You're a prime example of what AJ used to say, and that was that the legs respond fastest to regular training. He said it was because no other exercise approaches squats as far as "intensity of effort" is concerned, and that's why the legs had the fastest response. Do you agree with this statement? Also, does anybody you know follow very abbreviated training (ie. Mentzer's consolidated routine)? And if so, are they making progress on it?
Well I tried bodypart splits for nearly a year and all what happened was a lot of soreness but not a lot of over compensation, in fact my strength regressed and I did not see "hypertrophy" or whatever
I can't find the topic but a couple of very knowledgeable guys on elitefitness agreed on something like this
*bodypart splits use a ton of volume about once a week on every muscle group, this is flawed for the natural because
-the volume will require too much off the body's limited recovery ability, this way chances of overcompensation being achieved are slim if at all
-the frequency is too low, there is too much time in between training the same muscles, this way the overcompensation, if it worked at all will have disappeared again and your strength will be lower again so you are going back and forth at best (in many cases like mine you will actually go backwards)
*the reason this approach of "destroy every muscle into jiggly shit every week" is because of the drugs
this is what they said
these same guys also thought mike mentzer was some sort of scam artist, because the training he used in his day was very similar to HST
while his ideas sound great in theory I have never seen or heard a legitimate success story
and about the "intensity of effort" thing, I do think that with squats, assuming your volume and frequency is at an optimal level, progress proportionally to the effort you put in the training, which can be quite grueling, because a muscle that large requires you to activate a lot more motor units than curls so you really need to isolate your mind from outside distractions and muster all the aggression you can get to go to the maximum effort level
I have not really tried abreviated training but I have read about it in Stuart McRoberts book, problem with his book (beyond brawn) is I found it so repetitive and didnt get much practical directions from it
that's why i went the "5x5" route with glenn pendley/mark rippetoe influenced programs (bill starr influenced)