To clarify this before things get out of whack:
-I didn't co-invent HST.
-I didn't have an ounce of knowledge contributed to the formation of HST.
-I am merely, like all of us here, another guy who benefitted from Bryan's work.
"Administrator" merely means I have enough privileges to make sure the board runs smoothly and broken stuff gets fixed.
There.
As for the e-book, see the edited post above (thread starter).
Jules is an ol' HST Expert from "the golden age." His e-book is a result of the thread "Tweaking HST", I believe. He's a pretty knowledgeable guy, knows his stuff. In the book, a lot of options are mentioned, following the saying "There are no rules, only options" or something like that, which is what Proteus9 quoted when he started the tweaking thread. Not all of those will be appliecable to everyone, and none of those are probably advisable for those just getting to know HST.
As for the "HST Bible", it is pretty impossible to say what "THE" HST routine is, simply because HST is less a routine and more of a set of principles. Anything that properly applies the principles of HST is an HST routine, and will give you better results as long as you manage your training well. As long as you utilize progressive (over)loading, frequent training (chronic stimuli actually, just a means to achive proliferation of satellite cells, so whatever floats your boat), mechanical load of course, and SD, then you are pretty much in an HST routine, regardless (irregardless?
) of whether you train 3, 6, or 12 times a week, or if you increment every workout or every week, or you start of in 15's or 10's, or you do or don't use rep phases at all... you get the idea.
I guess you can say HST is all those factors, and isn't about missing the forest for the trees.
I'm pretty sure someone will ask me about this, so I better clarify it already. When I said, "regardless of whether you train 3, 6 or 12 times a week", you are probably wondering "what about CNS fatigue? Where's the proof that more is better?" and so on and so forth.
The same way as reps, or even any other factor of your training, the bottom line is how you manage it. Naturally, if you train 12 times a week, that would mean you aren't doing as much work every workout as you really would in 3x a week setup. In a standard 3x a week setup, you'd be going all out, practically. In 6, 9, or 12x a week or whatever, you simply don't. It's just a matter of breaking down your total work for the week into smaller pieces.
How can that be helpful? First, fatigue management. Second, you have more energy to do more work, because you don't have to cram so much sets or exercises in just under an hour or so. By breaking them into a lot more workouts, you can stay less fatigued, yet do the same total number of reps/sets, and perhaps even add a little more. Fatigue, after all, isn't the "hypertrophier". What is? Well... increasing and maintaining an increased level of protein synthesis, enough microtrauma (perhaps you can just name them as one, except that the first one relies a lot on diet), proliferation of satellite cells, blah blah blah (can we say mapK/Erk other voodoo
), which have nothing to do with fatigue at all.
Will breaking down the workouts be more beneficial? Hard to say. Will probably heavily depend on how you manage your workouts.
Regards,
-JV