Vince - post re muscle hypertrophy

[pellius]

I find your thinking interesting. Look at men who do manual labor, for instance mechanics, farmers and so-on. Most mechanics have very thick hands and fingers and powerful looking forearms. My own father was a mechanic and had very thick fingers and a very powerful grip. Although I have larger triceps, pecs, lats etc., than him, my hands look like baby hands compared to his. This development is the result of chronic "overuse", perhaps comparable to the fowl-example you have referred to.

NN

I think this phenomenon can be explained by a principle sometimes referred to genetic bias. If you are built like a Woody Allen and naturally small and weak you are not going to go into manual labor or be drawn into occupations that require strength. If you are a Paul Anderson then being a piano mover is a very real option. So it's kind of like putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying playing basketball makes you tall.

Vince, tiresome as he can often be, I believe has a lot to offer in this field of "hypertrophy" training. Say what you will of him, and he is an eccentric sort, but he is also a thinking man. It's frustrating trying to squeeze out any useful, coherent and specific information out of him because I think he's just tired (hence the "tiresome" label). Tired in the sense that I get tired as the years  wear on. Same old stuff. Same old know it alls that only want to preach and argue but not listen and debate. You just don't want to bother anymore because you know the questions asked are not in the spirit of edification but to show how little you know and/or how wrong you are and how much smarter the questioner is. That he is the expert. Hence, the tiresome "Everyone is an expert" refrain. 

You've drawn the old bugger out a bit and already I have learned something new. Or rather have clarified one of his beliefs. I never agreed with him about the body not having to recover for hypertrophy to occur. But, as he probably noticed, he never said body but rather the muscle. It seems he is referring to localized recovery, i.e., the individual muscle itself; and I was referring to systemic recovery, i.e., the body as a whole which we all need, at that very minimum, in the form of daily sleep whether we lift weights or not. Two different things entirely. Now I still don't know if that is valid but it does change the equation substantially and gives me something to consider.

In a debate, before one can come to any conclusions about right and wrong, valid or invalid, we have to have clarity. Being crystal clear about exactly what we are talking about. Being on the same page if you will.

There are endless opportunities here on GetBig to bash the former Mr. Canada. Opportunities that are ravenously seized upon. But there are some that do want to hear what decades of experience and being there as generations of bodybuilders, from Pearl to Cutler that have come and gone, has been distilled in the not quite yet senile mind . For just this one thread let the man speak. Those who don't care what he has to say, think ill of him, wish him harm, relish making unsubstantiated accusations about his personal life..., there will be many more opportunities for that. But for this one thread, just this one thread, just leave it be. Go elsewhere. No one is forcing you to listen. Remember, Vince didn't start this thread. A poster has shown a genuine interest and was the one that solicited the ideas and theories from Vince. Give the OP and the rest of us a fair chance to hear the man out. Fair dinkum?
   

[Vince B]

In order to appreciate what I am claiming you have to be prepared to abandon cherished beliefs. As long as you insist the muscle must recover then you are not going to accept what I am proposing.

Those of us who have been around a long time eventually default to various ways of training and do not change nor do we grow much ever again. As we age we assume nature didn't mean for us to have large muscles so tend not to train that way. My experience suggests that making gains is possible at any age but more effective for males who have natural testosterone. The big problem in old age is to find the sufficient motivation to train in a regular fashion and hard enough to cause hypertrophy.

So, what is distilled from what I am saying is not so much a program but a strategy. DOMS training requires that you generate sufficient soreness in target muscles. If your muscles are not very sore following training then you go back and train that muscle again. You might have to try different things here. This is where vast experience comes in handy. A lot of this is not obvious but is stuff we discover through training long and hard. Once your muscle is quite sore you have achieved your immediate objective and rest a day or maybe two. Then you retrain that muscle doing about the same thing you did to cause that soreness. Hopefully you will be a bit stronger and can add some additional weight for your sets. Now comes the interesting part that I have distilled from almost 52 years training. You warm up the muscle by ascending sets and do something more than 15 reps during that warmup. Then you keep the resistance the same and then do set after set after set after set with that maximum resistance. You will find that your reps might diminish with the sets. The reason we chose 15 was two fold. To cause more of a muscle pump and to allow about 10 minimum reps for the last maximum weighted sets. This is best for hypertrophy. Of course you are always trying to do more reps and use more weight. There must be a progression because it is the progression that partly triggers the hypertrophy response.  You retrain the muscle before the soreness evaporates. That seems crazy but so far I haven't found a problem with this way of training. You have to avoid the dangerous moves and ballistic movements because the sheer volume of exercise with such heavy weights will tax the body. Probably every 3rd day might be sufficient.

