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Muscle Hypertrophy Training884. Training programs I have been reading chapters 32 and 33 again. Every time I think I have a better understanding, I ask you a question and I find out that I'm wrong. I like the idea of brief training that you described. I really only have time for 1 leg exercise and a push and pull exercise for the upper body each day. Using the high reps will take some time to get used to, but will be much easier on my joints. 1. For the sake of knowledge and to clear my mind of all the information I have read the past 30 years, how would you train a person who was only concerned with building larger muscles? 2. Would this be anaerobic exercise? Again, thanks for answering my questions. I hope that my inability to grasp the concepts in your book doesn't wear you out. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To maximally hypertrophy muscle fibers, athletes have to maximally stress those muscle fibers. The difficulty comes from how to maximally stress specific muscle fibers without injury. My recommendation: 01. Athletes should start at about one-half of their present maximum. 02. Do one repetition for four consecutive days. 03. Increase the weight by five percent and repeat. 04. When the weight is twenty-five percent over their previous maximum, stop increasing the weight. I would call this type of training program, Ballistic. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 896. Training Programs You stated to stop increasing weight when it is twenty-five percent over their previous maximum. 1. Why wouldn't you stop when you reach your "final stress level"? 2. When an athlete reaches his "final stress level", should he begin maintenance training for awhile and then attempt to exceed his previous level? 3. Is it possible for your "final stress level to improve"? 4. Are you in a state of overtraining when you reach you final stress level? 5. Do you achieve the full benefits of reaching your "final stress level" after you stop training at your maximum intensity for awhile? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The training program that you requested was to maximally increase the size of the muscles (hypertrophy) involved with your desired activity. To maximally hypertrophy muscle fibers, athletes start below the maximum resistance and gradually increase. My Muscle Hypertrophy program has a work interval of one repetition, a rest interval of twenty-four hours and a frequency of every day. 01. However, the danger with this program is the 'final stress level.' This means that, with an undefined goal, the likelihood of going too far is inevitable. Therefore, instead of increasing until the resistance is greater than athletes can withstand, before they start, athletes should have a clear maximum goal. The clear maximum goal that is reasonably achievable and safe is one hundred and twenty-five percent above their starting maximum level. 02. When athletes achieve one hundred and twenty-five percent above their starting maximum level, I recommend that they change from ballistic training to anaerobic training to aerobic training. That is, I want athletes to continue to work daily with their maximum resistance, but I want them to do as many repetitions as they can. 03. After athletes are able to complete twenty-four repetitions for four consecutive days, they can start another Muscle Hypertrophy program. 04. It is not possible for athletes to continue to increase the resistance without injury. However, with a clear stated reasonable goal, athletes will avoid injuries. 05. With the interim aerobic program, athletes are able to physiologically and psychologically prepare for their next step up in their Muscle Hypertrophy program. Athletes will voluntarily stop doing the Muscle Hypertrophy programs when they believe that they cannot go any higher. At that moment, to keep their gains, they need to continue the aerobic training at that level. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1088. Muscle Hypertrophy Training I found Questions #884, and #896 in regard to your advice to maximally grow muscles very interesting. I would like to clarify your advice. You wrote: "02. When athletes achieve one hundred and twenty-five percent above their starting maximum level, I recommend that they change from ballistic training to aerobic training. That is, I want athletes to continue to work daily with their maximum resistance, but I want them to do as many repetitions as they can. 03. After athletes are able to complete twenty-four repetitions for four consecutive days, they can start another Muscle Hypertrophy program." Let's say I can bench press 200 lbs when I start the program. Therefore I would start at 100 lbs. and do 1 set of 1 repetition everyday for 4 days. Then, after 4 days, I would go up 5% (i.e., 105 lbs) for 4 days. Then, after another 4 days, I would go up another 5%. (i.e., 110 lbs) and so on up to 250 lbs. 1. Is it correct that you only lift the weight one time each day? In other words, 1 set of 1 repetition every day? 2. I can see where it would be pretty easy to lift the weights on the lower end of the scale one time once daily. As the weight increased, however, would you recommend any type of warm up lifts? For example, when I got to 215 lbs, would you recommend any warm-up lifts at a lower weight before I attempted the one rep of 215 lbs? 3. After I got to 250lbs, I would start the aerobic program at this weight. Therefore, I would lift 250 lbs as many times as I could every day until I could do 24 reps for 4 days. Correct? 