Fortitude < DC = Training Volume?

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey guys,



I am pretty new here on this board and finished the Fortitude book yesterday. Currently, I am on the 2-way DC split and I ask myself if Dc is missing important aspects of hyerptrohpy - especially for natural guys? 



DC is all about loading sets with rest pauses and tons of failure points + extreme stretching. With Fortitude we have more metabolic work and more not-to-failure sets + higher freuquency.



But if I took a look at the total workload Fortitude seems to be even lower in volume as DC and I am afriad if I would lose gains or progress slower as with the 2-way. 





For example the push-chain with DC



We have a chest press, shoulder press and triceps press

= 3 x 3 rest pauses and that's around 9 sets with lot's of effective reps for triceps I would say.



In Fortitude it looks different: We have on a Tier II on the Basic the following

Loading set chest + loading set chest iso, same for shoulders

pump set chest 1 push and 1 iso, maybe shoulders 1 push to, triceps 1 set

muscle rounds 2 chest presses, maybe a third shoulder press and 1 triceps 

= that's 2 loading sets wit 2 failure points, 1-3 pump sets and 3-4 muscle rounds with 3-4 failure points

here we have 6-9 sets of lot's of effective reps for triceps 





So we have every week in Fortitude 6-9 sets for triceps and I count it as direct work bc of my close-medium grips and the effort for each set. Same goes with DC, but in Dc we have 9 sets every workout and we do this every other week twice. So we could say we have 13,5 sets of effective reps for triceps each week. 

So you're getting into the set counting issue here which, complicated by the notion of effective reps, which makes for a very imprecise metric for training volume, IMO, especially when we're talking about comparing cluster sets (MR vs. RP) leaving Reps in reserve (RIR) vs. not doing so.  
What counts for triceps when doing Chest and delt pressing?
How effective is a set of heavy pressing for triceps growth in a beginner vs. advanced and how does this vary across 
*individuals who vary in pressing styles
*mind Muscle Connection
* Exercise: E.g., Converging chest press vs. BB press


How do you compare effective reps for these two:

MR with 200lb (Lets say this load is a true 12RM - I use 15RM in the book as a rule just for a margin of safety and to account for differences in fatigue across exercises, and individuals. i'd rather have folks go a bit lighter the first time out.)

The MR goes: 4 (8RIR), 4 (5 RIR?), 4 (1 RIR?), 3 (Failure), (drop to 160), 4 (1 RIR), 4 (0 RIR)
Are all reps of the last 4 sets effective?... Or, realistically, only the last two - three reps before a failure point would occur?....  Looking at the last 4 sets:

Last 4 sets of 6 set MR:  4 (1 RIR?), 3 (Failure), (drop to 160), 4 (1 RIR), 4 (0 RIR)
Effective reps (respectively): 1, 2, 1, 2 = 6 Effective reps just for one MR?... 

I'll call Effective Reps ER below.

---------

DC Rest Pause with same load:

12  / 4 / 3 / (Partials /negative hold)

This would be 3 x (2-3) effective reps (all sets to failure) plus the pulsed negative so maybe about 8-9 effective reps for a single RP set?...


You can see how much guesswork/ eyeballing is involved here, eh?... 

Can you REALLY count a rep that's 2 shy of failure the same as the rep just before a failure rep.
How much does a failure rep count?... 


If you're doing, lets say for chest the following every two weeks (DC two way vs. FT Tier II)

DC:  3 x RP = 3 x 9 effective reps = 27?...  Your number!
What happens if we add in a Chest widow maker?...   Maybe that's an extra 3 x 5 Effective reps so

Every two weeks; [9 + 5] x 3 workouts = 3 x 14 ER = 42 ER or 

DC TRAINING 
THIS IS: 22 Effective reps / week with the neurological strain of the 9 RP Failure points, plus the 3 x pulsed negative failure points + the 4 widow makers = [9 + 3 + 8 (WM's come very close to failure repeatedly!) ] = 20 failure points or 10 weekly failure points. 


FT (Tier II): [2 x Pump sets + 2 x Loading sets + 2 x MR ] x 2 = [2 x 2 ER = 2 x 2ER + 2 x 6ER] x 2 = [20 ER] x 2 = 40 effective reps 

THIS IS: 20 Effective Reps / week with Failure points from [2 (Pump) + 2 (Loading) + 2 MR] x 2  = 6 x 2 = 12 Failure points or 6 weekly failure points.

This is generally what I hoped to accomplish with FT (more effective training with fewer failure points).

NOTE too that Pump sets can be done a VARIETY of ways such that the relative stress (muscular and neurological) can be vary here  to fine tune in an auto regulatory way.

Also How do we quantify the stretches: Extreme in DC (only option) vs. The three types in FT?... 

-> and that's around twice as much as in Fortitude

in addition to the REALLY highly estimated noting of "effective reps" and estimation of volume, there's

DC has a 2 way and 3 way split  variations.

FT has THREE volume Tiers to Address the volume / recovery issue.

I hope this topic would'nt discuss before  . And to make it clear, I love the ebook by Scott, it has so much great info in there. Scott is a true mastermind and training to failure + low volume is the way I love and need to train! 



I am looking foreward to this discussion ! 

Great topic!!!!!!


And then there's this - Variability in adaptive responses.  


Damas F, Barcelos C, Nóbrega SR, Ugrinowitsch C, Lixandrão ME, Santos LMEd, Conceição MS, Vechin FC, and Libardi CA. Individual Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Responses to High vs. Low Resistance Training Frequencies. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 33: 897-901, 2019.

Note that HIGH frequency also meant high volume in this study:
"This short communication highlights that some individuals showed greater muscle mass and strength gains after HF (31.6 and 26.3% of individuals, respectively), other had greater gains with LF (36.8 and 15.8% of individuals, respectively), and even others showed similar responses between HF and LF, regardless of the consequent higher or lower TTV resulted from HF and LF, respectively. Importantly, individual manipulation of RT frequency can improve the intrasubject responsiveness to training, but the effect is limited to each individual's capacity to respond to RT. Finally, individual response to different frequencies and resulted TTV does not necessarily agree between muscle hypertrophy and strength gains."