[Vince B]

Pellius has come a long way from being Mark Twain. Thanks for your interest.

If you read 'The Stress of Life' by Hans Selye you see a man who saw things no one else was looking for. I had a discussion with Ray Mentzer about stress and the GAS. General Adaptation Syndrome. I wondered if it were possible not to turn on the whole adaptation response. Ray was adamant that any training that leads to hypertrophy will cause the system to respond to the stress. He didn't think it was possible to train a muscle and not switch on the whole body adaptation response to the stress. I came to envisage all training as being like a funnel. To be effective and result in hypertrophy you had to achieve the same physiological responses. All the methods are in the wide part of the funnel but all methods must pass through the narrow part and result in exactly the same physical responses. Your symptoms will be a huge pump, your muscles will be shaking, you will be buggered and you will be sweating. There will be no exceptions. If you don't experience these phenomena you won't grow much. The next day you MUST be quite sore in the target muscle.

What I found by training calves and arms the same day was that I wasn't exhausted and each training day returned with enthusiasm. My soreness was most welcome because I knew I would be able to physically measure both bodyparts the following day and they would be larger by 1/10 inch. In ten workouts I had added 1 full inch to both bodyparts. It remains to be seen what would happen if the larger muscles are targetted. I would have the same positive response if I substituted lat pulldowns for biceps curls and supersetting the pulldowns with lying triceps extensions. I don't do triceps pressdowns nor anything using a barbell. Never use a rope! Those lying barbell exercises are dangerous and will injure your elbows because you have to use additional force to prevent the bar from hitting your face. Use the lying triceps extensions because the triceps are under tension from being in the stretched position. Come to my gym and I will show you how to do this exercise. A pity you can't buy this equipment.

[pellius]

Pellius has come a long way from being Mark Twain. Thanks for your interest.

If you read 'The Stress of Life' by Hans Selye you see a man who saw things no one else was looking for. I had a discussion with Ray Mentzer about stress and the GAS. General Adaptation Syndrome. I wondered if it were possible not to turn on the whole adaptation response. Ray was adamant that any training that leads to hypertrophy will cause the system to respond to the stress. He didn't think it was possible to train a muscle and not switch on the whole body adaptation response to the stress. I came to envisage all training as being like a funnel. To be effective and result in hypertrophy you had to achieve the same physiological responses. All the methods are in the wide part of the funnel but all methods must pass through the narrow part and result in exactly the same physical responses. Your symptoms will be a huge pump, your muscles will be shaking, you will be buggered and you will be sweating. There will be no exceptions. If you don't experience these phenomena you won't grow much. The next day you MUST be quite sore in the target muscle.

What I found by training calves and arms the same day was that I wasn't exhausted and each training day returned with enthusiasm. My soreness was most welcome because I knew I would be able to physically measure both bodyparts the following day and they would be larger by 1/10 inch. In ten workouts I had added 1 full inch to both bodyparts. It remains to be seen what would happen if the larger muscles are targetted. I would have the same positive response if I substituted lat pulldowns for biceps curls and supersetting the pulldowns with lying triceps extensions. I don't do triceps pressdowns nor anything using a barbell. Never use a rope! Those lying barbell exercises are dangerous and will injure your elbows because you have to use additional force to prevent the bar from hitting your face. Use the lying triceps extensions because the triceps are under tension from being in the stretched position. Come to my gym and I will show you how to do this exercise. A pity you can't buy this equipment.

I read Seyle's book at 18 yrs. solely due to reading the articles by Mike Mentzer. Love him or hate him, he was the one the got me thinking about bodybuilding and there was something different from standard routines you read in the mags that Arnold and the rest was doing. At the time I was training six days a week, each body part 3x/wk. Eventually, through sheer exhaustion, I reduced it to six days/wk each body part 2x/wk. Chest/back, shoulders/arms, legs. Still 12-20 sets per body part. Also, during that time when I was working as a security guard a fellow by the name of Hank Grundman opened up a Nautilus gym that was all the rage in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s. He gave me a book that had all the writings and bulletins at the time by Arthur Jones. It opened up a whole new world for me because it introduced ideas that I never considered. Full range motion, variable resistance, negative resistance, rotary resistance, directness (isolating muscle groups) of resistance, progression, intensity, pre-exhaust, frequency, duration, correlation (not causation) between size and strength.... Before it was mostly about sets and pumps. Also, that though we are all unique and different in so many ways, that fundamentally -- biologically -- we are identical. If the basic fundamental principles didn't apply to all of us then a field such as medical science could not exist. We different only in specifics. If you have a bacterial infections an antibiotic will cure it. What specific antibiotic will vary widely. In my case, I am allergic to penicillin so I was given tetracycline as a child. Still the fundamental principle of antibiotics treating bacterial infections apply to everyone. 