4. Then, I would start the process over at 125 lbs for this example? 5. Needless to say I have never seen anything quite like this before. <>br> Can you think of any sport where this type of training would be beneficial? I only can only think of weight lifting competitions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. For Muscle Hypertrophy, I recommend one maximum intensity repetition per day. 02. I recommend performing the activity without resistance before performing the one explosive repetition against resistance. 03. After achieving 125% of the beginning level, which is one-half of the maximum level, I recommend that athletes change from one repetition to as many as they can until they can do a minimum of twenty-four repetitions for four consecutive days. 04. Then, if athletes want to hypertrophy these muscle fibers more, then they drop to one-half the weight and repeat the process. 05. This training program only hypertrophies muscle fibers. It has nothing to do with sport skills. Strengthening the bones, ligaments, tendons and muscles associated with sport skills requires specificity of motor unit contraction and relaxation sequences and increasing the number of arterioles that serve the associated muscle fiber and increasing substrate storage. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1232. Muscle Hypertrophy training I may not have explained what I am doing very well. I am not doing as many reps as I can. I started with a very light weight that was one half of my 24 rep max and performed 24 reps and stopped. I continued to add 5% after four consecutive workouts, but I still only performed 24 reps even if I could do more. I am now getting close to the point where I will not be able to complete 24 reps. I felt that this was the same as the hypertrophy workout that you explained, except with higher reps. 1. Is this not a hypertrophy workout because I'm using high reps? 2. Does this change your response? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For my Muscle Hypertrophy workout, athletes perform only one repetition. If you want to practice the motor unit contraction and relaxation sequence for your activity, then I recommend a one second isoanglos joint action. When you perform more than one repetition, you are performing an anaerobic workout. Anaerobic workouts produce lactic acid. Twenty-four repetitions are too high for anaerobic workouts. I use twenty-four repetitions as the minimum for aerobic workouts. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1236. Muscle Hypertrophy training 1. Are compound movements superior to isolation movements for enhancing muscle hypertrophy? I understand that the leg press, for example, would involve more muscles than the leg extensions, but: 2. Is the leg press superior to the leg extension for building the quad muscles? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When training to increase muscle size, athletes focus on stress, not motor unit contraction and relaxation sequences. That means that they isolate each muscle set with simple movements. The leg press primarily trains the single joint muscles that extend the knee, which are the muscle set of the Vastus Lateralis, Vastus Intermedialis and Vastus Medialis. To safely perform leg presses, athletes lie on their back under the leg press. Then, they raise their bent legs and place them under the press. The press has to be at the height that allows athletes to keep their lower back flat on the floor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1240. Muscle Hypertrophy training 1. Could you provide me a list of exercises that "isolate the muscle with simple movements"? I would have thought that the leg extension isolated the muscle, but then you explained the muscles that the leg press trains and that confused me. I have read muscle magazines my whole adult life and thought I had a basic understanding of exercise. Since I started writing you years ago concerning my son's throwing, you have made it clear that I know very little. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first step is to decide which muscles that you want to train. The second step is to decide how to isolate those muscles. For example, bench presses train the Pectoralis Major muscle. However, bench presses also train the Triceps Brachii muscles. This means that when athletes do bench presses, they only train the weaker of these two muscles. And, bench presses are dangerous. This means, like using a leg press apparatus versus squatting with bar bells on the shoulders, the first consideration is removing potential injury. Therefore, the third step is to design a safe way to perform these exercises. I prefer dead weights. But, the technique has to be injury-free and without spotters. Another danger with bench presses is taking the Humerus bone behind the acromial line. When my baseball pitchers asked me to set up a weight training room for them, to do bench presses, I had them lie on their backs on a mat on the floor with the bar bell in vertical slots that I cut in a two 2 x 12 inch boards that I secured to the floor and the rafters the length of their forearms. With this set-up, athletes cannot take the bar bell behind their acromial line and cannot drop the bar bell on their neck. Lastly, to train only their Pectoralis Major muscles, I had them raise the bar bell only as high as when their Humerus bones were forty-five degrees above horizontal. As you can see, providing a list of exercises that isolate specific muscles with simple movements is much more complicated than your muscle magazines say. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1242. Muscle Hypertrophy training I find the questions about muscle hypertrophy very interesting. Since the questioner seems to be actually interested in building muscle mass, it would be very interesting if he would pick a muscle group to hypertrophy and keep you and your readers updated on his progress. For example, if he can now bench press 200 lbs, it would be very interesting to see him get to 250 lbs by doing one rep per day starting at 100 lbs. While this subject, on its face, has nothing to do with pitching, my take is that muscle size has nothing to do with how fast you can pitch a baseball. Is that correct? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I was a graduate teaching assistant at Michigan State University, the Chairman of the Physical Education Department assigned me to teach a weight training class. In the first class, I asked each student to write what they wanted to accomplish during the ten week quarter. One student said that he wanted to bench press 300 pounds. At the time, he could press 200 pounds. I used this one repetition program. However, I added one second isoanglos training at the beginning position and the 'stuck' position. The 'stuck' position is the position of the affected bones where the leverage position is the least favorable. While the class met three times a week, this student trained seven days a week. At the end of the class, he pressed 380 pounds. This young man did not meaningfully increase the muscle size of the affected musculature, but he did meaningfully increase his technique and motor unit contraction and relaxation sequence. Whatever the type of training, technique and motor unit contraction, relaxation sequence and muscle contractility are the keys to success. You have seen my baseball pitchers. Therefore, you know that they dramatically increase their muscles size. However, the percent of muscle size increase cannot account for the incredible increase in the work that they can do. I call this, my 20% Principle. That means that muscles hypertrophy explains only 20% of the amount of work they can do. When they finish my Recoil Interval-Training Cycles, they are able to complete 96 non-stop repetitions of my Drop Out Wind-Up competitive baseball pitching motion with 30 pound wrist weights, 48 non-stop 15 pound Iron Ball throws, then throw 48 baseballs at competitive intensity. With their Lid and Football throws, my guys throw over 200 wrist weights, iron balls, lids, footballs and baseballs for 60 consecutive days. These guys are Monster baseball pitchers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1262. Muscle Hypertrophy Training You replied in part: "I used this one repetition program. However, I added one second isoanglos training at the beginning position and the 'stuck' position. The 'stuck' position is the position of the affected bones where the leverage position is the least favorable." 1. What is the beginning position of a bench press? My image is that you had your student hold the bar steady for one second when it was a little bit above his chest. As I thought about it, however, you actually begin a bench press with the weight on a stand a couple of feet above your chest. 2. My image of the "stuck" position would be where the humerus bone is 25-45% below horizontal as you lift the weight. Is that correct? 3. You write that you consider this one rep training ballistic training. If you are stopping twice during the lift, how does the lift become ballistic? My original image was that you would move the bar to your chest and explode upward in one move much like you pitchers explode when their glove foot lands. As an aside, during the 1996 Olympics, I was in a bar and ran into a very famous (in his country) 1992 Olympic weight lifting champion. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. I was probably the only one who recognized him, so I reached out and shook his hand. This guy was about 5'7" at most and had a very limp hand shake. I remember expecting him to crush my hand. So I said to him I was surprised he could lift so much weight. Your comments on motor unit sequences reminded me of his response. He said matter of factly (in excellent English), "It's all about technique. I could teach you to do it." A week or so later, he won the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember how I said that I built the bench press apparatus for my baseball pitchers. My baseball pitchers lie on a mat on the floor, with the barbell resting in a vertical slot the length of their forearm above the floor. I use isoanglos training as preparation for doing the one repetition bench press. To do isoanglos training, we use immoveable bars. At the height of their forearm above the floor, I drilled holes in the two 2 x 12 inch through which I threaded the immoveable bar. The 'stuck' position for bench presses is when the elbow joint is extended forty-five degrees. Therefore, at the height of the barbell when baseball pitchers have their elbows bent forty-five degrees, we drilled holes through which we threaded the immoveable bar. When baseball pitchers do bench presses, they explode the barbell straight upward. I would never allow anybody to move the barbell downward to their chest. My barbells sit still in their grooves. My baseball pitchers only move the barbells upward and back downward to the bottom of the grooves. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1266. Muscle Hypertrophy Training I have never seen or heard of anyone using your system of having the weights slide in slots. Did Michigan State have their weights set up this way? Did you learn this isoanglos training from professors at Michigan State or is it something you developed on your own? To go from 200 to 380 lbs in 10 weeks is quite impressive. If your student had not done the daily isoanglos part of his lifts, do you think he could have gotten to 300 lbs? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With your numerous visits to my Baseball Pitching Research/Training Center, I was sure that you went into the garage in which I set up my weight lifting equipment. The kids called it, 'The Jailhouse.' To prevent several hundred pounds of weights from crashing down on the athletes that laid under it, the weight training room at Michigan State University had a leg press apparatus that it slid up and down on poles with blocks to stop the downward movement. Cutting vertical slots into 2 x 12 inch pressure treated boards secured at both ends is my idea. In the 1950's, Hettinger and Muller developed isometric training. However, with their six-second contractions, the Valsalva Effect of their training method caused blood vessels in the brain to burst. With my one-second isoanglos muscle contractions, my athletes learn the proper bone alignment and muscle motor units to contract withouit the Valsalva Effect. By isoanglosly isolating the 'start' and 'stuck' positions of weight lifting exercises, athletes do not have to control the weight. Instead, they focus on technique. I believe that the safety factor of one-second isoanglos muscle contractions helps athletes to learn the proper muscle motor units to contract. However, I have not conducted matched pairs comparative research. If I had had an opportunity to direct Master and Doctoral degree student what to research for their Master's Thesis and Doctoral Dissertations, then, if the candidates were interested, I would have included research such as this. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1302. Muscle Hypertrophy Training In your response to question 1242, you stated that your student increased his bench press from 200 lbs to 380 lbs in ten weeks. You also mention that he "did not meaningfully increase the muscle size of the affected musculature". 1. What do you believe are the reasons why he didn't experience a meaningful increase in muscle size? You later state that your pitchers dramatically increase their muscle size. They do this by performing high repetitions. I am aware of some of the muscle size increase they experience as my son experienced a significant increase in muscle size in his trapezoid muscles from throwing the iron ball. 2. How do you explain the muscle size increase with high reps and the lack of muscle size increase with the student performing the hypertrophy training program? I understand that the pitchers increase their muscle size because their training incorporates progressive overload. What I don't understand is why that training appears to produce superior results (hypertrophy) to the training utilized by your weight lifting student. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. When athletes improve their muscle motor unit contraction and relaxation sequences for specific movements, they greatly improve their performance. I believe that, in ten weeks, this young man increased his bench pressing ability from 200 pounds to 380 pounds indicates perfecting his force application technique. 02. That my baseball pitchers dramatically increase the muscles associated with the pitching arm action that I teach is a result of the long term daily training. This means that, if the bench pressing athlete were to aerobically continue to train daily for a much longer time, then I believe that he would also hypertrophy the muscle associated with bench pressing. Since the course only lasted ten weeks, I have no idea whether he continued to train. In 1968, when I started my baseball pitching interval-training program, I weighed 175 pounds. In 1974, I weighed 205 pounds. I remember, in spring training 1972, the Expos trainer complaining that I had gained fifteen pounds from when I joined them in mid-summer 1970. