FT Questions....

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey Dr Stevenson


Thank you very much for your responses - let me be one of the many to say it's really humbling to have someone at your level take the time out to answer what can at times be juvenile or asinine questions


Understood your points on the load selection - can and will do


Isolation movements for chest on loading sets? Hooo boy - this is going to be a difficult one for me to do - just mentally it's going to be difficult to move away from heavy pressing - but I trust your judgement and will give it a shot in this next blast once this tummy but has worked it's way out of my system


I was suggesting the high reps for pump sets simply based on the fact that I've found with experience straight sets in that rep range actually donjust that help create a crazy pump in the target muscle - although since as the book suggests hitting muscular failure isn't the goal with pump sets I'll add in techniques such as 5s in the hole drop sets 21s etc

For the isolation movements given what I have in my gym I was thinking of variations of cable chest presses with a focus on the hold in the contracted position to really feel the muscle so it would t be a flue nor would it a press in the truest sense it would be something of a flue press - does that approach make sense?

Since my dumbbell a only go upto 55lbs I was also thinking of adding bench bands I picked up from elite fts on dumbbell flye movements to make them mor challenging and the loading more appropriate - and finally I do have a seated converging chest press that maxes out at 100kg - I've already maxed this out at 22 reps with the stack so am thinking of adding bands for extra resistance here as well that's my plan of attack

Will keep the rep range in the 10-12 range as You've suggested - progressive overload has always been a priority for me but sometimes in the past I've gotten overzealous and made jumps too fast and too much of a jump but the moment I knew in the back of my head that I have to hit 15 reps sense would conquer my over zealousness and the increase would be 2.5lbs instead of 10 or 15 - I'll just have to be more disciplined with it

I do rotate exercises for loading and MR I have a selection of 3 I keep for each MR and each Loading movement per blast. The ones that are still going strong at the end of an last are retained for the next blast the ones that are burnt out are done away with and substituted for their respective loading type i.e. In some cases the exercise is still progressing in an MR but has stalled in a loading set so it'll stay in my MR section but be replaced in the loading set selection

Roger the above.

The point of training is to stimulate the muscle you want to make grow. Whatever exercises get that done are the ones to go with. It's as simple as that. Hopefully, over time, you'll be able to connect better with the pecs and make damn near every "Chest" exercise a good one.

If that system of rotating exercises between Loading set and MR's is what you need to do, I understand, but the idea of auto regulation is to introduce variety that is in attunement with how you feel that day. This can feel unregimented to some - it's a higher level training notion that can be hard for less experienced trainers to use b/c they've spent so long building up to and practicing a disciplined approach to training.

When a trainee has come down with a tummy bug as I have and sticking to a diet is difficult simply because keeping the heavier foods down is challenging is it ok to sort of just eat light till you've recovered or would I be risking atrophy since my protein intake will have dropped significantly for a week or two? I know I've read studies where even in the absence of adequate nutrition hypertrophic was exhibited in rodent models

Just get better, man. Figure out what's up, get healthy ASAP and if you feel like training just to get out of the house, that can sometimes help. (Typically, trying to train full bore through an illness doesn't work out, IME.)

Thanks again for your inputs


Best
Joshua

You're welcome!

-S