So a lot of you guys have been asking recently about the new style of training myself and Matteo have taken up and swear by. I decided to write up a post going into fine detail about the training style, as well as some scientific background on the concepts and any other essential snips of information you need to know to train properly. There's a section at the end introducing the human nervous system in terms of overtraining that I think would be good to read. I feel overtraining is one thing not many people are educated on and don't have a clue about. Its a long read, so i've broken it up for you to skip any sections you don't care about.
HST (Hypertrophy Specific Training) and
exercise philosophy
Introduction to a busy persons exercise mentality
These last two years I have
spent a lot of time (combined effort with Matteo) learning and reading and
improving our knowledge on exercise, nutrition and training. The main incentive
was to try and maximise how efficient our training sessions were at the gym/park,
and spend as minimal time there as possible, and reap the maximum reward from
it. Once you get out of school, get a job, get some hobbies, the truth is
were all too busy to devote a whole lot of time to exercise. That was our
driving incentive- to be the most efficient guys in the gym. Get in, do
everything perfectly, get out, and go on with other tasks. My goal with this
post is to pass on all essential knowledge I have learnt, in the hope that it
saves a bunch of you a few hours a week, as well as helping you achieve any
fitness goals faster. Please note most of what I write will apply only to
males, who are training for general size and strength. Girls bodies react very
differently to exercise and nutrition. Also people training for a sport should
get proper personal training as their needs are different. Think of the
following information as a Ghetto Approach to packing on size and getting
strong fast.
HST Philosophy
If I had to sum up everything
I have learnt over the last two years in one sentence, it would be – You are
what you know. Forget the old sayings of ‘you are what you eat’, or ‘Abs are
made in the kitchen’, or ‘You are as big as you lift’. The truth is, you are as
healthy or as big or as strong as your brain. People spend hours looking online
for routines to use, and researching the ultimate number of sets or reps, and
the best exercises to do. They try ten different routines and still don’t get
very far. The truth is, there is no single routine out there for you. None of
it will work extremely effectively for you. Every routine you read was made for
somebody else, based on their initial fitness and strength, their goals, their
timeframe, the amount of time they can spend in the gym, their lifestyle, how
stressed they are, their vascular development, their levels of Hypertrophy and
Hyperplacy, their energy levels, their diet, and more. If you try an exercise
program that was developed for someone else, you will get some weird results.
Often poor results resulting in less energy, or destroying one part of your
body, or an injury making you stop training again. There is no single training program on the internet that is made for
you. Can’t stress that enough. One person who lives a very stressful work life
might train 3 times a week, and be overtraining, having very low energy levels
across the week. One person might train 6 days a week, and be perfectly fine
with the amount of training. They might not have a stressful day job, and be
fresh for every gym session. They could potentially train every day for months
without fear of overtraining. It depends on every element of your life. To be
efficient and prepare an effective program for yourself, you need to know how
your body reacts, how to tell the state your body is in, how to tell if you can
push further, when to stop, when youre doing it correctly. Not by printing out
a routine you found online and saying this is it- this paper is the winner!
During Uni there were periods
where I would go to the gym 5 days a week, and see extremely slow results. They
would plateau, and I would be stuck lifting the same weights for weeks or
months before going on a holiday or something and ending the cycle. Gym sessions
would often last 60-90 minutes. What a waste of time.
The truth is, you can get
amazing results in much less time. To pack on size, all you need to do is buy
my new book ‘Attila tells his secrets’… no im joking. All you need to do is
train 45-60 minutes, 3 times a week, and you can achieve whatever you like.
Length of a session depends on how fast youre trying to grow. Once you are the
size you want to be, all you need is 2-3 sessions a week, 45 minutes a piece.
That’s not much is it. Between 1.5-2 hours a week. That’s nothing! Funny how
many people look at a big guy and think oh he must live at the gym. Truth is
once you’ve put in the hard work of learning everything, and train hard for a
period of growth, all you need is 2 hours a week to stay there. I spend longer
than that staring at the wall in a week!
So the way I am going to
structure this, is begin with the introduction of Hypertrophy specific training
(HST), and explain the concept and how and why it works, and how you can write
your own program. Everyone I know that has tried it to some degree has been
amazed with their results by the 1 month mark. Following this I will add a few
topics on basic nutrition and supplementation, to clear up a bunch of
misconceptions and plain BS marketing out there, to stop you wasting money on
shit which does nothing.
