I often hear people talk about the issue of trying out changes in training volume and frequency to find out what works best for them (are 2 sets per workout better than one? what about training the muscle twice per day? or 6 times per week? which builds more mass High reps? vs Low reps? etc.)
But the way its usually done is to switch from one full routine to another after a given period of time and compare the results when all is said and done.
To my mind this an inherently error prone way of going about it becuase your body conditions from one style to the other can vary drastically. If for no other reason that after 6 weeks of training style A, your muscles are now more toughened and your system is more fatigued than before. Plus what about changes in diet and sleep and stress? Are the conditions the exact same from month to month? if not that can really affect your results in determening which training variation really worked better?
For example say you tried 2 sets of low reps, 3 times per week for arms and added 1/4 inch. Then you switch to 4 sets twice per day, 6 times a week with reps of 8 to 10. Perhaps you then gain another 1/8 inch. Does that mean the first routine was better? not necessarily becuase as you get bigger and bigger your results will face diminishing returns. Even if you take time off for SD between changes, then when you come back, the effect of SD will throw off the results. Perhaps using the higher voume style first would have results in even MORE than a 1/4 inch gain.
So how can you achieve "Ceteris paribus" (everything else being equal) in your testing methodology? What I'm planning to do in the fall (after dieting down in the spring and summer) is to do the following on myself as a human guinea pig: Im going to pick small muscles such as the biceps (which put little stress on the overall CNS) and train each arm in a different style at the same time. Thus I pick onearm dumbell curls and one arm precher machine curls as my exercises and train each arm vastly different.
The benefit of this is that it should really distill the effects of the training styles down becuase my diet/rest/fatigue etc will all be the same over a given time frame. I can see this working well on any bodypart that you can train one side at a time, but Ill start with biceps again since it doesnt really tax the overall system even when trained frequently.
So after 6 weeks on traing one arm lower sets and frequency and the other arm with much higher volume I can just measure them and compare the relative differences.
Has anyone ever tried this before? Please share your experiences. Im excited to try this out and report back my progress.
But the way its usually done is to switch from one full routine to another after a given period of time and compare the results when all is said and done.
To my mind this an inherently error prone way of going about it becuase your body conditions from one style to the other can vary drastically. If for no other reason that after 6 weeks of training style A, your muscles are now more toughened and your system is more fatigued than before. Plus what about changes in diet and sleep and stress? Are the conditions the exact same from month to month? if not that can really affect your results in determening which training variation really worked better?
For example say you tried 2 sets of low reps, 3 times per week for arms and added 1/4 inch. Then you switch to 4 sets twice per day, 6 times a week with reps of 8 to 10. Perhaps you then gain another 1/8 inch. Does that mean the first routine was better? not necessarily becuase as you get bigger and bigger your results will face diminishing returns. Even if you take time off for SD between changes, then when you come back, the effect of SD will throw off the results. Perhaps using the higher voume style first would have results in even MORE than a 1/4 inch gain.
So how can you achieve "Ceteris paribus" (everything else being equal) in your testing methodology? What I'm planning to do in the fall (after dieting down in the spring and summer) is to do the following on myself as a human guinea pig: Im going to pick small muscles such as the biceps (which put little stress on the overall CNS) and train each arm in a different style at the same time. Thus I pick onearm dumbell curls and one arm precher machine curls as my exercises and train each arm vastly different.
The benefit of this is that it should really distill the effects of the training styles down becuase my diet/rest/fatigue etc will all be the same over a given time frame. I can see this working well on any bodypart that you can train one side at a time, but Ill start with biceps again since it doesnt really tax the overall system even when trained frequently.
So after 6 weeks on traing one arm lower sets and frequency and the other arm with much higher volume I can just measure them and compare the relative differences.
Has anyone ever tried this before? Please share your experiences. Im excited to try this out and report back my progress.