Pellius is continuing the debate so I will respond to things he has posted. Let us accept that he is above average in intelligence, education and experience. While young and impressionable he met a gym owner who clued him in about hypertrophy training. The bible in those days was written by Arthur Jones. It was logical, detailed, and convincing. Everything Arthur said made sense and fit into his overall ideas about intensity being the trigger for more hypertrophy. Arthur had amply demonstrated his methods on a huge Sergio Oliva who grew even bigger while Arthur was training him. If we needed proof that Nautilus methods worked then that had to be it. The Colorado Experiment involving a deconditioned Casey Viator impressed hardly anyone in the Irongame. Muscle memory, maybe drugs and genetics helped explain his amazing gains in one month. He was supposed to have lost bodyfat but the photos aren't convincing.
Just about everyone who was training in the 60s-70s was influenced by what Arthur Jones wrote. Heck, people even read his ads in IronMan Magazine. Arthur used Hans Selye's Stress theory to convince us that we needed time to recover. That was a fact of physiology and no one disputed this claim. Along came Mike Mentzer and Ellington Darden who developed Arthur's system for their readers. At the time it appeared that HIT would replace the 'conventional' method because it was more effective and more efficient. In other words, HIT worked and you spent less time in the gym. The smart guys embraced HIT while the knuckleheads were unconvinced and stuck with what they knew. This included Arnold. HIT didn't dominate and today it is a minor method compared to the various volume methods.
Bodybuilders might collectively be a bit thick but they have a lot of experience and they repeat what works for them. Hypertrophy might be relatively easy to obtain if you persist for several years in a gym. In the old days it took perhaps 10 years to be big enough to win some contests. Of course, there were a few exceptions and they were big relatively young. Casey Viator was huge at 19. Arnold was huge at 19. However, the vast majority of bodybuilders had to struggle to get to the intermediate level and few transcended it to be advanced bodybuilders. Yes, steroids did enter the picture in those years and by 1970 you had to use them to win a national contest. It was a reckless thing to do because the medical profession insisted they didn't work and they had dangerous side effects and might even cause cancer. The vast majority of bodybuilders in the 60s gave steroids a miss. I am talking about people training at home and in hardcore gyms. Eventually everyone noticed that the big guys weren't dropping dead so the side effect myth was dismissed more or less. In those days you seldom saw anyone with gynocomastia. That is because most guys were going off the steroids and were supervised by doctors. Testosterone was not something anyone would take because of the virilizing effects. Stacking was pretty much unheard of. Dianabol and Decadurabolin were the drugs of choice in LA. Those who did not like injections never found out what Deca could do for them. After I won the Mr Canada contest in 1970 in Vancouver, I met Dr Michael Walczak and he told me I could be Mr Universe within 6 months by following his treatments and training hard in LA. I never accepted his invitation and I never won Mr Universe, either! He was the doctor that many of the muscleheads used in LA for their gear.
Nautilus Machines were popular in America and elsewhere and Arthur became a multi-millionaire through that business. The muscleheads pretty much ignored his advices and stuck to what worked in the gym. At Golds in Venice they had many of the major manufacturers donate equipment lines because potential franchaise owners would go there to select gym equipment. The Nautilus machines were installed in the second room and you never had to wait to use them. It was a different story for Flex, Icanian and Hammer equipment. Somehow the Nautilus machines were not embraced by the bodybuilders. They insisted that free weights were the core for successful bodybuilding. Of course they needed machines for calves and legs so these were used to good effect at Golds and elsewhere. Arthur was unable to convince the muscleheads and out of frustration Arthur wiped his hands of these dummies and concentrated on sports and general training. He sold Nautilus then opened Medx and came out with a new line of machines. Again, the muscleheads more or less did what they have always done. Free weights, pulleys and some machines for legs. The Hammer machines were liked but in truth, only a few were really effective. Gym owners thought the whole line must be good so today you see many of these machines that hardly anyone uses. The chest machines established them as excellent machines and that gave the whole line a reputation.
Is it any wonder that the vast majority of bodybuilders are confused? Whatever are they supposed to believe? Everyone who lifts weights will read some of the muscle magazines. In addition there are publications galore about bodybuilding and most people have read a few of these as well. That is why just about everyone who lifts weights believes he needs more protein and other supplements. That isn't what is written for graduate students in nutrition at our best universities. No matter, these beliefs are passed on via word of mouth and reinforced through the impressive ads in magazines. If you look up to someone in a gym and he is way bigger than you then you tend to accept what he says about training. You also watch what he does and eventually you copy his exact exercises. That is why I still see guys doing triceps pressdowns with those ropes. A total waste of time but they do this. Instead of using the ab machines many will use the rope and do kneeling crunches. Ah, so many waste so much time and effort in gyms. The raw and inescapable truth is clearly that the vast majority of trainees are NOT growing at any one time. Why is this? If methods evolve and you accept what works for you then how come you remain on plateaus for most of the year? Not many can explain this phenomenon. HIT experts insist trainees need more rest to recover. Mike Mentzer trained people and reported that everyone grew better when he scheduled workouts to be further apart. Sometimes he would have them training a bodypart once every two weeks. The rank and file musclehead dismisses this as hogwash. The general consensus is to train a bodypart twice a week. Once really hard and the other to get a pump.
