Newbie gains again??

[zmt]

I don't wquite fillow the 21weeks vs. 14 days comparison you make...

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)

Well, I think that a layoff, call it strategic b/c it's planned, could and should have a place as a possibilty if someone is just not progressing and regular deloading (I'm speaking generically here, not jsut about FT) isn't sufficient.

I think the crux of the issue is whether, if one is making progress and by all estimates would CONTINUE to do so, whether it would be at that point better to:
• Strategically decondition in some way?...
• Continue making progress?...

(Sorry if I'm creating a strawman argument above... Not my intention.)

I really can't say for sure, as I've never intentionally derailed what I thought was a progressing, fruitful period of training by deloading long enough to intentionally create a deconditioning effect.

clear

A question that Bryan may have answered (I didn't hear it on the podcast) is HOW much deconditioning are we shooting for and how can we measure / quantify this?...

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)

Should one have actually lost high load strenght or perhaps just some degree of strength -endurance (able to maintina workload over a workout) or is this really a matter of just some diminution of the repeated bout effect, but without an actual substantial amount of deconditioning from a PERFORMANCE perspective.

In other words, need one actually become "deconditioned" to optimize the resensitization and I would suspect that that's not the case...

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

... and this is another topic... But one can create this same novelty of stimulus effect (as you intimated kind of above) by simply rotating exercises, using a DUP (as HST does) or even just employing a different trainng sytem altogether. This is why I suggest (and have seen folks have good results with) rotating among 2-3 programs, such as FT, MD and DC. This is would take us off topic, but fits here in that if finding a trainign stimulus one is responsive (sensitive to) is important (I think it is!), then this can be had by variety without a "deconditioning" per se.

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

thank you again Scott for deep analysis !