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1304. Muscle Hypertrophy Training In response to question 1088, you state: "After achieving 125% of the beginning level, I recommend that athletes change from one repetition to as many as they can until they can do a minimum of 24 repetitions for four consecutive days. Then, they drop to one half the weight and repeat the process". If you are dropping the weight back to 50%, it doesn't seem that you are utilizing progressive overload. 1. Do your muscles respond since you are applying more stress than the previous four workouts without any regard to the fact that you have the ability to lift heavier weight? 2. Do you just keep repeating the process over and over? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. You are correct. When athletes are performing one repetition of their maximum weight, I do not recommend that they progressively increase their overload. Instead, I recommend that after they achieve 125% of their beginning level, they leave the weight the same and increase the number of repetitions until they can perform a minimum of 24 repetitions for four consecutive days. This means that I changed from 'ballistic' training to aerobic training. 'Ballistic' training streamlines the muscle motor unit contraction and relaxation sequence. The aerobic training increases capilarization. When athletes ballistically stress their physiological systems, the physiological systems respond to that stress not just to meet the training overload, but beyond. Therefore, athletes can only safely train until they reach that beyond level of fitness. That is why athletes need to change from ballistic to aerobic. After the body adjusts to the aerobic training, it is again safe to train ballistically. 02. If athletes want to go farther ballistically, then they repeat the process for as many times as they want. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1306. Muscle Hypertrophy Training 1. What would happen if the athlete did not change from ballistic to aerobic? If instead, after they reached 125% of the beginning level, they went directly back to 50% of the 125% weight. 2. Would they not be able to exceed their previous 125% level because they did not perform the aerobic training? 3. Is it the aerobic training that enables you to exceed your previous maximum level each interval? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How the physiological systems responds to the stress depends on the type of stress they receive. When training ballistically, such as with one maximum resistance repetition, the physiological system responds by streamlining the muscle motor unit contraction and relaxation sequences. As with all physiological responses, this respond has limits. When athletes exceed their limits, they suffer injuries. I prefer that athletes stop before they exceed their limits. As your son's physiological response to my 120-Day High School Baseball Pitchers Interval-Training Program taught you, daily training with gradual increases in resistance and repetitions increases muscle motor unit contraction and relaxation sequences, muscle hypertrophy, capilarization and substrate storage. To continue without exceeding physiological limits, the one maximum repetition per day program needs muscle hypertrophy, capilarizaton and substrates storage. To directly answer your questions: 01. Injuries. 02. Yes. 03. Yes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1357. Muscle Hypertrophy Training In response to question 1088, you stated: "After achieving 125% of the beginning level, I recommend that athletes change from one repetition to as many as they can until they can do a minimum of 24 repetitions for four consecutive days. Then, they drop to one-half the weight and repeat the process". I have a question concerning the "drop to one-half the weight and repeat the process." In chapter 33, you state that for maintenance, "reduce the intensity at which they train to three-quarters of their maximum training intensity". If you drop to one half the weight and repeat the process, aren't you training at less than the maintenance level for approximately a month (adding 5% every fifth day)? Is there some benefit to training at less than the maintenance level for that long? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The original question that started this conversation was: What is the best way to hypertrophy muscle tissue? The popular design to hypertrophy muscle tissue is to do several sets of 10 repetitions. However, that design not only exhausts the substrate, it also tears the connective tissue that surrounds each muscle fiber, each bundle of muscle fibers and the entire muscle. <>br> Therefore, to avoid hypertrophying connective tissue, athletes need to perform only one repetition. However, if, on the first day of training, athletes were to try to lift their maximum weight, then they would be at high risk of injuring the involved muscle tissue. That is why they need to start by lifting one-half of their maximum for four consecutive days. From that point, they increase the weight by 5% and repeat the process until they lift 125% of their beginning level. If they continue at this 5% increase pace after reaching 125% of their beginning level, they