My philosphy: 85% of 1RM, or you're wasting time. Don't lift to failure. Train type IIB fibers, or try to hit them at least. Teach the muscle to contract against resistance during a movement to maximize motor unit recruitment. Strong muscles are big muscles. Training is far more important than diet -- we are a lazy people and are afraid of hard work...killer training can more than make up for poor nutrition (if you want an example, look at the NFL)...but a great diet will not make a poor trainer huge and strong. Train movements, not muscles. Correct imbalances before they lay you out. Train every day -- rest is over rated. The body will adapt. Fools change their training too often -- consistent effort leads to measurable, consistent results.
Diet wise, I eat to live, and not the other way around. Get a gram of protein per kilo of bodyweight. Eat 10 to 12 kcal per pound of ideal bodyweight to lose fat. Eat 13 to 15 kcal per pound of bodyweight to gain muscle and a little bit of fat that you can hopefully lose easily.
That's about it. Hard to sum up a man's beliefs in one page, now that I've tried.
Bottom line: if you aren't a pro, take it easy and have fun with this. Most guys take it way too seriously. Last time I checked, lifting weights and bodybuilding could still be fun.
Excellent post snx. It's obvious that your knowledge is emperical and not theoretical.
My experience however is that the type of training is not that important. I made great progress with very different types of training. The only thing that did not work for me is very high number of reps. But I do agree that frequent switching of training methods is highly overrated.
I don't think that the difference between going to failure or not is that important. Going to failure essentially just means one rep more. Regarding 1RM, trying 1RM itself has no great benefits IMO, but the process of getting there (e.g. using HST) can be very beneficial in breaking plateaus.
