more weight lifting

newGuy12

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I have decided to increase my weight lifting from one day per week to two days per week. I will also now lower the repetitions so that I fail between 8 to 10 repetitions. This will innervate the "slow twitch" muscle fibres instead of the "fast twitch" muscle fibres. If this means that I will move slower, that is okay.

I have been lifting one day per week for a few months and have confidence that my connective tissue is now ready to take heavier weights, lower repetitions. This will be done to become bigger, more handsome, not to become faster. Any strength gained will only be seen as an extra benefit. This is to be ready to have "The Gun Show", --> to look like the movie star.

I will not take any kind of supplements at all, though. My diet will remain the same. I am sure that I will still see big gains. Also, of course, I will not use any kind of steroids, those are totally not needed and dangerous.

Even if I lose some range of motion and become slower with less stamina for punching, that is the choice I make. As far as resistance training for the legs (therapeutic work for the knees -- leg extensions and leg curls) -- they will still be done with high reps, for safety's sake.

Right now, I do this:

Therapeutic:
leg extensions -- 3 sets
leg curls -- 3 sets

Upper body:
Machine press -- 3 sets
Lat pulls -- 3 sets

I will ADD the following:
Military press -- 3 sets
Seated rows -- 3 sets

I WOULD isolate the triceps and the biceps as well, to get "The Guns", but, my deltoids group is small. I then become misshapen. Also, the exercises mentioned above DO exercise the arms a little. I am sure that I will eventually have to isolate the arms -- curls and tricep extensions.

I am excited about this, because I am lifting bigger masses now! And, I maintain control through all of the motion, I can feel my upper body gaining strength, no joke!
 

exile

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I have decided to increase my weight lifting from one day per week to two days per week. I will also now lower the repetitions so that I fail between 8 to 10 repetitions. This will innervate the "slow twitch" muscle fibres instead of the "fast twitch" muscle fibres. If this means that I will move slower, that is okay.

My advice is—don't do that. Instead, increase your weights radically, shorten your reps so you stay within your optimal leverage range, and decrease your training frequency. High intensity lifting regimes are now widely regarded as by far the most efficient (although they most demanding), and requiring the greatest recovery time. More frequent lifting of weights heavy enough to really force significant muscle growth will only delay the onset of that growth—because you can't add muscle till you've recovered from the effort/damage of the previous lifting session, and if you lift while you're trying to recover, you'll stay in hock forever.

And as far as fast/slow twitch muscles go—there's no connection between rep speed and which muscles you stimulate. Honestly, nG, the thing about slow twitch muscles is that they do not respond to overload resistance training; what they respond to is endurance training—which builds stamina but not strength. Marathoners are born to run marathons because they have an abnormally high population of slow twitch muscles; sprinters are the opposite—they have a significant predominance of fast twitch muscles—and look at marathoners and sprinters with their shirts off. A world of difference: the sprinters look like gymnasts, basically; the marathoners... not so much :rolleyes:.

Those of us with ordinary genetics can choose training regimes which promote growth of slow or fast twitch muscle groups, but if it's strength you want, you need to work on fast twitch muscles, and that means, heavy heavy weight, short but very intense training sessions, working in your strongest leverage range, and plenty of recovery time. That's going to get you way further than increasing your output and keeping yourself in recovery debt, where you never get back to the square one you need to be at in order for muscle growth to occur.
 
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newGuy12

newGuy12

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Okay, then. If you remember a while back, you counseled me this same way -- to do the VERY taxing exercises to EXTREME failure, going through a shorter range of motion.

Now, I did differ that myself, after a while. I was going through the greater range. This is my fault. I should take your advice.

These guys at the weight lifting gymnasium told me to lift more often to get bigger size. They should not lie, they have no reason to. But, they are probably just going by an older way of thinking, they may not know about the latest ideas of lifting, though they are big themselves! They should know.

Also -- in your way, you must push HARD at the end, fighting against failure! But, I often give in to the failure when the burn comes. You see, when failure comes, at that point, the exercise relies on the MIND, and my mind is not yet so strong. I go to some failure, and then think to myself, "I SHOULD HAVE PUSHED HARDER".

Because I have the tendency to give up too soon, to not push myself as would be needed for your method, I am left to choose -- either push myself to failure VERY HARD one set per week, or, perhaps, to lift more often. When it starts to hurt, it just starts to hurt. You know what I mean. It is mental then, the spirit comes into play, and I suppose that I am just not pushing myself hard enough to maximize the gains.

I'll just redouble my efforts to get the most out of ONE day per week, but hit it HARD for that one day. Even if it takes additional sets, I will do enough work to tear the fibres up so that they will grow.

It comes down to this -- what you advise seems to go against the conventional wisdom of this gymnasium. I should not doubt what you say, but, you can understand that I am being presented with some other ways from the other lifters there.

I will just continue one day per week. The benefit will also be that I will be less likely to become bored with it.
 
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newGuy12

newGuy12

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Oh, no. I *DO* wish to increase in size, and I am already. Also, I have a friend who has said something about giving grappling a try. He and I may give it a go. Upperbody strength would certainly be a plus with that, to break the hold, or keep it from getting applied to begin with.