Let us look at hypertrophy training from a logical point of view. I think it has to be accepted as self-evident that the muscle will grow if and only if it has a reason to do so. There is an equivalence principle in hypertrophy. You can do several things that will stimulate muscle growth. For calves, you can go for a long hike. You can put a backpack on and walk up and down hills. You can do various protocols in the gym with machines or partners. Many methods can result in hypertrophy. What bodybuilders have discovered is some methods are better than others. Thus, gym training is superior to other methods to build muscle. It all comes down to getting direct mechanical tension on a target muscle for a certain length of time and of a certain intensity. You repeat this process at intervals and use progressive resistance to give the muscles a reason to grow.
A reason to grow = hypertrophy stimulus. A problem for HIT enthusiasts is known as the RBE or Repeated Bout Effect. Scientists found that high intensity training would result in adaptations that would persist. If you retrained a muscle with the same protocol say in a week then nothing further would happen in the muscle. It already adapted to that protocol and no further adaptation was possible. How then to get around this frustrating problem?
We need to visit HST to see what they say about exercise science. Hypertrophy Specific Training is owned by Bryan Haycock. That is what we all are trying to do. He and his associates have read the exercise literature and come up with principles that work. According to them protein synthesis is completed in the muscles approximately 36 hours after a workout. For practical reasons they suggest training a muscle every 48 hours. If we take this principle and incorporate it then that means retraining muscles every second day. The trouble is that this isn't what we find the really big guys doing. So what gives here? Unfortunately, much of the stuff done by the pros is contaminated because they use drugs and plenty of them. They can recover from workouts that might put a natural in the hospital.
Training every 48 hours might avoid the repeated bout effect. If so then this is another reason to embrace this schedule. Is there anything else we can consider? Yes, and this is the feedback we get from growing tissue. Those of us who have had a layoff know that we get sore when we hit the gym again. Everyone knows this and it is an unpleasant experience. There has been a lot of research to find ways to lessen or avoid the DOMS soreness. DOMS stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. It appears on the day after hard training and can persist for several days. Some experts suggest waiting for the soreness to evaporate before training the muscle again. The worry is that one might damage a sore muscle. Well, that is pure speculation. I wondered about this and used a thought experiment for the answer. Suppose our ancient ancesters in Africa went out hunting one day and encountered an animal and a struggle followed that left the man totally exhausted and without any food. The next day this guy would awake and have very sore muscles. Would he be able to go out and encounter another animal and get food to survive? Clearly this must be possible. So, even though sore from an intense event it is still possible to exert the muscles in a maximum fashion. Our survival depended on this capacity. Thus, the bodybuilder with sore muscles can retrain them after a day with no worries at all. The repeated bout effect will be avoided and perhaps it is easier to keep a muscle sore than to get it sore. If soreness is a side-effect of muscle hypertrophy then sustaining the soreness will stimulate more growth. It is possible to do this for weeks at a time and have rapid growth during this time. For evidence we go to the fowl experiments of Dr Jose Antonio. He was able to cause the anterior latisimus dorsi muscle of his experimental birds to grow 300% in one month! He added resistance to one wing every 3rd day. That is also the likely optimal time to retrain a muscle. There is sufficient time for healing and growth in the two rest days. It may be that different muscles need different schedules. There is evidence that many bodybuilders have had success with training calves daily or even every second day.
What I am writing here are conjectures based on personal experience. Ultimately it is pure anecdote as far as science goes. That doesn't mean it is unlikely to be true. Only that there is no compelling supporting evidence that it is true. Pellius and the other resident experts will assess what is written here via their personal beliefs, ideas, methods and experience. I am claiming that this method has not been systematically tried by scientists or muscleheads. It is something new and it makes bold predictions. It can explain why the vast majority of bodybuilders are not growing. It can explain why most grow imperceptibly slowly taking many years to see results.
At the moment I am proceeding in the experiment and have progressed reasonably well so far. Remember that I tore a right biceps doing a stupid deadlift in 1977. I was trying to set a gym record and tore the biceps so that I can't do supination any more with any resistance. Curse those deadlifts. Don't do them. And don't see how much you can lift. Ronnie Coleman and Dorian Yates both lifted too heavy and paid the price for being reckless. I also have sore elbows and so arm training is a delicate process. As I advance and use heavier resistances I am risking injury. Pellius was surprised that I always go to my limit in every set I do. Again, you have to give the muscle a reason to be bigger. Heck, you have to give it a reason to stay the same size. That is all that most guys do when training in the gym. No soreness = no rapid growth. To test if this is true try to get your biceps sore and see if they grow. Hard to do but you will be delighted at the growth. What I have been doing is warming up thoroughly then staying at the maximum resistance for up to 6 sets. I rest plenty between sets so that I can still do over 10 reps. By the 3rd set you will usually find the reps have decreased. If you start at 20 reps you will be down to 10 by the 3rd set. Not sure what that is but it always happens to me. If you take short rests then you won't be able to do many reps at all. When you have stimulated hypertrophy your muscle will be swollen, hard, and you will be sweating and shaking during your hard reps. There is no easy way to get bigger muscles. The bigger the muscle, then more effort will be required to make it grow.
