Lots of rest

TheCSWFighter

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I remember reading an article awhile back about this guy who was around 185 pounds 5'11 and was pound for pound one of the strongest people in the world. I can't remember all his lifts but he was a powerlifter. They had an outline of his routine which was he'd do two sets of each exercise and about 1-2 exercises per body part. Such as standing barbell curls, deadlifts, squats, bench press, shoulder press, etc. The first set would be 40% of his max for 2 reps and the second set would be somewhere around 90% of his max for 1-2 reps.

He would do one workout for the weak and hit all the exercises in one session. then he would take a week off and workout the next week. So it was a every other week kind of thing. They explained he did this in order to make sure he had completely recovered. Now I do know that most people including myself look at that and say "screw that". I wouldn't feel right doing on day of working out every other week let alone once a week.

However, there have been times where I have fallen off and taken a week off and then gotten back into it and have had significant gains. If I am working out consecutivly for 8 weeks I'll normally take that week off. Well most rescently I was in the gym three weeks ago and benched 225 and barely got 2 reps. Then I stopped lifting for those three weeks and didn't eat all that great but it wasn't all that bad. I went back to the gym yesterday upset with myself that I hadn't gone in awhile and ended up putting up 245 for 2 reps and felt I could do 250 for 2 reps. I decided to call it a day at 245 though.

The only thing I supplement with is multivitamins but I've been slacking with that to. So I think the could be a couple of reasons for this. It could either be all that rest let me recoup all the way. Or it could be because I had lifted very hard for 2 years and then lifted off and on for awhile and then when at college I didn't even walk into a wieght room for 6 months. I'm fairly tempted to try to look into this a tad bit more but I just don't think I'll stick with the lifting if I do it once every other week due to me having the tendency to fall off the map as of lately. Thoughts?
 
Beelzebub

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only one way to find out for sure brutha, try it. personally, i don't have the mental fortitude to hit the gym once a week (much less every OTHER week) and be satisfied. i'm sure there's something to it though. and you're right, after a scheduled week off, i always come back stronger ready to kill sh!t.

OTOH, this guy may be one of those genetic freaks and comparing yourself to him could be your downfall. nickw can probably add 50lbs to his bench by doing pushups for a month, lol.
 

TheCSWFighter

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only one way to find out for sure brutha, try it. personally, i don't have the mental fortitude to hit the gym once a week (much less every OTHER week) and be satisfied. i'm sure there's something to it though. and you're right, after a scheduled week off, i always come back stronger ready to kill sh!t.

OTOH, this guy may be one of those genetic freaks and comparing yourself to him could be your downfall. nickw can probably add 50lbs to his bench by doing pushups for a month, lol.

Haha exactly why I'm very skeptical. I would never compare myself to a dude who is pound for pound one of the strongest people in the world and what works for him may not work for everyone else. However I may try something like this where I do one day then 8-10 days off a couple of times and see where it gets me. But right now I'm just trying to get back into the grand scheme of things and I'm not at that point where I feel I need to change anything up. Needless to say the 20 lbs increase was a more than pleasant surprise. I was expecting to be weaker going into the gym that day.
 

Ichidan

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The one workout per week plan sounds like a pretty crappy program to me. Even if you are a powerlifter, i believe that you have to think of yourself and train as an athlete. What athlete trains for their sport once per week? If you are in good shape it is reasonable to be able to perform some sort of a workout every day and that is without drugs. Sometimes you need more rest when you feel like crap and those are the weeks you take it easy with less volume, less intensity or assistance work. The only time off that i take is about a week after a competition i dont touch a weight, and then dont squat at all for a full month after a meet. Remember that the ability to recover has alot to do with whether or not you are in shape. You just cannot get adequate time under tension or volume with one workout per week.
 

TheCSWFighter

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The one workout per week plan sounds like a pretty crappy program to me. Even if you are a powerlifter, i believe that you have to think of yourself and train as an athlete. What athlete trains for their sport once per week? If you are in good shape it is reasonable to be able to perform some sort of a workout every day and that is without drugs. Sometimes you need more rest when you feel like crap and those are the weeks you take it easy with less volume, less intensity or assistance work. The only time off that i take is about a week after a competition i dont touch a weight, and then dont squat at all for a full month after a meet. Remember that the ability to recover has alot to do with whether or not you are in shape. You just cannot get adequate time under tension or volume with one workout per week.

