T-Nation's Chad Waterburry is suggesting similar

[John A. Casler]

Looks like a couple articles on T-Nation by Chad Waterburry have duplicated much of what I have been suggesting in my program.

The exception however is that we "continue" the set until we reach a Personal Record PR, or a Rep Maximum RM.

Chad suggests stopping the set as soon as the rep speed drops to a certain level.

Look here, as it looks like Chad has been reading all my posts for the last 7-10 years.

"OR" Great minds think alike.

www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1650066

[killroy70]

John,

I've used a lot of Chad's programs in that past. As you noted, he's not a big fan of consistently taking an exercise to failure. He is also HUGE on high frequency training. That's his "bread and butter." About a year and a half ago, I actually used his high frequency training program for a while. It had one build up from 4 full body workouts/week up to 8 workouts/week (4 days, twice a day training). He most often utilizes an undulating periodization scheme, althernating between high, medium, and low reps in different workouts.

[carruthersjam]

killroy70 said:

John,

I've used a lot of Chad's programs in that past. As you noted, he's not a big fan of consistently taking an exercise to failure. He is also HUGE on high frequency training. That's his "bread and butter." About a year and a half ago, I actually used his high frequency training program for a while. It had one build up from 4 full body workouts/week up to 8 workouts/week (4 days, twice a day training). He most often utilizes an undulating periodization scheme, althernating between high, medium, and low reps in different workouts.

Hi Ken

What kind of results did you achieve following the above type of "system"?

Thanks again

[killroy70]

Jamie,

I've tried a bunch of Chad's programs posted on T-nation.com. Now, in certain instances I substituted exercises, etc., but strictly ahered to the workout template. I usually made some pretty good gains for each cycle, but the problem I encountered was that those gains made didn't seem to carry over.

Now, what I mean by that is that Chad likes to mix up the exercises, often times using different exercises for a given bodypart throughout the week. And when I'd switch programs, there might be a whole slew of completely different exercises yet again. So, if I used, say the bench press in one 8 week workout, I might not get back to that exercise for a couple of months and would find myself kind of back where I started. Now, this isn't a knock against chad, but probably a knock agains ME! I probably should have been more consistent with my exercise selection so I could actually see strength gains achieved as opposed to switching from, say, bench press one cycle, to incline DB press, to flat DB press, and then 4 or 5 months later back to the bench press.

Also, using the undulating periodization scheme with DIFFERENT exercises for each full body workout during the week, it was kind of tough to monitor improvements. For instance, for my back, a week's workout might look like:

Monday - supinated grip chins 8x3
Tuesday - bent over row 3x10
Thursday - wide grip pulldown 4x6
Friday - low cable row 2x12

Maybe, using this scheme, I would have been better off doing something like:

Monday - supinated chins 8x3
Tuesday - bent over row 3x10
Thursday - supinated chins 2x12
Friday - bent over row 6x4

OR

Monday - supinated chins 8x3
Wednesday - supinated chins 3x12
Friday - supinated chins 4x6

Also, as with many programs that utilize a fixed weight and a fixed rep scheme for mulitple sets, as the weights got progressively heavier, I found that it was tough to meet my rep goals, especially because of the prescribed rest between sets. Rarely was rest prescribed to be more than 2 minutes between sets unless reps dropped to 3 or 4. What I encountered in that latter stages of a given program as the weights go closer and closer to my max (it is usually recommended that one start the program with a weight 2-3 reps shy of that rep ranges RM) a workout might go something like:

supinated grip chins - 3x12, rest 90 seconds between sets:

BW+20x12
BW+20x9
BW+20x7

Strength and lean mass gains have been achieved quicker and more consistently using John's system, at least for me. And this is despite the idea that training multiple sets to failure week in and week out would quickly lead to a plateau.

[John A. Casler]

killroy70 said:

Jamie,

Strength and lean mass gains have been achieved quicker and more consistently using John's system, at least for me. And this is despite the idea that training multiple sets to failure week in and week out would quickly lead to a plateau.

Glad you're finding that to be the case. So far that seems to be what happens in most implementations.

I like the fact that, even though, you are required to mentally "get up" for at least 6 sets a session that you actually look forward to the challenge of setting the PR.

In fact it is one of, if not THE most motivational programs I have ever used.

I find all the "naysayers" pretty interesting. It is like I insulted their mother or something. Everything from CNS burnout to there is no way it works, always from someone who has "claimed" to have tried everything just like it, yet they have no idea what any of their Rep Maxes are beyond 5RM (if that!!)

Keep training at that level Ken.