An interesting piece written by Drew Baye. I may not agree with everything he says, but I do agree with most of it. Q&A: High Intensity Training for Bodybuilding Versus General Strength and Fitness https://baye.com/blog/ Question: What do you recommend if I want to do high intensity training for bodybuilding and not just strength or general fitness? Is a higher repetition range better for hypertrophy? Do I need more variety of exercises to make sure I’m working all my muscles from different angles or in different parts of the range of motion? How can I tell where I need the most work and what can I do about lagging muscle groups? Answer: Contrary to popular but uninformed opinion there is no difference in how you should perform exercises for increasing muscular size versus muscular strength, and you do not need a large variety of exercises for any muscle group. However, there are some differences in how you should design your workouts for bodybuilding versus general strength and conditioning. Training for Strength vs Hypertrophy Many people confuse strength, which is your muscles’ ability to produce force, with how much weight you are able to lift in a specific exercise, which is a combination of your strength, how skilled you are in performing that exercise (skilled at the assumed objective of lifting the weight, as opposed to the real objective of using the weight to efficiently load and fatigue the target muscles), and specific neural adaptations. Strength is general, meaning it transfers to every physical activity you perform. Skill and specific neural adaptations do not transfer to other physical activities, only the activity or exercise practiced. This is one of the problems with using 1RM testing to compare the effect on strength of different training methods, especially when the same exercises are used for workouts and testing. The old belief that different repetition ranges were required to stimulate different types of adaptations (e.g. lower reps for strength, medium for hypertrophy, high for endurance) is based on observations of how bodybuilders versus powerlifters tended to train, without consideration for genetic differences and selection bias. We now know this belief was wrong, and a very broad range of repetitions (time under load, actually) can be similarly effective for increasing both muscular strength (general) and muscular size when exercises are performed to momentary muscle failure. If your goal is to improve your 1RM in a specific exercise you would benefit from also practicing that exercise with a very heavy weight and very low reps with unrestricted speed of movement. For general increases in muscular strength and size, though, a broad range of loads and repetitions will work, and longer sets with more moderate loads will be safer as well as better for metabolic and cardiovascular conditioning, which is also important. For more on this, read Q&A: High Intensity Training for Strength vs Size vs Power and The Myth of Training for Sarcoplasmic Versus Myofibrillar Hypertrophy and High Load/Low Reps Versus Low Load/High Reps For Hypertrophy. The Need for Non-Variation in Exercise As for variety of exercises, although our bodies are capable of an infinite variety of movements all of these are just combinations of a relatively small number of basic joint movements, and only a few basic exercises are required to effectively work all the major muscle groups which produce them. Just because a particular muscle is capable of producing more than one joint movement doesn’t mean you need to work that muscle through all of those movements, either, just one is enough. Even convergent muscles capable of producing movement in very different planes can be worked effectively with just one or two. You are better off performing just one or two of the best exercises for each muscle group—the most effective and safest you are capable of with the available equipment—consistently, than performing a wide variety or frequently changing them. Read The Ultimate Routine for more on this. Exercise Selection for Bodybuilding versus Functional Ability For general strength and conditioning, to improve your overall functional ability, your workouts should be designed to strengthen every major muscle group as much as possible, which will eventually result in the maximum size of every muscle group your genetics will allow. However, most people do not have the genetics for perfectly proportional and symmetrical growth throughout the body, and will tend to have some muscle groups with greater or lesser potential for strength and size than the others. This difference in the relative size potential of different muscle groups doesn’t matter much if your only concern is maximizing your potential physical performance and not having a perfectly proportional physique, but if aesthetics are a higher priority for you, you need to be careful to avoid over-development or under-development of muscle groups with greater or lesser size potential. This is not as much about how you perform