There exists a fundamental hypertrophy training system that applies to all. What the specifics are and how someone responds vary widely. The search continues, sort of, but with the wide spread use of anabolics the attitude seems to be, why bother?     

[Vince B]

Arthur Jones probably prevented me from getting 18+ inch arms. After his extensive writing and even ads it was thought to be stupid to train too long or too frequently. We started looking for minimums. Larry Scott influenced us because he had narrow shoulders yet won the Mr Olympia. We all thought he retired when Sergio Oliva showed up. Anyway, Larry suggested that when training arms or calves, you train to pump them bigger than ever. If you could achieve that pump you should be bigger the next day. Fitting that in with what Jones advocated I ended up doing about 7 total sets per bodypart which included the warmup sets. We all more or less did a pyramid program and did a set or two after the maximum by reducing the weight and trying to get an additional pump. There was a writer in Ironman who suggested that it was the waste products in tired muscles that led to the hypertrophy. Sergio Oliva seemed to practice this strategy by doing lots and lots of sets. He would even come out of the changeroom and do an additional set or two to keep the pump.

Yes, anabolic steroids ruined bodybuilding as we knew it. Nowadays the interest isn't about training but drug protocols.

By the way, Pellius, your early experiments with training were probably doomed to failure because of your inadequate calories. All that expensive protein being converted to energy but you still didn't eat enough to grow big muscles. No wonder you struggled for decades looking for the right method to make gains. Countless others have similar experiences.

The one factor I overlooked was the sets at maximum resistance. I found this out the hard way when this large Pacific Islander trained at my gym in Blacktown in the old days. We started with 10 plates in the lat pulldown and I did way more than he did. Next set was 15 plates X 5 kg. About 80 kg resistance including the assembly. Well, I did 18 reps and he did 15 reps. Then he said it was my set. Shit, I could manage only 9 reps. He did 15 reps. I gave up at that point and he continued doing 15 rep sets again and again. Then he did seated rowing. Big muscles allowed you to do heaps of sets with fairly heavy weights. I had missed this crucial factor all those years.

[Lion666]

If we start saying that we do what works for us then it ceases being a science. While individuals do vary, and this includes potential to grow muscle, we are arguing that the optimum way to train must embrace the same strategies and principles and apply to everyone.


The technology of training is underappreciated. Too many now believe 'it is all drugs' that they disregard training methods as contributing to hypertrophy.


Take the standing triceps extensions most bodybuilders do. I would bet that most use this exercise for some gains but there is a cutoff point where doing it will no longer cause any growth. Why is that? Well, Arthur Jones pointed out that the triceps responds best when prestretched by placing the elbows near the head. You get this best in the lying triceps extensions. Believe me, this exercise can be effective but almost everyone cheats at it and cancels out any possible growth from doing it. Quite incredible the way so many think they are training effectively but are not putting much mechanical tension on target muscles.

There are effective exercises for most muscles. Some people believe you have to provide novelty and keep changing things. I am not sure this is a requirement. While I embrace the concept of novelty I don't think it is necessary if you are stimulating maximum growth. It is when you stall your growth that you have to try something different.

Those who are not intelligent enough to apply these theories cannot and will not grow much. They will conclude that it didn't work.

exactly, we are all different but we are more the same,,, bodyparts arms legs etc., function of muscles etc.

"training is underappreciated"
yes very, reason being are there are truly gr8 physiques few and far in between

there may be somethin with someone like a kai for example, who takes training and theory and recognizes and explorers it

its a shame that some ppl can build a physiqu that rivals champions of yesteryear or even today just because they respond well to supplments and diet strictly (if at all even, some supps negate the need to diet strict and stiil cut up from information passed around)...
instead of training "the best"

I find your thinking interesting. Look at men who do manual labor, for instance mechanics, farmers and so-on. Most mechanics have very thick hands and fingers and powerful looking forearms. My own father was a mechanic and had very thick fingers and a very powerful grip. Although I have larger triceps, pecs, lats etc., than him, my hands look like baby hands compared to his. This development is the result of chronic "overuse", perhaps comparable to the fowl-example you have referred to.

