Newbie gains again??

[Scott Stevenson]

my bad ...
meant 21 DAYS (3 exercise in Loading Days one per week) VS 14 days of SD
this way we have (again I assume) some kind of re-sensitization to the stimulus (to given exercise)

Ah, OK - yes, that could very well be at play, for sure. The 3 exercise rotation just seems empirically to work out well. (This has been covered here on the board a few times now.) The idea that I have concerning it is that the longer period between using an exercise (at least in a Loading Set context) prevents short-term practice effects that could mean plateauing more rapidly (d/t neural / psychological adaptations), making the progress more representative of muscular gains (the goal).

never heard (I think I know Bryan's works quite well over the years) of measuring state of deconditioning in real life in HST
but SD calls for 12-14 days as optimal (some re-sensitization but not too much to loose too much strength)

as far as I remember - been a while - SD calls not for a full deconditioning - just for some re-sensitization to lighter loads and been able to use them effectively in new HST cycle

Yes, def. not full detraining, so to speak. As I think he mentions, the repeated bout effect can last for months, so it would be interesting to gain an understanding of the time course of it's decay in the context of muscle size loss, too.

hence we are not missing anything - FT is so complete system !

thank you again Scott for deep analysis !

Well, I've tried to put the main pieces in play, but it's not perfect of course!

You're welcome!

-S

[zmt]

topic fully analyzed and answered (in my opinion) - a big THANK YOU Scott

[Scott Stevenson]

topic fully analyzed and answered (in my opinion) - a big THANK YOU Scott

Cool. You're welcome!

-S

[U-Hulk]

Ok, here comes a long tangential story (from 21 years of bodybuilding training experience):

After the first 10 years or so of progressive training, almost NOTHING I ever did afterwards constituted almost any additional hypertrophy.

Regarding training breaks for resensitization:
Not only have I utilized the original HST-style "SD" breaks of 9-12 days once or twice a year, but last year when I hit 20 years in the gym (and 10 years of really no progress), I actually took 6 weeks off training (still went to the gym 2-3 times a week to stretch, foam roll, etc).

After returning to training there was a period of 2-3 months when even much lighter training "felt" overloading, but eventually I reached my previous workload levels. There was NO ADDITIONAL growth whatsoever from any of this. Also, it was funny to note that I really didn't lose almost any muscle mass over the 6 weeks of no training. I kept an isocaloric diet and did lots of recovery stuff, but no training of any kind.

So after the 6 week break, I was practically the same size as before, but much weaker in the gym. Then I slowly built strength back up over 2-3 months of training.

I would say that 6 weeks of no training was a bit too long. I probably would have recovered chemical messengers, CNS and connective tissues in 3-4 weeks.
Didn't lose any appreciable muscle mass (after 20 years of training naturally), but strength obviously went down because of the neural detraining effect.
My semi-arthritic joints actually got WORSE during the break (less movement and blood flow around them), but tendons and soft tissue injuries got much better.
Psychologically it was EXTREMELY difficult to commit to the 6 weeks of no training, but once I started the recovery period, it went by surprisingly smoothly.
In the future I will definitely take one 2-week break from the gym every year. So far I've only done the 9-10 day Strategic Deconditioning breaks, usually just once a year because I love training too much.

For context, I'm 6'2" and have competed around 200-205 lbs since my first show in 2006. Lifetime natural, done over 20 shows.

-------------------

So like Scott and some others in this thread have already speculated, after one has got close to their "genetic ceiling", I don't think any amount of time off will lead to additional hypertrophy beyond that genetic limit. However, the 9-14 day breaks can have a myriad of other benefits, mostly injury healing, CNS and chemical messenger recovery, rebuilding the crazy motivation to train we all had when we first started, etc.

[Scott Stevenson]

Ok, here comes a long tangential story (from 21 years of bodybuilding training experience):

After the first 10 years or so of progressive training, almost NOTHING I ever did afterwards constituted almost any additional hypertrophy.

Regarding training breaks for resensitization:
Not only have I utilized the original HST-style "SD" breaks of 9-12 days once or twice a year, but last year when I hit 20 years in the gym (and 10 years of really no progress), I actually took 6 weeks off training (still went to the gym 2-3 times a week to stretch, foam roll, etc).

