Looking forward to see that. I've started doing feeder but stopped and there's barely any reviews or logs out there. Rich piana said it was the best advice he's ever given so hopefully it's true haha.
The science makes sense and I did really well with feeder sets a while back. I did a lot of medial and rear delts, like 100-200 reps at the end of every workout and my shoulders came up quite a bit. You are really only adding volume, feeding the muscle, and creating metabolic signals for growth, but not actually creating mechanical damage to the cells so you stimulate hypertrophy without digging a hole.
I alternated between Feeder sets, and Cell swelling work, and definitely stand behind them as a solid tool for hypertrophy. Also great for if you have an injury and can't really train it heavy but still want some growth.
Is that you in your Avi, if so you are looking stellar!
Im interested in trying this.
Couple of questions: do you think doubling that workout a day (once in morning, once in evening w/deload) would have the same effect, or do you think that overnight recovery is important for this process?
Someone once told me that doing full body workouts everyday will actually decrease the size of the muscle groups over time (this was an old school body builder that trained me years ago). If that statement is true, then do you think it could be detremental to gaining size (read more full) in the muscle groups? Or is this an outdated approach?
Last question: In the past, as far as past experience goes, i remember having to trick my body because of plateauing. Do you think by doing this, it could make it harder to trick those muscle groups in the future?
I know im throwing alot of questions at you and some may seam stupid questions. I appreciate you (or anyone else's) effort to answer some of them.
I think your old school buddy was just that. Old School. Nothing wrong with old school except it limits you to the basics...however the basics is where we get 90% of our progress. You can train your full body every day and grow well, you simply have to manage recovery ability. You would not want to go anywhere near failure during training, and would want to drive growth via progressive overload. With proper rest and nutrition while managing CNS and overall volume you can most definitely grow. Sooner or later you would need a break, but progress can most definitely be made...
Just think like this, you do one solid body part workout and get in 10-20 work sets, that means in a daily training you would only want to hit a body part with 1-3 work sets per session depending on intensity which ends up being 7-21 sets a week per body part... You are just spreading out the volume so that you can stimulate the muscle more frequently. It is believed all things being equal, IE volume and what not that high frequency tends to be better for growth so long as recovery ability is not surpassed.
You need to feed a muscle to make it grow though. I would not even think about this unless I was in a surplus or maintenance with a goal of leaning up via recomp.
Doing the feeder the same day is counter productive, IMHO. The feeder day is sort of an "enhanced rest day". Instead of doing off, you are moving the previously stimulated muscles, right when the body struggles to repair them, you enhance blood flow.
I noted, that I plateaued while doing full body 3-4 times a week. For me its age related, I need way more rest.
I wouldn't think it would be counter productive, you should already be signalling for recovery, and already produced higher levels of IGF, and MGF. The second workout will still shuttle nutrients into the system and will still spur on more protein synthesis. Will it have the exact same effect, not exactly, will it have less of an effect, that is up in the air.
The benefits of the 2nd day would be stimulating a 2nd large increase in protein synthesis where one would not be present otherwise without training. With doing 2 a days you are just creating 2nd large as well, but in the same day that it is already elevated... which works better? Who knows...
However with his current diet I don't really see feeder sets being very beneficial. He is eating one meal a day post training. You need nutrients in the blood to do a feeder set, otherwise all you are doing is moving a lot of empty blood around, not feeding the muscle. As we already discussed and why you are now eating throughout the day on your feeder days.
For someone doing 2 a days it might be better to do something like Heavy Upper in AM, Heavy Lower in PM then the following day do Feeder upper in AM, and Feeder Lower in PM. However if doing that the volume really needs to be managed as the frequency is going to be ridiculous and easy to go overboard with the volume in that scenario.
Still intermittent fasting on workout days (not doing it on feeder days).
Here an example of what I eat in my 3 hour window after training, at night:
View attachment 173172
-250gr tilapia fillet, baked in oven
-300gr, grilled beef (pieces)
-150gr beans
-5 scrambled eggs
-150gr peanuts (raw)
-glass whole milk
-2 bananas/ 1 apple
Not shown is a small bowl of rice, still on the stove
Good stuff! Not eating any greens? That would be my only suggestion there, add in some greens of some sort, even if just blending fresh or frozen spinach into your milk with some of your fruit listed here as a smoothie. Then you don't have to taste it, and it will not really add much volume to your stomach since blended into tiny particles.