To Shred or Get Shredded

General Music Discussion
#27

God, Doggcrapp. lol Giving me flashbacks to 20 years ago. A lot of the HIT variant routines work great if you’re pretty much dedicated to lifting and nothing else, and a little (or lot) of exogenous test in the mix makes it even better.

If you’re natty and interested in bodybuilding/general lifting, I think it pays to look at what lifters were doing (and what they looked like) in the earlier part of the 20th century, prior to the introduction of steroids. Steroids changed everything.

I’m out, gonna go read some T Nation now. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#28

We should change the title to Gym Rats, Gamers, and Guitarists. :smiley:

I would bet it even changed professional sports as well.

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#29

Lol nah. I don’t take it that seriously anymore. I don’t really do compound lifts anymore. Everything I do now is verryyyyyyy slow and to failure. Less volume more intensity, which is what Mentzer, Arthur Jones, Doggcrapp and Yates were getting at. I’ve been more so following these guys Drew Baye and Jay Vincent from Instagram and their model of the HIT training style; less volume more intensity. I haven’t made up my mind yet if it works as well as higher volume, but if I can maintain what I have going to the gym for 30 minutes every 3-5 days sign me up lol. Everyone online is trying to sell a product so it’s hard to pick out the flowers from the weeds if that makes sense. But exercise becomes a much more interesting topic if you think about it in relation to the dose and response effect as opposed to just constantly going as hard as one can 5 times a week lol

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#30

See if you
Like my new title :joy:

If not, I’ll gladly throw your idea up there haha

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#31

Wouldn’t you say it’s the opposite for HIT? From my understanding they were utilized to spend less time in the gym and workout less frequently

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#32

One thing I realized is that pullups will lean me out. And I think it has to do with the fight or flight mechanism in our bodies. It is like forcing your body by pulling your entire body weight up when climbing a mountain or you die. If you have some bulk and want to lean out definitely do pull ups to failure, use an assisted pullup machine to help go for a wider grip and to go as far in the paint as you can. It is some of that broscience see if it works for you, I always get good results from doing them. If you can weighted is even better, but don’t go to crazy. Definitely utilize the pull up machine though cause you can maximize the pump like crazy by doing super high reps to failure.

Yea I like it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#33

I see what you’re saying about pull-ups feeling like flight or fight. But I don’t think the fight or flight response can be directly related to building muscle. Is there research behind this?

Glad you like
My name. You get credit since it came from your idea! Lol

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#34

no idea but i noticed it over a period of kind of doing them when i never really had, and noticed i was losing weight. like i said broscience try it see what you can get out of it. if nothing else it is a dang good exercise if you use a wide grip to hit them lats.

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#35

Well, if you’re really doing HIT like it was intended, you’re supposed to push to failure every session, though with minimal volume. And then the crazy stretching in DC and such was purportedly to induce hyperplasia, I believe (though last I recall there was no actual evidence this could occur in humans). All this stuff can take a pretty extreme toll (physically and mentally) on someone versus a plain old 3-5 day split, even if it technically takes less time to do.

That said, I believe everyone’s just got to experiment and see what works for them (hey, kinda like picking motions!)

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#36

ive had a pull up bar in my folks garage and have been doing them for a long time. God bless the pull up it’s a great movement. If i could only do one exercise for the rest of my life it might be the pull up!

#37

That’s the thing. Everyone puts their own spin on, “how it was intended,” so currently it’s twice a week, 30 minutes tops, full body or close to it, one set to absolute failure. I really like the way it feels. Minimal rest periods. Very slow reps. It’s just hard to say if it works for multiple reasons.; before I got bored of the high gear lifting life (i did compete in bodybuilding once as well), i think i was close to my natural genetic limit, and I don’t care to eat all the food anymore! Not to turn this into a bodybuilding forum, but I also have decent genetics for building muscle so it’s hard to say what works and what doesnt lol

This video is more of what I do now. Rosanna - YouTube

I hope it works because I actually enjoy working out like this. Slower, more intense, feels more connected IMO

Edit: WOW i did not mean to paste a link to Rosanna but enjoy that tune anyway! here the other link lol

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#38

If you enjoy it, that’s awesome and worth a lot. Whether it works would require monitoring some metric, and that’s where I feel HIT gets a little weird - you can’t accurately measure intensity. So, if you’re trying to maintain, I guess watch that your measurements aren’t decreasing? Maybe every once in a while go for a near max in one of the powerlifts to see that strength isn’t taking too much of a hit? I don’t know.