NN

exactly,,, some ppl do bc they have to and dont follow a accepted form of training protocol and still get results just as someone following a train program with similar results in mind may or may not achieve.
piont being it kicks overtraining and recovery in the butt a lil

[Lion666]

I have systematically tried out training each muscle group once pr week vs twice pr week. I grew continously on the two pr. week schedule for 6 months and suffered no injuries. On the once pr week schedule I had lots of joint pain and clearly less progress. I have never used drugs, except for creatine ;-). Of course, this is anectodical, but for me clearly true after systematically trying it out. (been training with weights for about 16 years)
 

NN

agreed, found results similar myself

[Lion666]

I think this phenomenon can be explained by a principle sometimes referred to genetic bias. If you are built like a Woody Allen and naturally small and weak you are not going to go into manual labor or be drawn into occupations that require strength. If you are a Paul Anderson then being a piano mover is a very real option. So it's kind of like putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying playing basketball makes you tall.

good point, unless u get the desire to be "able" to

Vince, tiresome as he can often be, I believe has a lot to offer in this field of "hypertrophy" training. Say what you will of him, and he is an eccentric sort, but he is also a thinking man. It's frustrating trying to squeeze out any useful, coherent and specific information out of him because I think he's just tired (hence the "tiresome" label). Tired in the sense that I get tired as the years  wear on. Same old stuff. Same old know it alls that only want to preach and argue but not listen and debate. You just don't want to bother anymore because you know the questions asked are not in the spirit of edification but to show how little you know and/or how wrong you are and how much smarter the questioner is. That he is the expert. Hence, the tiresome "Everyone is an expert" refrain. 

You've drawn the old bugger out a bit and already I have learned something new. Or rather have clarified one of his beliefs. I never agreed with him about the body not having to recover for hypertrophy to occur. But, as he probably noticed, he never said body but rather the muscle. It seems he is referring to localized recovery, i.e., the individual muscle itself; and I was referring to systemic recovery, i.e., the body as a whole which we all need, at that very minimum, in the form of daily sleep whether we lift weights or not. Two different things entirely. Now I still don't know if that is valid but it does change the equation substantially and gives me something to consider.

In a debate, before one can come to any conclusions about right and wrong, valid or invalid, we have to have clarity. Being crystal clear about exactly what we are talking about. Being on the same page if you will.


There are endless opportunities here on GetBig to bash the former Mr. Canada. Opportunities that are ravenously seized upon. But there are some that do want to hear what decades of experience and being there as generations of bodybuilders, from Pearl to Cutler that have come and gone, has been distilled in the not quite yet senile mind . For just this one thread let the man speak. Those who don't care what he has to say, think ill of him, wish him harm, relish making unsubstantiated accusations about his personal life..., there will be many more opportunities for that. But for this one thread, just this one thread, just leave it be. Go elsewhere. No one is forcing you to listen. Remember, Vince didn't start this thread. A poster has shown a genuine interest and was the one that solicited the ideas and theories from Vince. Give the OP and the rest of us a fair chance to hear the man out. Fair dinkum?
   

cool

[Lion666]

Arthur Jones probably prevented me from getting 18+ inch arms. After his extensive writing and even ads it was thought to be stupid to train too long or too frequently. We started looking for minimums. Larry Scott influenced us because he had narrow shoulders yet won the Mr Olympia. We all thought he retired when Sergio Oliva showed up. Anyway, Larry suggested that when training arms or calves, you train to pump them bigger than ever. If you could achieve that pump you should be bigger the next day. Fitting that in with what Jones advocated I ended up doing about 7 total sets per bodypart which included the warmup sets. We all more or less did a pyramid program and did a set or two after the maximum by reducing the weight and trying to get an additional pump. There was a writer in Ironman who suggested that it was the waste products in tired muscles that led to the hypertrophy. Sergio Oliva seemed to practice this strategy by doing lots and lots of sets. He would even come out of the changeroom and do an additional set or two to keep the pump.

Yes, anabolic steroids ruined bodybuilding as we knew it. Nowadays the interest isn't about training but drug protocols.

sas but true, some people love to train tho,, to ppl that dont use though this is the only thing more so than diet,,, even guys that do bc that playing field is atcually level in regards to drugs, its still they guy that trains "the best"

By the way, Pellius, your early experiments with training were probably doomed to failure because of your inadequate calories. All that expensive protein being converted to energy but you still didn't eat enough to grow big muscles. No wonder you struggled for decades looking for the right method to make gains. Countless others have similar experiences.

then in the bird study its either the proper training technique that was used stimulated muscle growth even without calories bc its not the case in human here then.  training without calorie = no mass ,,,,or,,,,,   the wrong training without calaorie = no mass
 
i always wondered about how much food is actually retained? is there where digestive enzymes come in, even still, ppl poop.
 can a person build with any type of training program without excess calories, does the body find a way, or take whatever it needs and/or can get from whatever lil food it gets???  makes the best with what it has, so to speak.

