cutting.

pzhang
 
I think I should be good to go with it. I mentioned the 8x/wk cycle a few weeks ago. I plan on doing MWF compounds AM/PM split with isolations on tuesdays and thursdays, weekends are rest. I'm 20 years old, so my threshold of handling fatigue is pretty decent I suppose. I was going to just bulk through the entire cycle, but I want to get ahead on leaning out since I have a 21st birthday, Las Vegas trip, and Atlantic city trip near the end of the cycle.
 
brisbanemick the thing with guys in prison beleive it or not it is easy to get hold of steroids.im not saying your freind was on them but a lot of guys are :confused:
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (colby2152 @ Jan. 04 2006,3:37)]I think I should be good to go with it.  I mentioned the 8x/wk cycle a few weeks ago.  I plan on doing MWF compounds AM/PM split with isolations on tuesdays and thursdays, weekends are rest.  I'm 20 years old, so my threshold of handling fatigue is pretty decent I suppose.  I was going to just bulk through the entire cycle, but I want to get ahead on leaning out since I have a 21st birthday, Las Vegas trip, and Atlantic city trip near the end of the cycle.
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ahhh yes I remember those days....spring break trips and special trips with the guys.

Vegas and atlantic city...if you are like any other man..it will be tuna and egg whites for month..hehe.

Have fun this post just reminded me of the running days!!!

worship.gif
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (brisbanemick @ Jan. 03 2006,2:34)]This time I plan on doing my compound lifts only twice a week, and my compounds have always been a basic combo of;
Click to expand...
The thing I find weird about this thread is that everyone is advocating greater frequency subject to staying away from muscle failure...but you are actually going to reduce the frequency of your compound lifts?

If you want to experiment with frequency i would go for increasing the frequency of your compound lifts before trying out this isolation idea. I absolutely love going 6 a week full body although it gets harder towards the heavy fives just because it's harder to stay away from failure. I keep the volume low (1 set for 15s and 10s, 2 for fives and beyond) to allow for the greater frequency.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers

Rob
 
Rob,

Well, I increased the frequency of my compounds from 3x/week to 3x/week with the AM/PM split giving me the advantage of increased amount of exercises. Ex: leg press in the morning, squats in the evening. I am picking up Fausto's idea of doing the isolations on off days such as Tuesdays and Thursdays which makes a total of 8x/wk.

-Colby
 
Ah, I wasn't referring to your workout colby but that described in the initial post.

Yours sounds like a killer routine!
 
It's killer already, and I haven't even begun the AM/PM split! Perhaps that is because I just came off a 17 day SD.
wow.gif


And to the original poster.. up your frequency of compounds to at least 3x/week if you can.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (robefc @ Jan. 04 2006,5:34)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] (brisbanemick @ Jan. 03 2006,2:34)]This time I plan on doing my compound lifts only twice a week, and my compounds have always been a basic combo of;
Click to expand...
The thing I find weird about this thread is that everyone is advocating greater frequency subject to staying away from muscle failure...but you are actually going to reduce the frequency of your compound lifts?
If you want to experiment with frequency i would go for increasing the frequency of your compound lifts before trying out this isolation idea. I absolutely love going 6 a week full body although it gets harder towards the heavy fives just because it's harder to stay away from failure. I keep the volume low (1 set for 15s and 10s, 2 for fives and beyond) to allow for the greater frequency.
Just my thoughts.
Cheers
Rob
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Yes mate, you are right.
I thought about this yesterday when I was in the gym. Initially, I was looking at the 2 compound days in the gym, then the iso work at home to accomodate my timetable better with work...but, have decided to arrange my timetable to suit the 3X compounds in the gym and do my iso training at home every other day except Sunday.
3X compounds, 3X iso.
I don't know what I was thinking dropping a compound, that thought was in reverse. If any, it should be dropping the iso day..but got the timetable sussed now. This will bring my workout time down to no more than 40 mins a session, so no problem.

Plus, I just came off a 21 day SD!! Talk about SORE!
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (faz @ Jan. 04 2006,5:17)]brisbanemick the thing with guys in prison beleive it or not it is easy to get hold of steroids.im not saying your freind was on them but a lot of guys are :confused:
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Yeah, I thought about this a bit, but even with the gear I don't think they can still smash in over 4000 cals a day for it to be really effective.
I asked my mate about this, about gear getting through the prison system, and because it is very corrupt, he mentioned that "anything else" was avaiable through the system, but gear was definatly a no go.
See, in Australia in most prisons, all weights have been taken off the inmates and even a lot have banned protein powders as well. Prisoners were just getting way to big and strong to handle, even still, as old mate said...there are methods to train of course. But the smuggling of gear through the system was something they were/are very tight on for obvious reasons.

Going back to Tookie Williams. 24 years in Max Security on the row would make it very challenging to train and be on an effective cycle.

As I mentioned above, a lot of people are paranoid about the overtraining bit, and traditional splits see the same body part only trained once a week and still with decent results. Us here understand the relevance to hitting the muscle group 3X a week for better results, so quite simply, we can keep providing ourselves with a more positive training response with even more sets/more frequent workouts.
We can look at it this simple..if you train useing the big compounds, lift big, eat big..the body will have no choice but to adapt and grow big.
All I'm ranting on about is that I believe we can train as much as we like with as many sets as we feel right with just saveing CNS fatigue to get even better results.

Overuse, joint pain, tendonitis, all these can play a part in overtraining the body, but if one learns to understand ones own physical capabilities, then I think muscular overtraining is hard to achieve.

More sets, higher frequency = better results?.mmm, I think it must.
 
I wonder about frequency. I've done well upping to 5-6x week full body just in the fact that i can get away with alot more diet wise. If i cheat really bad, that full body workout i did earlier really knows how to suck up those calories in the right areas! :)

But on DKM's board they show studies showing that more than 2-3x week really doesn't show much of an increase.

Makes me wonder, after that i dropped back to 3xweek frequency, but do miss those short workouts of the higher frequency.
 
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