Also before negatively
criticising, remember that there are a number of elements that add to muscle
growth. If you are doing just one of these things, you will get bigger. I’ve
read so many contradictory ideas out there from people saying fact A and fact B
are not true, what you need to do is C and D- when in fact all of these things
can make you bigger. So remember that if youre routine is different and it
works for you, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it J
Ghetto training (HST)
A quick bit of technical
knowledge. Your muscles are made of a bunch of fibres strung together. When you
train, there are two ways you can develop your muscle fibres.
Hyperplasia – the number of muscle fibres in the actual muscle increases.
Hypertrophy- the size of the existing muscle fibres themselves increase.
Generally Hyperplasia or an
increase in the number of total muscle fibers will make you much stronger,
without as much increase in size when compared to Hypertrophy. You have all
seen that relatively small guy who is an absolute beast. Think of crossfitters,
they are extremely strong and fit but not necessarily very big. People who
train for hypertrophy however are not so focused on being functionally strong
as they are focused on building mass. Don’t take this to mean they are not
strong, just that they are more focused on size. So generally when training for
a sport, you want functional mass, so train in higher rep ranges to promote
cellular proliferation or Hyperplasia. If just training for ‘aesthetics’ or pure
size then hypertrophy training or lower rep ranges are often more effective.
From now on, when you see
‘HST’, take it to mean Hypertrophy Specific Training, which is a mode of
training used by bodybuilders to induce maximum muscle growth, as opposed to
focusing on functional training like crossfitters or training for a sport.
HST is a method of resistance
training that aims as maximising the speed of muscle growth, without the use of
anabolic steroids, that doesn’t lose efficiency after following a program for a
few months. It tries to surpass the need to get a new training program every
few months when you have progressed. A solid HST program can be followed
indefinitely with continual results. The fact that I don’t currently train for
a specific sport, and the fact HST is aimed at efficiency, makes it perfect for
my lifestyle. The speed of gaining strength is what surprises people the most.
Strength gains in the order of 50% over an 8-12 week program are pretty
standard, as long as you aren’t starting from a jacked state, and your
nutrition and sleep are under control too.
Specifics of a HST Program
When people first start
training at all, often they just do a little bit of everything in the gym. One
exercise for legs, one for back, one for chest, one for shoulders etc. They
usually don’t go very often, or lift very hard. Theyre just learning whats
going on. When theyre a bit more confident, often what they do is break up
their training into body groups. They will train Legs and Pullers (back and
biceps) one day, and then the next day they will train Shoulders and pushers
(Triceps and Chest). The idea is they can do a lot more with each bodypart,
doing more exercises and sets for each, thus tearing them up more. This is a
good training method if you go often, say two days in a row. You could break it
up so you don’t do the same thing twice a day. For some timetables this might
be the best. But the truth is, if you go twice a week, and break it up into two
muscle groups, youre only really doing each muscle group once a week. That’s not
very often.
The idea of HST is taking it
back to the old school way of training
everything each session. If you were previously doing 3 sessions a week,
breaking it up into 3 groups. You were still only training everything once. If
you do 3 days a week of HST, you hit everything 3 times a week. Over a month
this is training everything 12 times as opposed to 4. As long as you know what
you’re doing, and do it properly, this can speed up your gains by 300%! J *BS number
I’ll explain later all the
science behind it all, and try to just mention program specifics here.
So you want to train every
second day (3 times one week then 4 the next week), or 3 times a week with a
longer weekend rest. Whatever suits your life timetable. Days cannot be
consecutive. You need at least 48 hours between sessions for recovery (recent
studies suggest 36 hours is ideal for quick gains in elite lifters).
Exercise Selection
The most critical part to
writing a HST program is understanding the difference between a compound move
and an isolation move, and writing your routine up accordingly. A compound move
hits a whole muscle group, and thus exerts a lot more stress on your body. For
example a wide grip- pullup. It uses mainly your back muscles, but also your
Lats, and your Biceps, and your chest as well. So while you can say it is a
‘back exercise’ it is actually doing a bit of work on a lot of other things
too.
Compare this to an isolation
exercise, like a dumbbell preacher curl on a bench. This pretty much isolates
only the bicep muscles, and nothing else is really doing any work.