would again be at high risk of injuring the involved muscle tissue. Therefore, to prepare the involved muscle tissue for another phase of increasing their maximum at 5%, I change the training methodology from ballistic to aerobic. To do that, I have the athletes complete as many repetitions of their maximum every day until they can complete 24 repetitions for four consecutive days. This training program increases the capillarization and substrate storage in the involed muscle tissue. However, like in the very beginning, if, on the first day of their new training cycle, athletes were to try to lift their maximum weight, then they would again be at high risk of injuring the involved muscle tissue. That is why they need to again start by lifting one-half of their maximum for four consecutive days. At no point in this training do the athletes 'maintain.' They are always trying to achieve a new level of fitness. To maintain their maximum one repetition level, they should continue to complete 24 repetitions every day. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1366. Muscle Hypertrophy Training I believe that I misunderstood what you were attempting to teach me about training for muscle hypertrophy. I thought that in question # 884 and 896, you were advising to start at 50 percent of my one rep max and continue until I reached 125 percent of my original one rep max. Then, start performing as many reps as possible until I could complete 24 for four consecutive days. I read your response to #1088 today and realized that this might not be what you meant. That response indicates that it is 125 percent of my original starting weight, not 125 percent of my one rep max. Is the following what you were trying to get through to me? 1. Start at 50 percent of your one rep max (100 lbs). 2. Perform one rep at 50 lbs for four consecutive days and add 5 percent. 3. Continue adding 5 percent every fifth day until I reach 125 percent of my starting level (62.5 lbs). 4. When I get to 62.5 lbs, perform as many reps as possible until I can complete 24 reps for four consecutive days. I was frustrated and confused with what I thought you were explaining because I knew there was no way I could get to 125 percent of my original one rep max on my first cycle. I'm still confused about what I do after I can complete 24 reps for four consecutive days with 125 percent of my beginning weight (62.5 lbs). Do I add 5 percent and complete one rep until I get to 125 percent of my first 125 percent weight (78 lbs)? At which point I would again complete as many reps as I could until I could complete 24 reps for four consecutive days? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A 100% increase of a maximum weight of 100 lbs. is 200 lbs. Therefore, 125% increase of a maximum weight of 100 lbs. is 225 lbs. Therefore, when I recommend that athletes start at 50% of their maximum, they should divide their maximum weight in half and start with that weight. They should perform one repetition per day for a minimum of four consecutive days and, when successful, they should add another 5%. Using 100 lbs. as a maximum, this means that, every four days, athletes would add 5 lbs for a minimum of four consecutive days until they are able to lift 225 lbs. for a minimum of four consecutive days. At that point, they should try to do as many repetitions every day that they can until they are able to do 24 repetitions for a minimum of four consecutive days. At that point, if they want, they can divide their new maximum weight in half and repeat the process. However, if they succeed with their second training cycle, then 125% of 225 lbs would be 506.25 lbs. Therefore, most athletes either maintain after the first training cycle or stop at some weight before 125% of their maximum with which they are satisfied. For example, after about 70 days (quarters last 10 weeks), the young man that had a maximum beginning weight of 200 lbs. for his bench press, for his final exam, pressed 380 lbs. My understanding was he was satisfied and started the aerobic program to maintain. If you do the math, then you will see that he was always able to increase after four consecutive days. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1371. Muscle Hypertrophy Training When you switch your training so that you can perform 24 reps for four consecutive days, you say to perform as many reps as possible every day. I prefer not to go to momentary muscular fatigue every day. I would prefer to go to fatigue every fourth day. I want to make sure that I'm performing enough reps the other 3 days so that I don't lose any of the benefit of the fatigue day. What percentage of the number of reps performed on the fatigue day would be necessary on those 3 days? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When athletes are able to perform 24 repetitions for four consecutive days, they chose whether to continue doing 24 repetitions every day or start a new muscle hypertrophy training program. Instead of completing as many repetitions that they can every day, athletes typically gradually increase the number of repetitions they do. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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