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Post by John A. Casler on Jul 17, 2007 15:42:31 GMT -8
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
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Post by killroy70 on Jul 18, 2007 8:16:54 GMT -8
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.
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Post by carruthersjam on Jul 18, 2007 9:30:18 GMT -8
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
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Post by killroy70 on Jul 20, 2007 3:37:19 GMT -8
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.
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Post by John A. Casler on Jul 24, 2007 17:00:27 GMT -8
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.
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