Excellent. How many days do a week do you train PJim, I think you follow principles correct? Every workout a person should try to increase if you dont over training is suspect. Your thoughts?
Mr.N, my man. When I first started training at 17 I was doing relatively low volume 2 days a week due to other commitments (school and ill family) and made MASSIVE progress for that year(and I truly believe it wasn't only because it was my first year)...then I tried to be a smartass and increased it to 5 days a week and stopped EXACTLY, (and I mean EXACTLY) the same weight and size for a year.
I then stumbled across Mike Mentzer's books, Jones's stuff and Dorian's articles and whatnot. Long story short, put on about 30 pounds in 5 months lol. I would train once every 4th day, so for example; Mon, Thur, etc and insert a rest day once I had completed two cycles of bodyparts etc. I cannot explain how fucking amazed me and my main training partner were at the strength and size gains we were making. Did that until I was training once a week and then started the consolidated routine. Did that for about a year and made my most gains, strength went through the roof.
The consolidate routine takes a lot out of you, we would do a compound exercise and have to sit down and take 10-15 minutes just to move on to the next movement out of unmitigated exhaustion. In practice it sounds dead easy. But when you are completely fresh, rested and strong, warmed up and sitting under half a ton on the leg press and you are doing negatives in what feels and probably looks like slow motion, it's intense stuff.
The thing is, I've trained volume, so I'm allowed to comment on it. I've done 30 sets on arms, I've done every exercise known to man. But you just can't keep up the intensity and you end up pissing around wasting your time doing curls "for the squeeze" after an hour and a half and you end up feeling smaller for it.
I train once a week now and go through periods of time doing the Ideal routine and then others where I will do consolidated. This is just to give my joints a rest as the heavy compound movements are rough.
To answer your last query, I think the main idea is some sort of steady progress. That word can be applied to both physical mass increases and strength increases. They aren't linear nor predictable. It fluctuates person to person. One month I will gain size, another strength, sometimes both, sometimes I will maintain. I'm not going to get massively stronger nowadays without PED's to be honest, my gains are few and far between the last year, but I can't complain, I've put on a ton of weight and size and don't expect that my body has an unlimited capacity for increasing in strength and size forever!
Just to clarify. I do negatives (for as long as I physically can) on every workout on every rep. I treat them as the focus of each rep of each movement. Forced reps/rest-pause are/is done occasionally because I feel taxing the positive strength after it has failed, ESPECIALLY seen as it is the weakest portion of the contraction is asking for an injury.