I know that grapplers learn the techniques, the FLOW from one position to another, but I also know that it is resistive -- strength certainly comes into play.

But, no, I wish to have the bigger upper body irregardless, just for show.
 

exile

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Okay, then. If you remember a while back, you counseled me this same way -- to do the VERY taxing exercises to EXTREME failure, going through a shorter range of motion.

Now, I did differ that myself, after a while. I was going through the greater range. This is my fault. I should take your advice.

These guys at the weight lifting gymnasium told me to lift more often to get bigger size. They should not lie, they have no reason to. But, they are probably just going by an older way of thinking, they may not know about the latest ideas of lifting, though they are big themselves! They should know.

Well, it is an older approach, and it's also an approach which is, let's say, highly compatible with steroid use and/or genetic recovery advantages. Some people just are programmed to recover faster, and someone who's using anabolic chemicals will recover faster. But most people I suspect are neither steroid users nor genetically advantaged in that way. And the thing is, there's a big trade-off: more volume, less intensity. For an untrained lifter, virtually any lifting is going to seem high-intensity to their neuromuscular 'control center'. But it's been shown by innumerable physiological studies—I used to follow this stuff a long time ago—that increasing volume does not increase muscle growth, but rather muscle endurance; that strength increases come from increased muscle size and muscle size comes from progressively increased lifting intensity, i.e., overload; and that, as I say, you can have a lot of volume and low intensity, or small volume and high intensity, but you cannot have high intensity and high volume... assuming, as I say, that you're training clean.

Also -- in your way, you must push HARD at the end, fighting against failure! But, I often give in to the failure when the burn comes. You see, when failure comes, at that point, the exercise relies on the MIND, and my mind is not yet so strong. I go to some failure, and then think to myself, "I SHOULD HAVE PUSHED HARDER".

Not necessarily, nG. Going to failure for me is just a way to ensure that I can compare the results of successive training sessions; if I used 60% one week, and 90% a few weeks later training the same muscle group, and I do better the second week, that doesn't necessarily mean that I've made progress. Only if I put out the same share of effort can I conclude that more weight shifted in the same time means that gains have accrued between the two sessions. And since, so far as I can see, there's no very good way of objectively calculating what percent of effort you're using, I've always figured that you have to just bite the bullet and go for 100% effort each time, just to keep the training regime constant from workout to workout. Now, Mentzer say that you must go to failure to get the neural trigger for new muscle. But Sisco and Little disagree strenuously with this; their take is, as long as you push your envelope out by the same amount (e.g., add say 3%-5% of your previous total weight shifted in a given amount of time to each new workout schedule), you will gain. The body will add muscle on the same principle it adds callous tissue: to protect itself from irritation or stress on resources. If you make it clear to your neuranatomical sensors, by going this 3%-5% extra each workout of a given length, that you're going to be increasing the discomfort/stress burden on yourself by that much, the body will compensate by just the amount necessary to eliminate the overload discomfort. And then when you add the next 3%-5% increase the following workout, the same thing will happen. And so on. I'm inclined to agree with their model—I think the physiological basis for it is more up-to-date and realistic than Mentzer's was—so in principle, it's not really crucial that you go to total failure to get muscle growth; for me, it's just a convenient way to ensure that the amount of effort involved is consistent over time.


Because I have the tendency to give up too soon, to not push myself as would be needed for your method, I am left to choose -- either push myself to failure VERY HARD one set per week, or, perhaps, to lift more often. When it starts to hurt, it just starts to hurt. You know what I mean. It is mental then, the spirit comes into play, and I suppose that I am just not pushing myself hard enough to maximize the gains.

I understand what you're saying, nG. The great advantage of HIT is efficiency, but like anything else, you only get what you pay for, and, like interval training for anærobic fitness, there is a big downside: it's very unpleasant training. It's psychologically intimidating and extremely uncomfortable, even though the discomfort takes place within a short period of time... but no one who hasn't done it can have any idea just how long 30 seconds can be. If it's too unpleasant, you won't do it, and that's definitely worse than high-volume training. So in a sense, you should do the most efficient workout routine that you can stick with. I'd never argue about that!

I'll just redouble my efforts to get the most out of ONE day per week, but hit it HARD for that one day. Even if it takes additional sets, I will do enough work to tear the fibres up so that they will grow.

It comes down to this -- what you advise seems to go against the conventional wisdom of this gymnasium. I should not doubt what you say, but, you can understand that I am being presented with some other ways from the other lifters there.

I will just continue one day per week. The benefit will also be that I will be less likely to become bored with it.

Why not check out some of the literature on HIT—the Sisco and Little 'Power Factor' books, or whatever you can find by Mike Mentzer, or some of the other people who argue for HIT—and judge for yourself whether it makes sense or not? A lot of serious bodybuilders have sworn by it. And Mentzer, in his time, was second only to Arnold S on the pro circuit, and had the reputation for having resisted steroid use until he decided he was never going to win the big contests against AS if he stayed clean. Check it out and decide for yourself how much plausibility it has—in the end, that's probably best, eh? And good luck with your continuing training, whatever you wind up deciding!

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