For a pure HST program, you
need to use only compound exercises, including at least ONE that focuses on
each body part. i.e. squats for legs, pullups for back, bench for chest, dips
for tris, chin-ups for bis, and shoulder press for shoulders. Done. Only
compound exercises are used, and each muscle group is covered at least once
(even though they actually overlap a lot).
This gives you your core HST
movements. Don’t bother overlapping more than that. For example doing Back
pulls as well as chin-ups. You’re just overlapping core movements
unnecessarily. Stick to ONE of each!
Following this, if you want
to add more you can pick one or two isolation
movements. Think skullcrushers for triceps, or preacher curls for pure
biceps. Think of this as an extra focus on top of the core HST movements. If
you want your biceps to catch up to the rest of your body, add one or two
isolation movements for them at the end. These should be slow, using advanced
rep techniques like supersetting or drop-setting to make it harder. The core
movements should be executed normally, while any isolation movements aim to
push you till fail. The more lactic acid burn you get the better.
So in Summary, pick one core
movement for each body part, and let that be your Core HST routine.
Stick to that for a while,
and only add isolations at the end when sessions are quick, or you want to push
something faster.
HST repetitions
The reps you do on each day
are important, and change frequently. It is absolutely essential to have a training log when using HST to keep track of
weights. Standard HST requires you to do two weeks of 15 reps for each set. The
number of exercises you do depends on you. Typically, a few big whole body
motions are used, with isolation exercises plugged in at the end if desired.
Deadlifts, barbell bench, shoulder press, dips etc. How many exercises you do
depends on your time schedule. As long as everything is hit properly by one
compound exercise. So standard HST states that you do 2 sets of each exercise
only, and 15 reps for each set. So 2
sets of 15. Then after two weeks, you change it to 2 sets of 10 and jack the weight up. Do the same for two weeks.
Then you change it to 2 sets of 5 reps,
with heavier weights again. Do this for 2 weeks, then that is the end of a
single 6-week cycle. I will explain later the science behind changing the
number of reps you do. You can play around with it to see what works best for
you.
Personally, I change the reps
every single day. This requires more detailed logging, but I think the benefits
of such an eccentric rep schedule are much greater. In one week, I will train 3
times. I will do 2 sets of each exercise every session. But my reps on the 1st
day will be 15 for everything, on the 2nd day 10 for everything, on the
3rd day 5 for everything. So Day 1 is 2x15’s; Day 2 is 2x10’s; day 3
is 2x5’s.
So that’s it. Train 3 times a
week, aiming for every second day. Hit every muscle each session. Do big
compound movements that hit more than a single muscle group. Only do 2 sets of
everything. Change the reps up either every two weeks, or every single session
if you are really good with your training log. That is the basic structure of a pure HST routine.
Science behind why it works
Strength overcompensation after recovery
When you train, your muscles
develop micro-tears in their fibres. During recovery, they will be repaired,
and the body will make them a bit stronger. Your body responds to a sudden bout
of intense training by making you temporarily stronger than you need to be in case
it happens again. After a few days it realises it was a one-off and goes back
to a stable point, which is still slightly stronger than you were before.
Here are two diagrams showing the concept. Disregard the number of days labelled.
This diagram shows the
concept. After training, you get weaker, and your body starts recovering. After
it recovers, your body overcompensates for the stress temporarily getting
stronger than it needs to be to lift the weight, then it slowly drops back to
the required level. It has been scientifically proven, that it is sustainable
to continuously train in this overcompensated state. It is shown that you hit
this point between 36-48 hours. Then after 72hours+ you are getting close to
your original level. If you train every 3 days, you will still get the tail end
of this compensation, and get a bit stronger. However, if you train every 48
hours, you will be stacking the top of these peaks on top of each other, making
progress much faster than you would normally be.
That is the reason you train
everything each time you train, and that you try and go every second or third
day, 3 times a week is ideal. The overcompensation effect keeps stacking, and
you can make extremely fast strength and size gains.
Now, why only 2 sets?
Because that’s all you need
to cause the anaerobic cellular changes you want. Any more than that, and you
start producing Lactic Acids and moving into the aerobic or power endurance
zones where muscles will get stronger but not necessarily bigger. Two sets is
all you need.
There are very good reasons
for mixing up the number of reps.
