"The muscle has no idea how much weight you are lifting, only how much stress it is under."
In that vein of thought we could all never put more than 135 pounds on the bar for our entire lifting careers and continually get larger.
How would you improve then over 10 years and thousands of workouts?
There are just so many exercises you can do per bodypart....just for example how many exercises are there for quads? Squats, hacks, leg presses, smith squats, front squats, lunges, leg extensions and lets say we could come up with 1 or 2 more if we really thought it out.
Thats 7-9 exercises
If over the next 6 years you do 312 leg workouts how do you make sure that you beat what you have previously done? Because you sure as heck dont "get better or improve" if you do the same workout or less than what you have previously done.
Six years and 312 workouts from now
a squat is still a squat and if you started out with 225 for 8 reps and a whole 312 workouts later you are still working out with 225 for 8 reps (I dont care how many intensity techniques or supersetting or pre-exhausting you do....thats still three hundred and twelve workouts that you need to get continually better at and you can pretty much run out of intensity techniques within a short time period)....so if anyone in this forum is still squatting the same amount of weight in good form they did 6 years and 312 workouts ago...Im pretty sure their quads are not going to show astounding changes.
We can run around the block 30 times about this subject and the reality of the situation is
a) if you take a shitload of drugs it doesnt matter....pretty much anything you do is going to make you grow and guys who take a shitload of drugs lose the concept of "hey how would a natural bodybuilder grow after his 3rd or 4th year of lifting?" By staying with the same weights for the next 6 years and feeling the burn? No he isnt going to grow. Now a Juiced up to the gills bodybuilder on anabolics and gh? Dumbell kickbacks and sissy squats make that guy grow. Throw in incredible genetics (usually a black mesomorphic bodybuilder like the ones you see winning pro and amateur shows all the time when they are outnumbered competing wise by white bodybuilders by probably a 9 to 1 margin if not more)......take those guys and pump in the juice and gh and they grow doing things that the common every day man would get virtually nothing out of. I would be willing to bet that 90% of the hardcore bodybuilders on these boards lift much harder, like their life depended on it, than the genetic elite.
b) Its my personal opinion that people never can admit that what they are doing right now training wise "isnt making them grow". No matter who it is they will stick their chest out and tell everyone in vicinity that "what they are doing right now is making them grow". If that was the truth then there would be nobody who needed more size on these boards...it would be easy. Alot of advanced bodybuilders totally forget the two times in their lifting careers when they put on the most size. They all say the same thing. "I do this and this and this now and I find i grow just great with light weights"....well is it because you already built the size previously and you are maintaining or are you leaning up and you look better...and you arent one iota bigger truthfully? Or are you truly gaining 20 pounds of lean muscle mass a year lifting light <----- (that is not happening).........
the two times that people gain the most size are
1) first two years of lifting....they change almost daily. They also get incredibly rapid strength gains on all exercises during this time. 135 pound for reps squats turn into 275 pound squats. 135 pound bench presses reps turn into 260 pound bench presses for reps. 150 pound beginners turn into 200 pound beginning bodybuilders....(while their training poundages double and triple in some cases)....coincedence? All you have to do is look at all the people who start lifting for the sake of staying in shape only and they stay with the same training weights all the time....they go to the gym...they are consistent...they sure dont gain much size.
2) Second time people gain incredible size....They start using steroids. What happens? AGAIN their training poundages go thru the roof. 275 squats for reps now turn into 455 squats for reps. incline presses that were 225 for reps now turn into 350 for reps. And rapid size increases occur. And then after a few cycles over time strength gains slow down rapidly and so do the size increases.
Virtually all bodybuilders forget these periods in their lifting careers because again...nobody wants to think what they are doing right NOW isnt the tip top #1 perfect lifting routine for themselves...otherwise it screws up the whole belief system.
Perfect lifting routine? If everyone in this forum and all forums online could find the perfect mechanical positioning on exercises for their unique bodies and the perfect recovery rate as it pertained to amount of workload to do so you could rapidly train that bodypart again.....if they could do that and
with supplementation, food, and drugs or whatever tools they choose to use....they took all their training poundages they are currently using for 8-20 reps in good safe form and DRAMATICALLY INCREASED THEM (maybe even doubling them) for 8-20 reps in good safe form....you would have a boatload of gigantic bodybuilders who would be as good as their unique genetic shape, size, proportions, symmetry allowed them to be.
I still to this day cannot think of one bodybuilder who had a crappy upper chest who inclined over 400 pounds in good safe form for 8 plus reps but there are thousands upon thousands of bodybuilders who will say "you dont need to use heavy weights" who do.