questions about workout style while on gear
Just a general question about lifting while on gear. Perhaps the wrong forum. If so, mods please move.
When on gear, is it better to lift heavy with lower reps, or more reps at lower weights? I ask because the gym I go is a semi private gym. The owner is an IFBB pro and she trains us unless she's on vacation. Her husband fills in for her when she does sometimes. They have completely opposite training styles!
She does the low reps high weight, then when he comes in, we're doing like 3 sets of 30 reps at 20% of my max. Honestly, I hate his training style! lol I know there is merits to his style of weight lifting, but while I'm on gear I kinda feel like I should be lifting as heavy as I can every set to failure.
questions about workout style while on gear
Anabolics generally tend to favor hypertrophy in the Type I (slow twitch) muscle fibers. This is why you’ll generally see the biggest guys being the obnoxious fuckers doing stupid high numbers of reps with relatively lighter weight.
That said, you should still train toward whatever YOUR specific goals are. For me, having a bunch of extra tissue that doesn’t contribute much toward my peak strength isn’t very helpful to me. If I were 275 at the same comp as 220, but still moving the same weight as when I was 220, I’d get my ass handed to me in any strength sport. As such, following a Kai Green or Jay Cutler format would be patently retarded.
Drugs basically just make everything that we do more effective, so just do whatever you need to do and make sure to scale your progressions accordingly.
ETA: comparing women to men is patently stupid, due to variances in volume tolerance, versus intensity tolerance, versus recovery rates, etc.
questions about workout style while on gear
Failure training is constantly showing up in data as being far less useful than once imagined.
When we think about it from a logical standpoint though, it makes sense. The best way I’ve heard it put (by Broderick Chavez, one of the foremost coaches of enhanced athletes in multiple sports no less, including Olympia competitors):
“Let’s say you’re going to the beach for a week, and you want to get as much sun exposure adaptation as possible.
Scenario A: you go all in on day one, and spend the whole 12 hour day on the beach. You went to absolute failure. You literally couldn’t have done any more due to time constraints. Guess what your stupid ass is now doing for the rest of the week. You’re sitting inside, in extreme pain, and probably not doing shit the rest of the weeks.
Scenario B: you go out for say two hours the first day, 2 hours the second day, 2-3 the third, and so on, slightly escalating as you go. Well now your potential exposure to the stimulus is increased by roughly double, and you’re not turning yourself into a miserable bag of shit in the process. Which do you think yields better results?”
Put in training terms, training more often, without completely destroying yourself tends to allow for more volume, more tension, more stimulus, and therefore, more results.
questions about workout style while on gear
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Albedo121
If you’re destroying yourself to the point where you literally can’t work out anymore for the week I would say that’s a bit too far haha. I think in general most people believe they’re failing when they’re not even close, and when I say not even close I mean you just did 10 reps and you can get 10 more without not being able to use that body part for a week. If you’re putting yourself into rhabdo than yes I agree - you’ve gone too far lol
Very true, but if you look at the typical “bro split” setup, they’re either not doing either, or doing exactly what you said. The fact that “leg day” and “chest day” is a thing leans toward the fact that they are only hitting these things once per week, whatever the reason may be.
So they either suck at gauging what failure is (and this is made worse by the pathetic weights used by many, as ‘failing’ with a 25+ rep weight and failing with a 5-8 are metabolically two VERY different things), and quit when the shit gets too painful, or they’re not able to recover from what they’re doing. You don’t have to go full rhabdomyolysis to be digging the hole deeper than is optimally productive.
The resurgence of the RIR/RPE system in modern training has been great to offset this, but only if it’s used properly, and total failure training is failing to use it properly.
My gauge for people is only useful in the presence of compound movements though. For me, your set ends at technical failure, which is the point where form breaks. This tells me that the weakest link in your chain is now exhausted, and compensatory measures have kicked in, therefore we are no longer hitting exactly what we’re aiming for. The only time this isn’t the case is obviously during competition, because if your competition squat/deadlift/whatever looks ‘perfect’, either you’re a rare freak of perfect balance, or we left weight on the table.