good post. unfortunately, there aren't enough posts like this here - legitimate criticism on HST. and one can find elsewhere, in other forums, were they do injustice with HST, although it seems the know very little and never tried it.
HST deserves, as any great concept, to be criticized. here's a summary of lyle mcdonald's critique (its long, but should be available here for noobs. imo):
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">To one degree, I think HST may simply be ONE WAY of formalizing the rules Bryan has developed in terms of hypertrophy in terms of frequency, volume, intensity, etc. Clearly, to train a bodypart 3X/week, you have to be submaximal most of the time. Now, left to their own design, most hardheaded lifters will screw it up. By forcing the specific weight progression of HST, you sort of save lifters from their own propensities and psychologies...
...It also builds in tension progression into the system, since you're always increasing the weights. In that altogeher too many bodybuilders never add weight to the bar, formalizing weight increases is one way to get them to do what they should be doing in the first place...
...If you used a classic Heavy/light/medium and progressed the heavy workout each week, you'd also be progressing the light and medium workouts (to a far lesser degree because of the way the percentages work). Progressive tension overload + sufficient frequency without the artificial weight progression of HST.
</div>
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">SD does not define HST.</div>
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Q:
Do you think there is any advantage (in terms of hypertrophy) to
HST
vs.
full body 3x a week stopping a rep or two short of failure, adding weight where you can?
A:
I know I've adressed this before but I seem to have used much of my hostility today reaming out Kelly and I need to stall before riding the bike cuz it's going to suck.
Bryan's basic premise is that 'progressive tension overload' (plus some ancillary stuff) stimultes growth. Ergo he set up the program to have a weight increase at every workout.
The problem is that, in order to do this, you MUST start very submaximally. It's the only way to guarantee a weight increase at every workout, by starting with pansy ass weights.
Now, this gets into a separate debate: is say 50% of your previous best 10RM sufficient to stimulate growth or adaptation? Noting that it's incorrect to look at it on an acute single workout kind of thing, we're looking at the cumulative effect of several workouts in a row.
This also ties into the SD thing, with the idea being that 50% is now a tension overload because of the deconditioning. A lot of if's going on in there.
You can draw an analogy to endurance training. We basiclaly know that, once your fitness is X, you don't get any impact on anything if you are below some threshold %age of X. You may get active recovery, you may get some type of mild benefit, but you don't get fitness gains.
The same should basically hold for mass gains. If the tension threshold to stimulate growth is X, there should be some threshold %age of X below which you don't stimulate jack crap.
Hell, even the HG guys never start lower than about 80% of previous bests, ramping up over 2-4 weeks and then trying to set PR's at whatever rep range they are working in.
And now I've lost my train of thought on all of this. I guess my point being that I have trouble seeing the value of the very low %age workouts. Until you get to some threshold level of your previous best, I doubt you are doing anything in terms of stimulating growth (going that light may have value from relearning the movement, breaking back in after a layoff, or whatever).
i think a lot of it was practicality, knowing the mindset of the typical bodybuilder (who is either trying to go all out at every workout) he had to force tehm to use submaximal weights. Knowing also that all too many bodybuilders never add weight to the bar, he wanted to force a weight increase. Also, knowing tht most people will screw it up if you leave them to their own devices, it was a good idea to make it very regimented. Even tehre, look at the HST board, people insist on finding new and creative ways to muck up a rather simple system.
Of course, there were other issues, making sure they could maintain sufficient frequency (every other day) which also means submaximal workouts, etc.
Bringing us around to your question because you can implement some of the above priciple without using the exact HST methodology. You can readily train full body 3X/week as long as you don't try to go all out at every workout. Look at any 5X5 interpretation or Pendlay's stuff or a lot of approaches to training.
I guess the question is whether adding weight at every workout is required for growth? Empirical experience says a resounding hell no. Do you need to add weight at some point? Absolutely. Short of starting with pansy weights, or rank beginners, expecting a weight (or rep) increase at every workout when you're using semi-challenging loads is wholly unrealistic.
secondarily, if needing to add weight at every workout means starting with totally useless loading, are you gaining more from adding weight at each wrkout than you're losing from starting with useless loading? And, related to that, is the detraining you're going to get from working so submaximally going to hurt you even more.
I think if you have someone who has trouble knowing when to increase weight or hold back in the gym (i.e. typical hardhead), HST might be superior only in that it saves them from their own bad habits. If they are required to follow a certain progression on loads and stop at a given rep count, you stop them from going all out at every workout and hampering the frequency issue.
If they have nough self control to keep a rep or two in the tank, add weight when it gets easy, I'm not so sure HST would be necessarily superior. As per that other thread, old timey bodybuilders trained that way all the time, 3X/week, full body stopping short of failure except once every week or every 2 weeks, they'd go all out and have a PR/record day. Then a lot of submax work to a new peak.
</div>
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">One of Bryan's premises, as I recall is that HST should allow you to continue growing without having to continually keep adding weight to the bar. So instead of hitting 200, then 210, then 220 then 230 and having to increase continuously, it's a more gradual progression over many cycles.
So let me pull some made up numbers out of my butt. Say that with the SD you detrain and lose 5% of your msucular gains but the tension threshold for further growth (or however you want to conceptualize it) goes down by 10% (I can't even make up a reason this would occur, this is jsut me wanking theoretically). That is, the tension threshold for growth has dropped more than the amount of size you've lost. Under those conditions, I could see lower loads than previously stimulating new growth. Except that I don't see mechanistically how it can occur at this point.
Except that reminds me of some weird comment I saw just the other day in an exercie physiology book, something about how strength changed with eithe rtraining or detraining. Reminds me that I need to go delve into that some more.</div>
Lyle</div>
)