Yes but your ability to recover also has alot to do with the intensity of ones workout. I'd say hittin your one rep max is fairly intense although when I used to do olympic wieghtlifting we'd do around 85% of our 1rm for almost every exercise we did about 3 times a week. I think it also has alot to do with other things such as testoterone levels, nutrition, daily stresses, sleep, and the goals you have set for yourself. For all I know this workout was designed to meet his scheduled needs.

I highly doubt this program is for me considering I am still young and the most I'll need to recover if I go real hard is 4 days. The one body part per day program is alot like this however it's just spread out through out the week with more volume. Many can look at that and say "Well why not do the one day of lifting and do cardio the rest of the week?" But we all know that lifting has an effect on t-levels and gh-levels so that simply wouldn't due. So of course I'd prefer the one body part per day HOWEVER, you do work muscles such as shoulder in many different exercises involving movements to strengthen the chest or back. So maybe they see this as giving those muscles enough time to recover? But then again it takes smaller muscle groups less time to recover than larger ones.

All in all it's not a terrible idea and there is some reasons behind it. I am not asking "Hey is this a revoulutionary style of training?" I'm just a bit curious on what kind of progress one could make on a scheme such as this against other ways of training. The only real way to find out is to test it out. And if anything it will help me understand my body better if it does work. Maybe I'll need more rest in between workouts. I highly doubt two weeks of rest though.
 

Ichidan

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I agree that the ability to recover is based alot on intensity, however most powerlifters using the conjugate system are able to do two max effort days per week without any real recovery issues. The other thing that i see wrong with this workout scheme is that it neglects various lifting methods. It only incorporates the max effort method, lifting at 90% or more of ones max. The repitition method and the dynamic method are completely neglected. I guess if anaerobic conditioning was of no importance to you and you had an absolutely hectic schedule, then something like this could be used as a last resort. However you would absolutely need to change the max effort exercises each time in order to not be completely stagnant.
 

TheCSWFighter

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I agree that the ability to recover is based alot on intensity, however most powerlifters using the conjugate system are able to do two max effort days per week without any real recovery issues. The other thing that i see wrong with this workout scheme is that it neglects various lifting methods. It only incorporates the max effort method, lifting at 90% or more of ones max. The repitition method and the dynamic method are completely neglected. I guess if anaerobic conditioning was of no importance to you and you had an absolutely hectic schedule, then something like this could be used as a last resort. However you would absolutely need to change the max effort exercises each time in order to not be completely stagnant.
Yea definatly. There is a huge lack of diversity of exercises, rep schemes, etc. I am kind of curious however if maybe there isn't a huge need for different rep schemes, methods, and exercises because of the time taken off that your body is almost unprepared when you workout the next time. However that is one subject my knowledge is not extensive in. But yea, there are much better routines out there for powerlifting, bodybuilding, etc.
 

TheCSWFighter

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Well I started testing something like this out back on December 24th. I've been a little bit reckless with it but all in all whatever I'm doing is working. Granted I'm coming off a long hiatus with the weights. Prior to this I've made sure to get myself back into the routine of lifting weights so these long rest periods are unheard of when it comes to me. The longest time I've taken off for a muscle group when consistently training is 4 days maximum. I've just made sure to listen to my body with this routine.

December 24th:
Smith Machine Bench Press: 185x8, 200x5 (accelerate to top causing bar to fly a few inches out of hands)
215/3, 220/2, 225/2 (performed regularly on smith machine)

January 5th:
Smith Machine Bench Press: 225/6, 235/4, 240/3, 245/2

January 16:
Smith Machine Bench Press: 245/4, 250/3, 255/1, 260/1.

I know I was somewhat reckless with the weight increments but I felt I could do them. One thing however I have not been doing which I will begin to do is getting in a warm up set with chest. In between work out days I'll do upwards of 200 push ups every other day just for the hell of it. Today I've done around 300. Gradually increasing the push up reps.

I know I was fairly sloppy laying this out but I didn't really expect much progress at first. I do acknowledge smith machine is easier than regular bench due to the lack of stabilizers being forced to work. Once I get up to 300lbs on the smith machine then I'm going to switch over to DB bench. This is just an experiment.

The only supplements I've been taking are a multi-vitamin and whey protein shake after I lift.
 

TheCSWFighter

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PS- I'm crediting muscle memory for the ridiculous pound increments. Not sure how the hell I'm putting up so much more each workout but I'll just credit me getting back into a routine after a long time the reason.
 

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