your exercises as it is about which exercises you include in your workouts and how you organize them. It is rare to not want a muscle to get bigger, but bodybuilding isn’t just about size, it is also about proportion, shape, and symmetry. If you have a particular muscle group that grows too large relative to the others, it can negatively affect your proportions or overall shape. Reducing the size of a disproportionately developed muscle group or not letting a fast-growing muscle group get ahead of the rest of your physique is relatively easy. If a muscle group is too big stop training it until reduces to a size proportional to the rest of your body. If a muscle group’s growth is outpacing the growth of the rest of your body, stop working that muscle group to failure and do not increase the weight you use for that muscle group until the rest of your body has caught up. If you normally work the over-large muscle group with a compound exercise, you will need to substitute simple exercises instead to work it separate from the other muscles (e.g. a pullover and arm curl instead of a pulldown or chin-up, a lateral raise and triceps extension instead of an overhead press, or a hip extension and a leg extension instead of a leg press or squat.) Increasing the size of lagging muscle groups obviously requires a different approach, but not the one most assume. The key to body part specialization is not performing a larger volume of work for the target muscle groups with pre-exhaust or more varied exercises, or working them “harder” with forced-reps, drop-sets, rest-pause, finishing negatives or other set extension techniques, because more volume and/or more time spent performing an exercise past failure will not stimulate a greater increases in strength and size, it will only place greater demands on recovery energy and resources leaving less for growth. Instead, the key to designing a specialization workout for a body part or muscle group is to cut out exercises for all other muscle groups, to eliminate competition for your body’s limited energy and resources for recovery and growth. You should focus on specializing just one body part or one to three smaller muscle groups at a time—whichever are lagging the most. For example, if your upper arms were lagging, a specialization workout would consist of just one set of one direct, simple exercise for each; one elbow extension exercise and one elbow flexion exercise. Nothing else. You can alternate a specialization workout with your regular workouts, or, if the lagging body part is very stubborn, perform only specialization workouts for three or four weeks before alternating your regular workouts with the specialization workout for as long as it takes the lagging muscle group to catch up (assuming your genetics allow it to). When you add a specialization workout to your program you should maintain the same workout frequency, rather than add another weekly workout. For example, if you normally do two full-body workouts per week (a good starting point for most), start by alternating between your regular workouts and the specialization workout. After two or three months of this the lagging body part or muscle groups should have improved significantly (assuming they still have the potential to get larger) and you can cut back to performing the specialization workout every third or fourth time. Evaluating Physique Improvements Physique evaluation is rather subjective compared to evaluating improvements in exercise performance, but you can compare the progress of individual body parts by performing regular circumference measurements and you can evaluate your overall physique by photographing or taking a short video of yourself going through the mandatory bodybuilding poses and a few of your favorites every six to eight weeks (same place, same camera position, same lighting every time) and getting feedback from your trainer or training partners: Front Lat Spread Front Double Biceps Side Chest Rear Lat Spread Rear Double Biceps Side Triceps Abdominal and Thigh Most Muscular Save your images or videos in folders with the date they were taken or recorded. When you have two or more sets of photos or videos you can compare the before and after side by side. Keep notes on your training charts or in a journal on your progress, including how changes in your circumference measurements affect your appearance. Use yours and others’ feedback on these to determine what muscle groups may need either detraining or specialization, and adjust your workouts accordingly. If you want a more realistic standard to compare your physique against than today’s competitive bodybuilders—and one generally considered to be more aesthetically pleasing—look for photos of golden age bodybuilders like the one above of Steve Reeves, Mr. Universe 1950, performing a front double biceps pose. Keep in mind those bodybuilders were still very genetically gifted, but developing a physique like theirs is still well within the realm of possibility for some drug-free trainees.