The one factor I overlooked was the sets at maximum resistance. I found this out the hard way when this large Pacific Islander trained at my gym in Blacktown in the old days. We started with 10 plates in the lat pulldown and I did way more than he did. Next set was 15 plates X 5 kg. About 80 kg resistance including the assembly. Well, I did 18 reps and he did 15 reps. Then he said it was my set. Shit, I could manage only 9 reps. He did 15 reps. I gave up at that point and he continued doing 15 rep sets again and again. Then he did seated rowing. Big muscles allowed you to do heaps of sets with fairly heavy weights. I had missed this crucial factor all those years.

so ur saying that set volume is important then?

[_bruce_]

I don't agree with the soreness theory.

[Ursus]

Soreness is a tired and stressed muscle.

Therefore you don damage to it. All you have to do is eat enougha nd rest so it recovers before the next day. It really is that simple. DOMS are a sign of a good workout.

[Alexander D]

Who said soreness leads to muscle growth? I am saying that there is no rapid muscle growth without soreness. Therefore if you can keep a muscle sore it should keep growing. This is a physiological process that can be checked. Try it on one muscle group and see if it is true. Triceps and calves are good choices.

"If you keep a muscle sore, it should keep growing..." Say what? I could train triceps every day, 30 sets and FRY THEM 7 days per week and I am pretty certain that at the end of this experiment my triceps wouldn't have grown at all.

Last time I checked, training breaks down muscle... rest, recovery/food causes growth.

[Vince B]

Know it all experts have arrived and added their 2 cents worth. Physiology isn't about belief. It is about what happens in muscles after certain stresses and the timetable of hypertrophy. It is my hunch that painful DOMS is an indication that growth is occurring in the target muscle. If the cause of the DOMS was a severe training session with reasonably heavy weights then there is no doubt in my mind that hypertrophy is occurring. There are some experiments that support this hypothesis. The trouble with most of the scientists in exercise science is that they are hardly interested in large muscles so don't do research that would settle these arguments.

In the meantime, we have to extrapolate, postulate and experiment with our bodies and see what happens. If something happens to us we might be on to something that would happen to everyone.

Why do muscles experience DOMS? That seems to be an odd response of the body to some kinds of exertion. Why have that soreness? What purpose does it serve? If we use evolutionary biology we can imagine that this DOMS has some benefit otherwise it wouldn't have evolved. Perhaps there is no benefit and that is just the way our muscles work that we inherited.

[Vince B]

"If you keep a muscle sore, it should keep growing..." Say what? I could train triceps every day, 30 sets and FRY THEM 7 days per week and I am pretty certain that at the end of this experiment my triceps wouldn't have grown at all.

Last time I checked, training breaks down muscle... rest, recovery/food causes growth.

First of all that isn't what I recommend. Second, you have no idea what would happen if you did that protocol and ate plenty of extra food.

Last time you checked you accepted what just about everyone else believes. Is it any wonder, then, that so few trainees actually build huge muscles? I am wasting my time talking to knuckleheads.

[mass 04]

Worst thread ever.. Please Vince, tell us more about your bicep machine

[Lion666]

"If you keep a muscle sore, it should keep growing..." Say what? I could train triceps every day, 30 sets and FRY THEM 7 days per week and I am pretty certain that at the end of this experiment my triceps wouldn't have grown at all.

Last time I checked, training breaks down muscle... rest, recovery/food causes growth.

try it and find out before u make any assumptions.
when something heals it inflamed and that causes soreness....

thats why nsaid pain relievers inhibit muscle growth,,, one of the pruposes to take them along with stopping inflammation is to stop the pain,,, inflmtion and pain are relative

[Vince B]

The guys who have gotten reasonably big know what I am talking about and we have a different discussion compared to wannabes and know-it-alls. This happens because the physiology is the same in all of us. More or less. Those who are not growing have to ask why they are not growing. That is the biggest problem in bodybuidling. How come the vast majority of guys blasting away in countless gyms are staying the same day in and day out? If everyone believes they are training hard enough how come they aren't growing larger and larger? Nope, most come to a stop. At this point they believe they need drugs to get bigger. When they finally try the drugs they discover they hardly change at all and a revelation occurs and they believe they don't have the genetics.

If we go back to about 1960 we will see a near miracle occur in Southern California. A small, narrow shouldered dude from Idaho arrived and thought he would win bodybuilding titles. It was almost a laugh and Vince Gironda wasn't impressed with Larry Scott when he introduced himself at Vinces Gym. Hi, I'm Larry Scott. To which Vince replied, So what!

How did this narrow guy win Mr California and soon after the first two Mr Olympia titles? In 5 short years Larry transcended that little muscular guy and developed huge arms and shoulders. What did Larry do that so many never do? Most observers would have declared that Larry didn't have the genetics to be Mr Olympia.