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#39

I worked out with a guy that could do the fastest hack squat machine explosion i had ever seen. he would rep the hell of it fast, and i use to ask him, dude doesnt that burn hurt? i think he could just mentally block out the lactic acid build up, dude was one of my main inspirations when i lifted. his intensity was over 9000.

You guys ever seen that crazy russian olympic powerlifter do that tabata routine? This guy is like superhuman.

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#40

I see what you’re saying but the logic behind the intensity is going to true muscular failure. By doing this, supposedly, you stimulate all the muscle fibers triggering growth. And there are certain markers for knowing you’ve reached failure. But yeah I hear ya it’s all tough to follow

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#41

lol Talk about physical extremes! I personally only lift stuff when I am getting paid hahaha

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#42

This is true for all of the barbell / dumbbell moves, but I had good experiences with cables / machines. Obviously not the “true” program at that point, though!

The best thing about this program I think is learning what true failure feels like, at a weight range that shouldn’t be causing injuries (with the rest pause / myoreps, I remember being at about 8 reps in the first cluster of most exercises). So, I developed an appreciation of not ego lifting, and emphasizing the stretch component of eccentrics.

Definitely! I was lucky enough to start at a gym on base with lots of motivated Marines, so the gym equipment was honestly pretty good. I haven’t had access to a place like that in a while, but I might in the fall through my spouse’s job. Looking forward to that!

For sure! A reason why I started was to strengthen / rehab a pretty bad case of golfer’s elbow I had, so I would track lat / elbow flexion exercises really well.

I developed a bad habit of reading every T nation article I could at the office, lol. I still go there from time to time to get ideas, which I’m actually implementing now! One of them being, coincidentally, the “Dante Row”:

I am attempting with my knees “free-floating” though, as I’m always hyper aware of knee injuries.

This might be a subconscious thing about body to weight ratio exercises. Very common in climbing from what I’ve experienced.

I might be in a strange place for lats, but wide grip doesn’t feel to hit them at all. I swear I have some strange “non-active” lat syndrome. Best thing for me has been rounded back closest grip possible for a stretch, or “Kayak rows” for feeling a squeeze that almost cramps me, lol:

Pretty sure this is what Arnold said!

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#43

He said “I’ll be back” not “I’ll train back”

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#44

Right, I was stubborn and wanted to “do” the program (or “not” do the program since I am all-or-nothing). Relying only on machines and dumbbells, I would have run out of compound exercise to swap when I plateaued on a particular lift. That’s probably the lamest excuse ever for not doing DC though haha I do miss those days. Too bad about my lifting partner :frowning:

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#45

Yeah I have problems hitting my pecs with bench, and the only things that seem to work are decline bench, decline pushups, over one shoulder heavy as you can tricep pull down (ghetto weighted dips if no dip machine), and this machine which i probably wont find ever again, was an old school bench press machine that was split apart but each hand you could freely move instead of in a fixed position like most are these days, of course you could just use the cables and put a bench inbetween two to get similar results. Some people are just different, that is why once you go through a few years of training some basic stuff with the barbell, start doing all the machines, and see if you can find other exercises that work better for your body.

Haha!

#46

To add to that list, landmine chest presses (prayer presses as I call them) and a lot of variations of pushups such as pseudo-planche pushups, pike pushups and eventually hand stand pushups. A well done pushup with a lot of time under tension for your chest is incredibly effective.