Heavier low rep sets (5-8)
product more Testosterone and are the sessions where you can really lift heavy
and thus push strength boundaries. Higher rep days (10-15) cause a lot more
Human Growth Hormone to be produced in the body, as well as Lactic Acid. The
combination of exposing your body to higher levels of all three of these things
lets you grow fastest. If you only did heavy heavy 6-rep days, your muscles
would get stronger, and you would reach a point where your muscles themselves
could take the heavier weight, but your soft tissues like tendons and ligaments
could not keep up and are the weakest link. This is often when injuries occur,
when the muscles can take the load, but the softer tissues cannot. Tendons and
ligaments take much longer to strengthen. The reason for this is because there
is less blood flow to these regions so nutrients required to repair/grow take
much longer to have an effect. Lactic Acid stimulates bloodflow in these softer
tissues, allowing them to recover and strengthen faster than usual. So on low
rep days you are producing lots of Testosterone and pushing muscular strength,
while on higher rep days you are producing lots of Growth Hormone and Lactic
acid, stimulating and strengthening your ligaments and tendons to keep up with
the muscles.
This is the reason for
cycling between high and low rep days in a HST program. The way I do it,
cycling number of reps every single session is a bit over the top, but I think
my logbooking skills are up to the task. Using my method of switching reps
every single session, in every week, I have a day of Lactic acid building to
stimulate soft tissue growth, as well as pushing past the anaerobic threshold
which boosts Growth Hormone levels. But also an anaerobic 6-rep day, in order
to push strength levels, and boost Testosterone levels. I am not sure if it is
more or less effective cycling reps each day compared to the standard HST
program of two weeks at high reps, followed by two weeks at medium, and two
weeks of low reps. I cannot comment on which is better, just pointing out the
science behind it, and showing how you could mix it up.
Mandatory weight increases
Every time you complete a
cycle, you should log what weight you did, or note down what weight WOULD have
been ideal. For example on 15-rep day, if for a particular exercise you lifted
15kg, but could only manage 12 reps- you would note down either 15kg (heavy),
or 12.5 (since that would have been ideal for 15 reps). You continue logging
your ideal weights, and every time you complete a cycle, you jack everything up
by one rung.
For example, using my method
of training a 15, 10 and 5 rep day in a week- you would take notes for all
weights used. Then the following week on 15 day I would lift one touch heavier
for every exercise than I did the week before. While you might not be happy to
increase the weight every single cycle, you will be surprised at how well you
can actually manage the increase. That is the whole point of your body
overcompensating and stacking these recovery periods.
Strategic Deconditioning
The best part of HST. Due to
mandatory increases in weight every cycle, the weights get damn heavy damn
quickly. As mentioned earlier, muscles can get stronger a lot faster than
tendons and ligaments. So you don’t really want to keep getting heavier and
heavier or you’ll start damaging things and injuring yourselves. There has been
a bit of research recently on the concept of strategic conditioning that
suggests it is effective.
The idea is that after every
6 or 8 weeks you will be lifting very heavy weights. At this point in time it
is proposed that you take some time off to ‘decondition’ your body. It is
commonly suggested to take between 7-10 days off from training completely. During
this time, soft tissues have a chance to recover, as does the nervous system,
and you get more time to catch up on other elements of your life.
The suggestion is that 7-10
days is enough for you to lose strength, but not long enough to lose muscle mass.
So when you come back after the break, you are the same size, but a bit weaker.
Then you continue your routine, with the weights pushed back a few notches. The
progressive loading from hereon continues to induce growth in your muscle mass.
The idea is that hypertrophic growth is induced from progressive loading.. even
though you didn’t actually lose any mass. So essentially you trick yourself to
getting bigger, even though you’re pretty much just cycling the same weights
(will slowly get heavier as soft tissues like ligaments strengthen). So you can
picture the whole scenario as your ligaments and tendons being the weak points,
and developing very slowly. But rather than pushing too fast and getting
injured, or gaining fast then plateauing hard when your ligaments hold you
back, you reach this point then cycle back and forth slowly pushing up as
ligaments/tendons strengthen. This way you are constantly experiencing
progressive loading. On a cellular level it has been proven that you can trick
your body and continue growing like this without lifting ridiculously heavy
weights. In my experience when you reach your plateaus and are sure you’re
training correctly, a 10-day rest every 6 weeks of proper training is
effective. That sounds like a lot of time off, but they’re the numbers I stick
to. The first cycle of HST would likely be a lot longer- however long it takes
you to reach a plateau and feel like the weights are too heavy and your joints aren’t
going to hold much longer. My first cycle lasted 12 weeks, after which I cut
that in half and have a break every 6 weeks.