Another piece by Drew Baye from the same blog: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Working Out https://baye.com/blog/ Like most people, when I started working out over 35 years ago I made a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, unlike most people, after a few years I learned to exercise more effectively, safely, and efficiently. I could write several books on all the things I wish I knew when I started working out (and I have), but here are a few of the most important: Your results from exercise have far more to do with how hard you train than how much or often. Don’t assume you need to perform some volume and frequency of exercise and adjust your effort to allow for it. Train as hard as possible and adjust your volume and frequency to allow for that. I wasted years doing anywhere from three to five sets per exercise and performing a much larger number of exercises than needed for each muscle group. I was often in the gym for anywhere from one to two hours, four or five days a week. If I had learned sooner that I only needed to perform one hard set per exercise, of only one or two exercises per muscle group, no more than three non-consecutive days per week, I would have gotten better results, faster, and saved myself hundreds of hours yearly. When it comes to exercise many believe more is better—more exercises, more sets, more frequent workouts, etc.—but your body doesn’t see it that way. Exercise is a stress on your muscles’ ability to produce force, and on the other systems that support them (metabolic and cardiovascular efficiency) and transmit the force they produce (bone and connective tissue strength). The more intense a stress, the greater the demand it places on some system’s ability to perform its function, the stronger the stimulus for adaptation, but also the more energy and resources your body has to devote to coping with and recovering from it, energy and resources which exist in limited supply. The more your body must devote to recovering from the stress the less remains to devote to producing the adaptations stimulated by it. There is a limit to how much and how quickly your body can produce increases in muscular strength and size and improvements in the other factors functional ability. Exercise will only stimulate improvements up to a point, and the more intensely you train the more quickly you will reach that point as volume increases. Any more volume than necessary to do this is counterproductive; it will not stimulate your body to produce greater increases in muscular strength and size or improvements in the other factors of functional ability, but it will continue to increase the demands on energy and resources for recovery. Again, the more your body must spend on recovery, the less it has for the production of the desired adaptations. These days I only perform one set of one exercise per muscle group, of around seven or eight exercises per workout, no more than twice weekly, and I am stronger and more fit now at 48 years old than I was at 18. When designing your workouts go through each exercise and note which muscle groups are targeted (not just involved). Make sure your program effectively works all the major muscle groups, including your neck, forearms, and lower legs (you don’t have to work every one in every workout, though, and some might be better dividing exercises up). Also try to minimize overlap within workouts, so no muscle groups are overworked. As an example, here is my current routine, consisting of an A and a B workout, each built around a few compound exercises with simple exercises included to address the smaller muscle groups: Workout A Safety Bar Squat Underhand-Grip Pulldown Overhead Press TSC Hip ADduction TSC Hip ABduction Wrist Extension Wrist Curl TSC Crush Gripping or TSC Pinch Gripping (alternating) Workout B Trap Bar Deadlift Bench Press or Parallel-Bar Dip Seated Row Crunch Heel Raise TSC Toe Raise TSC Neck Extension TSC Neck Flexion “Maximum degrees of growth stimulation can be—and should be—induced by the minimum-possible amount of exercise; the minimum amount required to produce certain effects—and once these effects have been produced then additional amounts of exercise will actually reduce the production of increases in strength and/or muscular size.” —Arthur Jones, Nautilus Training Principles: Bulletin 1 How well you perform an exercise is far more important than how much you lift. You don’t have to train heavy to train hard. The quality of your repetitions is far more important than the quantity. The quality of your repetitions is related to the efficiency of inroading, how deeply the target muscles are fatigued relative to the time under load. When I started working out I believed the effectiveness of an exercise was related to the amount of work performed—how much I weight I lifted and how many times I lifted it. As a result I performed exercises in a manner that maximized load relative to effort. I know know this is backwards, that effectiveness is related to relative effort—how hard the target muscles are worked relative to how hard they are capable of working and how efficiently they are fatigued (inroad/time = intensity)—and that exercises should be performed in a manner that maximizes effort relative to load. When you deeply fatigue a muscle, temporarily reducing the force it is can produce, you send a message to your body that it needs to increase the strength and size of the muscle so you will have more strength in reserve and be better capable of movement the next time you encounter the same stress. The better your exercise form, the more efficiently you are able to create and maintain tension in the target muscle groups, the more rapidly you will fatigue them. The more rapidly you are capable of fatiguing the target muscles, the less weight you require to achieve momentary muscle failure within some amount of time. The less weight you require to achieve momentary muscle failure within some time, the less load on your joints and spine, the lower your risk of injury. The less time you require to achieve momentary muscle failure with the same weight, the less stress required to stimulate the best possible improvements, the less energy and resources required for recovery, the more your body has to produce the desired adaptations. When you perform an exercise take your time, focus on contracting the target muscles, and move in a way that keeps them under relatively continuous tension. Avoid doing anything that reduces the tension and causes the target muscles to be underloaded or unloaded. Avoid doing anything that suddenly and greatly increases tension and increases your risk of injury. From the moment