DC Logg: Doggcrapp Training - is it all that it's cracked up to be?

[natural al]

i believe in a universal law of building muscle, ala mentzer.

i do not agree with 'dc is not for beginners', or some body parts need 2 sets or 3- why? (safety wise i understand - but not from muscle/strength building point of view).

however a good system builds muscle in everyone, beginner, and experienced lifter alike, and should be safe in all movements - so 2 straight sets in case of injury is silly imho.

al how do you judge how much weight you drop to when replacing a maxed out movement with another. is there a 20% drop or some other scientific measurement you shoot for or is it just by feel?

i was doing 100lbs db presses, then got a shoulder injury, so i took 2 weeks off. when i went back i changed the movement, and i thought i should have been in the ball park of 100lbs, but i had to drop it to 75lbs. this bothered me. i'm working back up now but shoulder is still bothering me.

I'll only comment on one statement-DC training is not for beginners-

9 times out of 10 a beginner doesn't really know how to train, he might be going in and think he's busting is ass but for the most part training hard is something you learn, it's never a given.  If a beginner was to jump right into DC there is no way he could grasp all of the concepts and use them in an effective manner.  This is the same reason alot of people fail when they decide to train HIT cause they might think they understand the concepts but to actually train hard enough to get the most out of the program is another story.  YOu have to learn what works for you're body and just saying do 1 set with your heaviest weight to failure is pretty easy sounding but once you actually set out to do it a beginner might be using say 50% of the weight he could be using simply cause he doesn't understand what that statement actually means. 

I thought I trained hard 10 years ago but I know for a fact that I would destroy myself if I knew then what I know now and if I trained as hard as I do today using alot of DC's principles I'd be alot better off.

[Fatpanda]

i dont think 1 set to failure is hard to understand? even for a beginner.

failure is failure, if its a 10 rm or a 5rm.

yes they may not push truely into absolute failure, but they will get close enough. didn't you when you started?

why wont you answer the changing of excercises question? i'm honestly curious.

[natural al]

i dont think 1 set to failure is hard to understand? even for a beginner.

failure is failure, if its a 10 rm or a 5rm.

yes they may not push truely into absolute failure, but they will get close enough. didn't you when you started?

why wont you answer the changing of excercises question? i'm honestly curious.

what was the question again?  I'm busy as hell right now and I can't go back and reread stuff...honestly, I've got about 45 hours of work left to do this week.

If you think a newbie can use metzer's or even DC's theories on training and get all they can out of it and understand and utilize all the concepts than more power to ya, good luck getting a 16 or 17 year old kid to wrap his mind around doing one all out set to failure, nothing more and have him really understand how to do some of metzer's advanced training techniques like rest pause, hyper reps, static holds etc.

[Fatpanda]

they wont get all they can at first, that will come in time, but it will give them good enough. 1 straight set to failure that is, i wouldn't recommend they add statics, drops etc either not at first.

[natural al]

i believe in a universal law of building muscle, ala mentzer.

i do not agree with 'dc is not for beginners', or some body parts need 2 sets or 3- why? (safety wise i understand - but not from muscle/strength building point of view).

however a good system builds muscle in everyone, beginner, and experienced lifter alike, and should be safe in all movements - so 2 straight sets in case of injury is silly imho.

al how do you judge how much weight you drop to when replacing a maxed out movement with another. is there a 20% drop or some other scientific measurement you shoot for or is it just by feel?

i was doing 100lbs db presses, then got a shoulder injury, so i took 2 weeks off. when i went back i changed the movement, and i thought i should have been in the ball park of 100lbs, but i had to drop it to 75lbs. this bothered me. i'm working back up now but shoulder is still bothering me.

I got a few minutes to answer your question.  Right now I'm doing much higher reps than I've ever done before, my range is 20-30RP on almost everything.  Back when I was doing a more "traditional" DC rep range of say 12-15 reps I would always be very careful when rotating in a new movement.  I usually started pretty light for a couple of workouts to guage how I felt during the movement, I don't know if you ever looked at any of my other posts but I've got alot of non training related injuries that I have to work around, usually I can tell right away if a movement isn't gonna work for me.  I don't have a set formula.  I started a movement DC talked about over on IM it's a wide grip cable curl, I'd already maxed out on regular cable curls-150lbs for 18 reps rest paused.  The way you set up for this new movement might have caused a problem for my low back so I went really light and the first time I got over 30 reps, I'm just now getting up to a good weight and it's been over a month.

I don't know if that answers your question but my mindset is start off light and get used to it and go from there.

BTW-Superman>The Hulk

[Fatpanda]

I don't know if that answers your question but my mindset is start off light and get used to it and go from there.

yes it does, thats what i have been doing too pretty much, still having this shoulder problem though. i just dont want to give up the dumbell presses, they are really working well. so i'll keep changing things till it goes away or i need to see an art guy.

BTW-Superman>The Hulk

 

[natural al]

yes it does, thats what i have been doing too pretty much, still having this shoulder problem though. i just dont want to give up the dumbell presses, they are really working well. so i'll keep changing things till it goes away or i need to see an art guy.
 

if you're training DC, I'll give you one suggestion and it's a hard one to accept for alot of guys DB's pressing movements in general don't work out all that well, I'm a strong presser-at least I think I am and the work required to use DB's just got to be too much of a pain in the ass, once you hit a point it's a pain.  I got up to the 120's on DB incline presses before I realized it, kick the wieght up, press it 6-8 times, drop it....12 deep breaths, pick em back up and inot position agian and go...it's a pain in the ass.

[Fatpanda]

if you're training DC, I'll give you one suggestion and it's a hard one to accept for alot of guys DB's pressing movements in general don't work out all that well, I'm a strong presser-at least I think I am and the work required to use DB's just got to be too much of a pain in the ass, once you hit a point it's a pain.  I got up to the 120's on DB incline presses before I realized it, kick the wieght up, press it 6-8 times, drop it....12 deep breaths, pick em back up and inot position agian and go...it's a pain in the ass.

i'm not doing dc, however i like some of the principles of it.

i'm ecclectic in nature, and i like things from many systems. so i try to combine certain things, and if they work i stick with them.

i know what you mean about the db's though. i'm mainly doing straight sets with them.(changing rep ranges every workout)

i took a long layoff from training after i totally burnt out. 8 months or so off. but when i started back my strength was comming back very fast under my current system. i went from 50lbs db's to the 100's in 2 months, then got the shoulder injury thats driving me mad.