After returning to training there was a period of 2-3 months when even much lighter training "felt" overloading, but eventually I reached my previous workload levels. There was NO ADDITIONAL growth whatsoever from any of this. Also, it was funny to note that I really didn't lose almost any muscle mass over the 6 weeks of no training. I kept an isocaloric diet and did lots of recovery stuff, but no training of any kind.

So after the 6 week break, I was practically the same size as before, but much weaker in the gym. Then I slowly built strength back up over 2-3 months of training.

I would say that 6 weeks of no training was a bit too long. I probably would have recovered chemical messengers, CNS and connective tissues in 3-4 weeks.
Didn't lose any appreciable muscle mass (after 20 years of training naturally), but strength obviously went down because of the neural detraining effect.
My semi-arthritic joints actually got WORSE during the break (less movement and blood flow around them), but tendons and soft tissue injuries got much better.
Psychologically it was EXTREMELY difficult to commit to the 6 weeks of no training, but once I started the recovery period, it went by surprisingly smoothly.
In the future I will definitely take one 2-week break from the gym every year. So far I've only done the 9-10 day Strategic Deconditioning breaks, usually just once a year because I love training too much.

For context, I'm 6'2" and have competed around 200-205 lbs since my first show in 2006. Lifetime natural, done over 20 shows.

-------------------

So like Scott and some others in this thread have already speculated, after one has got close to their "genetic ceiling", I don't think any amount of time off will lead to additional hypertrophy beyond that genetic limit. However, the 9-14 day breaks can have a myriad of other benefits, mostly injury healing, CNS and chemical messenger recovery, rebuilding the crazy motivation to train we all had when we first started, etc.

This is a great post, man. THANK YOU for sharing.

Have you interacted with others who have done HST enough to get an idea of any consensus as far as the effectiveness of strategic deconditioning?... I'm guessing those who think it works would continue to do the program and thus be overly represented on his board, etc.

(Very interesting stuff about not losing any size, too, after all those years of training. I don't doubt that one bit. )

-S

[U-Hulk]

Have you interacted with others who have done HST enough to get an idea of any consensus as far as the effectiveness of strategic deconditioning?...

Well, the only time I did HST was roughly 15 years ago. I just took many of the principles behind HST and continued utilizing them in my training.

For me the 9-12 day SD was kind of like an insurance policy against becoming "resistant" to training. Also, I like the idea that these breaks lower your strength (due to neural detraining) but you don't really lose muscle mass. When I was younger I always had the problem of gaining much more strength than size, which in turn led to numerous joint problems etc. So being able to get a training effect from lighter weights after a 9-10 day break was always good.

On a sidenote, the legendary Canadian coach Scott Abel has written quite a bit about utilizing 2-4 week breaks strategically to foster new growth, reset muscle fiber type, etc. He calls it "Slingshot Training" in his books and articles.

(Very interesting stuff about not losing any size, too, after all those years of training. I don't doubt that one bit. )

That was surprising to me, I figured I'd lose at least 10 lbs of muscle. But also it kind of makes sense, because I have basically been the same size for 10 years now. Gained 99% of my muscle mass during the first 10 years of training, and the last decade I've been jumping through every hoop I can think of to just gain an extra 1%.

I too strongly feel after that period of time training naturally, if you've done things mostly correct, you've made almost all the progress you'll ever make unless you start using super supplements.

I believe this is actually a relatively well established consensus among top strength coaches and experts. Bodybuilders just refuse to believe it, because all the methodology and lore is so heavily influenced by the enhanced side (where genetic limitations are much less set in stone, if one is willing to up the dose etc). But when you look at long-time natural bodybuilders, almost all of them built the majority of their muscle mass early on and compete for years staying roughly the same size.

Have you found motivation to drop in those 10 years? Do you switch the routine up for the sake of novelty? As this point, knowing that most reasonable routines will result in the same progress (lack there of) I think it's a nice time to find what's most enjoyable for oneself. Great aspect of Fortitude Training there....the constant variety keeps it from being boring.

Not really. I've always had really good motivation for bodybuilding, because building a physique and competing was just one side of why I got into it. The other side of bodybuilding for me has always been the intellectual challenge it can provide. I've coached a lot of other competitors through the years, and even though I can't seem to get much bigger myself, I'm always trying to find new ideas to use with the people I help. And I just LOVE diving into new ideas and methodologies, trying them out in practice, etc. Even if I gain zero lbs from it.

[zmt]

meanwhile Bryan posted on Borge's FB page
more researches

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23372143
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20713720


just for the sake of information