you begin the exercise until the moment you unload, focus on using the weight to empty out the target muscles, rather than using your muscles to move the weight. “If you change your position, path, and/or range of motion to make it easier to lift more weight during an exercise, you’re doing it wrong. You should be trying to maximize your effort relative to the load, not the load relative to your effort.” —Drew Baye Exercise intensely, progressively, and consistently; avoid unnecessary variety of exercises and training methods. When you learn a new exercise there is a six to eight week period during which much of the improvement in performance is due to learning and becoming more skilled at the exercise and neural adaptations, rather than due to increases in muscular strength and size or improvements in conditioning. Because of this, changing exercises or switching workouts every couple months can appear to break plateaus and keep you progressing. However, what it really does is set you back, since the greatest general physical benefits will occur after this initial phase. When I started working out there were a few exercises I did consistently, but I switched workouts every couple of months, usually choosing them from whatever bodybuilding magazine I was reading at the time. This was almost as big a mistake as doing too much exercise with poor form. When you do this it is like taking a few steps forward then one step back. Frequently changing your workouts is not just unnecessary, it is counterproductive for long-term results. You do not need a large variety exercises to effectively train any muscle group. Just one or two good exercises are enough. If you choose well to begin with you do not need to change exercises at all, much less frequently, to avoid plateaus. In fact, except for making adjustments to your workout volume and frequency to account for changes in your recovery ability over time, or due to changes in the equipment available, you can get great results performing the same basic exercises your entire life. Consider also, the longer you perform a particular exercise and the more skilled you become at it, the more effective, efficient, and safe it becomes. “The human system very quickly grows accustomed to almost any sort of activity—and once having adapted to such activity, then no amount of practice of the same activity will provide growth stimulation, although it will help to maintain levels of strength that were built previously. Thus it is extremely important to provide as many forms of variation in training as are reasonably possible; but in practice this does not mean that the training program needs to be—or should be—changed frequently. On the contrary, the same basic training routine will serve a man well for his entire active life. Another apparent paradox? Only an apparent one; in the first place, the “double progressive” system of training provides a great deal of variation in training—secondly, the three-times-weekly training schedule provides even more variety—and finally, if the training program is varied somewhat one day weekly, then all of the variety that is needed is well provided.” —Arthur Jones, Nautilus Training Principles: Bulletin 1 Regarding the above, which was written in 1970, it is important to note Arthur would later recommend no more than eight exercises twice weekly instead of a dozen or more thrice weekly. Main points: Train as hard as possible, but keep your workouts relatively brief and infrequent to avoid overtraining. Perform every exercise as strictly as possible, focusing on efficiently loading and deeply fatiguing the target muscles. Choose a few of the best exercises for each muscle group and perform them consistently.
I will admit that only 3 compounds twice a week, with some single joint movements sprinkled in seems a bit light.
I'm not sure about his specialization for lagging muscle groups, which calls for cutting out all other muscle groups and then doing only a single set (say, for arms, a single bicep movement/set and single tricep movement/set). I understand and agree that obliterating the lagging muscle is not the way to go, but this approach is rather extreme on the low end, when you consider eliminating all other exercises and muscle groups during that specialization workout. I never tried it, so I can't say for certain, but it doesn't quite sit right. What do you think? Also, as I noted in my third post in this thread, doing only a single set of three compound movements, with a few isolation exercises thrown in, twice a week seems insufficient. While I now favor a minimalist approach, I have not yet gone to such an extreme. What are your thoughts?
I remember reading something a few years ago that basically stated that the body part that shows the most improvement over time is the one you start your workout with. I'm assuming that's because you're going in fresh and can truly exert maximum effort on that one exercise, and then after that any additional body parts you work out in the same session may benefit as well, but the measurable results will be less than the part you started your workout with. So I guess his point is that if you want to bring up lagging part, just focus on the one exercise that hits that body part the best and after that, its game over for that workout.
I guess that makes sense. Even so, I imagine that the muscle groups that will respond disproportionately are the ones with the best fibre composition and muscle bellies. And so, I prefer to work the largest muscle groups first. So I begin with upper legs, move on to back, then chest, and finally shoulders. No direct arm work, bit a set of calf raises at the end. Can’t say any magical has happened, though, so what do I know, eh?
And another thing: Richard Winett, a lifelong fitness enthusiast who has authored and co-authored some good papers on resistance exercise, wrote the following, as quoted by Clarence Bass on his own site: https://www.cbass.com/Winett_BassAge.htm Train in ways that play to your strengths. Consider how many of us have spent time trying to alter our training in some way to make up for a genetically based weakness. It’s not much fun. The reason is that for the most part you can’t overcome a genetic weakness and therefore it’s unlikely that you will ever see very positive results for all your efforts. When you train in ways that play to your strengths, workouts are fun and if you have realistic expectations, you always see positive outcomes. Fun and positive outcomes are a sure formula for continued training success. The powerful idea is to do the opposite of conventional advice that advocates focusing on your weaknesses. I'm inclined to agree.