[Lion666]

Know it all experts have arrived and added their 2 cents worth. Physiology isn't about belief. It is about what happens in muscles after certain stresses and the timetable of hypertrophy. It is my hunch that painful DOMS is an indication that growth is occurring in the target muscle. If the cause of the DOMS was a severe training session with reasonably heavy weights then there is no doubt in my mind that hypertrophy is occurring. There are some experiments that support this hypothesis. The trouble with most of the scientists in exercise science is that they are hardly interested in large muscles so don't do research that would settle these arguments.

In the meantime, we have to extrapolate, postulate and experiment with our bodies and see what happens. If something happens to us we might be on to something that would happen to everyone.

Why do muscles experience DOMS? That seems to be an odd response of the body to some kinds of exertion. Why have that soreness? What purpose does it serve? If we use evolutionary biology we can imagine that this DOMS has some benefit otherwise it wouldn't have evolved. Perhaps there is no benefit and that is just the way our muscles work that we inherited.

"Know it all experts have arrived and added their 2 cents worth." pay no attention whatsoever to the very very few that dont understand this... more than serious bbr's and prob even pros too,,, basically anyone thats been doing this longer than a decade knows this is valuable.

can we go back and delve into this a lil more vince... ie make it a hypothetical workout routine etc...
"If the studies on fowl were important then how come just stretching one wing produced so much hypertrophy in such a short time? Up to 300% growth in 30 days. That is totally unapproachable by humans as far as we know. Bryan Haycock estimates that it would require about 8 hours training a day to achieve the maximum amount of possible hypertrophy from training. It would be interesting to conduct an experiment for about 3 months using these protocols to answer these questions. If it were possible to put on 3 inches on your upper arms in 3 months it might not be as crazy as it seems. We could lock up experimental subjects in a room and monitor their progress!!"

vince u mentioned in the other post about u doing the 12hr a dayarm routine,,, and think u sadi u did it every other day,,, u also mentioned u gained an inch arm growth over a month, 10 wrkouts,, so did u train every 3 days then?  were they the same experiment or 2 different experiments. what did u do to get the 1" growth ovr 10 wrkouts.

keep going,, u dont have to "convince" anyone to suspend their belief of mainstream and accepted theory of weight training...  some ppl see thru mrkting ploys or swayed studies or worse,,, the experience of no gains lol etc...

so much great feedback from others on this thread, to even bother to acknowledge ppl that knock or mock this thread is an injustice. someone that disagrees an offers other theories and infact adds to the convo is welcome and appreciated, everyone doesnt have to think alike.  there are adults in this thread that intend to have a mature conversation about acheiving something most of us have in common as a goal.

[Lion666]

I don't agree with the soreness theory.

food for thought...

thats why nsaid pain relievers inhibit muscle growth,,, one of the pruposes to take them along with stopping inflammation is to stop the pain,,, inflmtion and pain are relative

[Lion666]

The guys who have gotten reasonably big know what I am talking about and we have a different discussion compared to wannabes and know-it-alls. This happens because the physiology is the same in all of us. More or less. Those who are not growing have to ask why they are not growing. That is the biggest problem in bodybuidling. How come the vast majority of guys blasting away in countless gyms are staying the same day in and day out? If everyone believes they are training hard enough how come they aren't growing larger and larger? Nope, most come to a stop. At this point they believe they need drugs to get bigger. When they finally try the drugs they discover they hardly change at all and a revelation occurs and they believe they don't have the genetics.


yes yes and yes... one thing that the intro of drugs did was cause ppl to stop finding ways to keep pushing the limits of building muscle thru training alone.  when all things are equal in the drug dept., more so than who "responds" best re genetics etc., the single factor that will seperate the champ from the rest is training, you get out what u put in.  ppl want to look like a muscle beast but dont want to pay the price and do the things one needs to do to really get it.  they look a certain way bc they can perform a certain way.  now u can fake it for a while, prob spend money for drugs etc. however,,, will u keep it yr after yr and stay the same and or make improvements if u remove drugs. no.  someone that "lives" in a gym and trains using proper muscle hypertrophy protocol in thier training programs will.

lil jumbled i know, just finished up a leg wrkout, dizzy and sik, u guys get my point tho
 
u know feelin gr8

If we go back to about 1960 we will see a near miracle occur in Southern California. A small, narrow shouldered dude from Idaho arrived and thought he would win bodybuilding titles. It was almost a laugh and Vince Gironda wasn't impressed with Larry Scott when he introduced himself at Vinces Gym. Hi, I'm Larry Scott. To which Vince replied, So what!