Overtraining and the Autonomous Nervous System
Thought I would add this in
as there are so many misconceptions about overtraining out there. I decided to
do my own investigating and read into the concept a lot more, looking into the
science and chemistry behind it.
I was very surprised how much
sense it all made, and how many episodes of fidgeting and drowsiness I’ve
experienced and could now explain and remedy in the future.
The human nervous system is
classified into two parts- the Somatic nervous system (voluntary responses) and
the autonomic nervous system (involuntary regulation of body functions). The
autonomic nervous system can be broken down further into two classes- the Sympathetic
nervous system, and the Parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous
system prepares the body for intense physical activity. The parasympathetic
does the opposite, and effectively relaxes the body and inhibits high energy
functions.
Both of these systems can be
overtrained. The interesting fact to note is that factors such as Work, Study,
Family, Relationships and Money problems all affect your overall level of
nervous system activity. Lucky last on this list is your training in the gym.
So if you are getting smashed at work, you are having troubles with your
partner, and money is tight- you wont last very long at the gym. You know those
days when you go and rather than it being a meditative activity you have zero
energy and just want to slop on the couch.
It is important to listen to
your body, and see what state of nervous stress you are under. Based on this,
you can guage how often you should train. At some times you might happily train
every 36 hours without issues. At others, every 3 days might be the maximum you
should do. Overtraining will just slow you down further in the future.
The Table below shows some
common effects of a particular part of your nervous system being overtrained.
It will help you listen to your body and know what needs to change.
|
Sympathetic Nervous system over
activated
|
Parasympathetic nervous
system over activated
|
|
·
Restless
·
Higher Activity
·
Easily fatigued
·
Bad sleep patterns
·
Weight Loss
·
Associated with anaerobic exercise
|
·
Easily fatigued
·
Drowsy or sleepy
·
Depression
·
Sleep undisturbed
·
Weight remains constant
·
Low immune system function
·
Associated with aerobic activity
|
So most people would read the
right column and think oh yeah that’s a generic low-energy state. It means you
need more sleep. But the thing most people look past is the left column. Think
about the number of times you’ve been lying in bed, with something important in
the morning perhaps, or maybe the temperature is too hot- and you lie there
kicking your legs. Or maybe you get home from work and you are really fidgety
and over-excited. Most people would think that is the perfect time to go to the
gym. But the truth is, that is just a case of Chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. Which is the proper
description of a particular type of overtraining. If you are in this state, you
might have plenty of energy, and go to the gym, but find you can’t lift your normal
weights for some reason. When you are in this state, and find you cant lift
proper weights, go home. It means you have overtrained.
The other thing to note is
the last point in the Table above. Sympathetic nervous system overtraining is
mainly associated with anaerobic exercise- or weight training/sprints. So gym
junkies should look out for fidgety, fast, but weak states and understand this
means they are currently overtrained. Conversely, Parasympathetic NS
overtraining is usually associated with aerobic activity, like long distance
running. That’s why after a long aerobic session you are exhausted and just
want to lie on the couch. If you are in a chronic drowsy and slow unmotivated
state, aerobic exercise will make it worse.
Nervous system over activation summary
In Summary, I think knowing
the difference between these two types of overtraining is essential, so you can
remedy or prevent the situation getting worse. If you are adamant on training,
make sure you listen to your body and choose the right type of training.
If you are twitchy and jumpy
and cant sleep, don’t go to the gym. Go on a long-distance run or a bike ride.
It will stop you making the situation worse, and likely bring your balance back
slightly. On the other hand if you are drowsy and fatigued, don’t go on a
long-distance run thinking it will fix you up, because it will just make things
worse. Instead, go to the gym and do some slow heavy weight training. Or best
of all, don’t train at all when in either of these states. Although this is
undesirable if your lifestyle leaves you in a chronic state of one or the
other, in which case you can pick what kind of exercise would be the most
beneficial to you.
Hope this answers any
questions you might have. As mentioned, Matteo and I have been on a mission to
educate ourselves on every aspect of health and fitness we can, in hope of
being very efficient in our training, avoiding injuries at all costs, and
seeing maximum results for the time we put in. We have come to realise
knowledge is the first step to achieving your training goals. Time only comes
in at second.
-Attila
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