I read the book and tried to max out on squats every day. I hit the PR goal I had but then I stopped because I was only sleeping about 3-4 hours a night due to trading and squatting on that low sleep daily is not advised. I also did tried pull ups / push ups every day, doing multiple sets thoughout the day but never to failure. I took my max pull ups from 10 to 20 in 2 months. The book studies how our body and mind react to stress over prolonged periods of time and about different states of adaptation that the body has. There are even lessons which can be applied to trading believe it or not. I lift now 3-4 times a week and do full body every time, heavy on squats, deads, bench, over head press, and pulls ups in different schedule variations. I am 32 so recovery is not an issue and I am used to training like this. Needing to rest 2-5 days between hitting the same muscle is a wife's tale. The more often you work out the less you get sore and the faster you gain strength due to the neural pathway adaptation in learning the motor patterns of the movements. Now obviously if you do a bodybuilding workout and blast every muscle into complete exhaustion, you will not be able to train it for 2-3 days but this is not a good way to train for a natural anyway. Think of people who do heavy manual labor like brick layers or other physically demanding jobs.. do they work one day and then need 5 days to recover?
The more I read the more I have to agree with Fred, especially for those that have already achieved their weight goals, assuming they had weight goals to begin with. Less frequency equals more muscle gain and fewer reps with greater weight achieves better muscle mass. The young can get away with high frequency, but as we age the need for proper recovery becomes paramount. The problem is for people who are 50 years+, 50lbs. or more overweight, and haven't seen the inside of a gym in decades. Take a trip to the mall and that's about 2/3 of the population.They need some frequency to lose the weight, but they're going to lose muscle mass while doing it, so it becomes a two step process IMO. Lose the weight through proper diet and some cardio mixed with enough weight training to get limbered up, and then lower the cardio training while increasing the weights they're lifting, all while cutting back on frequency.For most that's a multi year process that your average fat and out of shape American is not willing to do. Hence the yo-yo diet plans doomed to failure from the jump. Great for business though as the repeat customers keep looking for the next quick and easy fix.
Do they work to or beyond momentary muscular failure? On an unrelated note, do they have the physique you want?
I mostly train for strength and performance the physique is just a by product. It's very rare that I train to muscular failure.
What, exactly, is training for performance? I confess that I don't quite understand how someone can train for strength and not embrace training to failure. I'm sure you can get stronger without going to failure, but is it as efficient? Sure, you'll be able to do more volume and frequency, but will that make you stronger or just better at the movements you're doing more often? I'm not saying you're wrong. It just seems a bit counterintuitive to me. On the plus side, I have to say that increasing your max pull ups from 10 to 20 in 2 months is an impressive increase in such a short period of time, especially if you have already been lifting for a while. Do you make an effort to ensure that you are not relying on momentum?
Yes all the pull ups were dead hang. The idea of frequent training not to failure is that you get in a lot of quality reps and become very good at the movement. You can google the term "Greasing the Groove". If you want to squat more, you get there by doing it more often with more volume. Not by killing yourself in the rack once a week and then limping around for 4 days.
Just to be clear, I lift to failure (and beyond for a couple exercises) only once a week now, and I am not sore the next day. I'm fatigued, to be sure. But I'd have to be off for about 2 weeks to have charley-horse-type muscle soreness for a couple of days. P.S. I'm not suggesting for a moment that mine is the best way. Just commenting on the "killing yourself and limping" thing.
Just to put a finer point on it, extending the elbows at the bottom of the movement is fine. I do it, too, as I like full range of motion. (However, I immediately begin the next rep without pause except, perhaps, for the last rep, which is characteristically slower and more difficult.) But by momentum, I mean do you slowly lift from the bottom using only your back and biceps, or do you also engage the rest of the body in a bit of a swing or jerk to get going?
no jerk or anything. I do strict style pull ups. I weight 165lb and do my work sets with an extra 65 lb for sets of 5-8 reps. My pulls are pretty strong. Got that way by doing A TON of them. I would basically do 15 pull ups before every meal. Ended up doing 60+ every day.