How did this narrow guy win Mr California and soon after the first two Mr Olympia titles? In 5 short years Larry transcended that little muscular guy and developed huge arms and shoulders. What did Larry do that so many never do? Most observers would have declared that Larry didn't have the genetics to be Mr Olympia.

lol,
vince g, lol had that same attitude with arnold, lol
very true,,, actually the guys with the best genetics dont always win shows/contests,,, as we have seen.  ppl used to say and stiil do that flew w had the best genetics, yet he never won the o and even lost it to ppl that some would say had poor bb genes.

can we start building a hypothetical wrkout scenerio for muscle hypertrophy vince.  somethin obscure that doesnt have to fit into any accepted paradigm  whatsoever,,, you mentioned about the article to achieve 300% growth one would have to train 8hrs a day.
now would that be total body?  same muscle group everyday?   same wrkouts everyday? upperbod one day lower bod next day?
do u have any other references to studies similar to the bird/wing study, just for some thoughtfood that we can use to build this hypotheticalhyperwrkout ...

[Vince B]

It is hard to keep up with the posts. Anyway, let me continue a bit with Larry Scott. Larry was educated as an engineer so is well above average in the intelligence department. How did he find ways to get so huge that he amazed friends, family and even judges?

I suppose Larry was blessed with being with a guru like Gironda. The guy was knowledgeable and ruthless re training. Somehow Larry started to make gains but this was to be expected when you arrive in Los Angeles and are excited about training. Over the years he started experimenting and altering exercises to get them more effective. He would train his arms and each time he would try to pump them bigger than before. After workouts he refrained from most activities and declared that even table tennis might reverse some gains so wouldn't play that. That surely is an extreme attitude but it shows how serious Larry was about training. He found out that he could survive unbelievable pain via lactic acid build up in the muscles. He would literally use burns to cause more and more pain. The harder he trained and the more pain he endured the larger he got. The guy did extraordinary things to build those extraordinary muscles. It was no accident. He wanted full muscle bellies so fashioned exercises so that he targetted the brachialis. He would turn his wrists out and put tension on the long head of the biceps. To this day he probably had the best shaped arms in the business. Did I mention his shoulders? For a narrow guy Larry knew he needed huge shoulders to give him the illusion of width. His training employed the same partial movements and burns that saw Larry build some of the best shoulders in his day. The rest of his body was satisfactory. When he posed in New York in 1965 he literally brought the house down. The crowd was yelling, "Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry..... long and loud. Even after the contest the fans hung around to catch a glimpse of this hero. To this day Larry remembers that day as probably the best day in his life.

[Vince B]

There is some confusion with some training I did back in 1998 or so to gain 1 inch on my arms and calves in 30 days. I did 10 workouts so trained every 3rd day. I kept my muscles quite sore the whole month. Felt great and got strong as well.

The 12 hour arm experiment I have yet to do. This would involve warming up then alternating biceps and triceps for 12 hours using the same maximum resistance. Sounds crazy but I wonder what would happen. I would retrain probably every 3rd day.

The third day is interesting. I came to this conclusion partly because of what I learned when pinch grip training. I was training for a grip contest at my gym and did pinch grip training. I varied the frequency but discovered that if I trained sooner than the 3rd day I lost strength. If I trained later than the 3rd day I lost strength. If I trained exactly every 3rd day I got stronger and stronger. Later I pinched 92.5 Kg on my pinch grip machine which uses a mirror-finished stainless steel grip plate. I thought if I made such good gains in strength then maybe hypertrophy is the same. If you retrain too soon you aren't as strong. The 3rd day you are stronger. You could wait for a week and perhaps be even stronger but then you have to cope with the repeated bout effect and that changes everything. The RBE is a serious impediment to big muscles. If you read the literature you will find that one severe workout can affect the body and stop it from growing further even if similar severe workouts are done later. Why should this be so? Well, the body tries to conserve energy and resources. It doesn't like carrying extra bulk because that requires more resources. If you immobilize a muscle it atrophies. We see this when people wear a cast. This makes sense. No need to have large muscles if you aren't using them.

The technology of training has evolved all over the world during the last 70 years. We should know by now what works and what doesn't. It is quite amusing how confused just about everyone is regarding training.

[Lion666]

There is some confusion with some training I did back in 1998 or so to gain 1 inch on my arms and calves in 30 days. I did 10 workouts so trained every 3rd day. I kept my muscles quite sore the whole month. Felt great and got strong as well.

The 12 hour arm experiment I have yet to do. This would involve warming up then alternating biceps and triceps for 12 hours using the same maximum resistance. Sounds crazy but I wonder what would happen. I would retrain probably every 3rd day.

The third day is interesting. I came to this conclusion partly because of what I learned when pinch grip training. I was training for a grip contest at my gym and did pinch grip training. I varied the frequency but discovered that if I trained sooner than the 3rd day I lost strength. If I trained later than the 3rd day I lost strength. If I trained exactly every 3rd day I got stronger and stronger. Later I pinched 92.5 Kg on my pinch grip machine which uses a mirror-finished stainless steel grip plate. I thought if I made such good gains in strength then maybe hypertrophy is the same. If you retrain too soon you aren't as strong. The 3rd day you are stronger. You could wait for a week and perhaps be even stronger but then you have to cope with the repeated bout effect and that changes everything. The RBE is a serious impediment to big muscles. If you read the literature you will find that one severe workout can affect the body and stop it from growing further even if similar severe workouts are done later. Why should this be so? Well, the body tries to conserve energy and resources. It doesn't like carrying extra bulk because that requires more resources. If you immobilize a muscle it atrophies. We see this when people wear a cast. This makes sense. No need to have large muscles if you aren't using them.

The technology of training has evolved all over the world during the last 70 years. We should know by now what works and what doesn't. It is quite amusing how confused just about everyone is regarding training.

this goes back to recovery and how much do you need to proceed.  
lets take biceps for example,
24 hrs to recover from a wrkout is a number that floats out "there" against 1oo hrs for spinal erectors.
if you didnt care about strength for example before ur 2nd day or even every/other day.
it doesnt like carrying extra bulk either but exactly opposite of the cast, working muscles everyday.
this is where training knowledge kicks in and prevents injury while walking the line of gains injury.
basically we're like walking wounds after serious training.
dorian used a cool comment about sand paper one time
is everybody really concerned with too much when in reality its really not enough.
the question is how much is enough?

so you didnt do the 12hr yet.  what about that other guy with re 8hr = 300%...?
on the 10 wrkouts did u use diff weights set reps etc? tot time wrkout etc?


has anyone done a lift or trained specific muscle group/s for long periods of time, week, months?
results
stories
injuries lol

[Vince B]

I think Bryan Haycock estimated the amount of time needed each day to stimulate 100% hypertrophy in humans. He didn't do any studies or tests so it was a guess, I suppose, partly based on the fowl experiments. The fowl walked around with progressively heavier weights on one wing. So doing that during daylight would be equivalent to 8 hours training. Or so he claims. I have no idea. What interests me is if the body will adapt rapidly to usual demands.

It may be the the development of calouses resembles hypertrophy. There is optimum protocols for gaining the maximum thickness of calouses. Experience shows us that too much work can cause damage and not growth. So exactly where to draw the line is one of those operational things that must be worked out by pioneers. We are unlikely to get any studies to find our answers. I am afraid that academia regards musclemen as mirror athletes and totally unimportant and perhaps a travesty.

It may be that muscles are different from calouses and might adapt rapidly via hypertrophy to unusual and extreme demands. What amuses and frustrates me is how difficult it is to switch this process on. Just about everyone thinks bodybuilding is an easy pastime and you just lift weights and take steroids. Nothing could be further from the truth. The brain is involved and in a real sense big muscles are a property of brain functioning. The brain must supervise the hypertrophy. Well, supervise is probably not the right word. If it is true about the brain being involved this would partly explain why so few obtain really large muscles. Sometimes individuals have the genetics, experience and intelligence but still fail to get some bodyparts as big as they want.

[Vince B]

Gym owner and champion bodybuilder Milos Sarcev had trouble getting his arms big enough to match his torso and legs. He tried just about everything and foolishly even oil injections that almost killed him. No one would say that Milos isn't highly intelligent. He is also extremely knowledgeable when it comes to training. I don't happen to agree with his specific methods of rapid training but if he can get results then he is obviously doing something right.

Okay, how come his arms failed to respond to his training? This isn't easy to explain. I have a theory about torso champions vs arm champions. Larry Scott was an arms-shoulders champion. Milos was a torso champion. My hunch is that torso guys have a really hard time putting sufficient mechanical tension on their arms. Oh, they do the exercises. When you watch them train you notice they swing a lot and the momentum allows them to use heavy weights. All impressed except the biceps. If you do not put mechanical tension specifically on the biceps they won't grow. You will swear you are training them hard but the results say otherwise. The triceps are relatively easy to get larger. The trick is finding specific exercises that isolate and target the muscles. You have to immobilize the upper arms and put the triceps in a stretched position for best results. Then you have to keep your elbows and shoulders still so that the arm rotates by triceps contractions alone. That again is more difficult to do than it seems. I have supervised person after person and just about everyone cheats. They use way too much weight and the only way they can lift those heavy weights is to cheat. So they change the angle of the shoulders and they don't reach back very far and they push the elbows out at the end. Many also lift the upper arms off the pads. When you do this you are cheating. The muscle won't be stressed and you are wasting your time. How do you know if you stressed your triceps? They will be quite sore the 3 days following that workout. If they are not sore then the workout wasn't effective and again you are wasting your time. If your muscles don't get sore my advice is to return to the gym and retrain them.