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Are you training hard enough?

hawkmoon

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This is one that escapes easy answer as is is so hard to be truly objective.

How do you know you are training hard enough?
Most of us train to failure - or beyond using various techniques.

DC rest-pause, forced negatives, drop sets, etc.

But how do we REALLY know?

I know after moving heavy weight and 2 rest pause intervals I feel drained.
When I finish 6 reps with 405 on rows, take a 15s break, grab two more reps, 15s and 2 more reps....well I am pretty done. But should I recover and go for more...and was that last 2 all I really had to give? It felt like it, but was it really?

Is that enough to stimulate growth or do we need to go back and do more working sets? Or does this merely impact our recovery?

I ask because this always puzzles me as it is so hard to define.
The mind to muscle connection in activating muscle fibers and having the guts to go all out is extremely hard to measure.

As I think going all out in your working sets is the only way to stimulate new growth I am always pushing while being mindful not to injure myself.

But where is the line between too much and not enough?
And how can you really know you have given it 100%

Curious on insights of the forum...
 
Man I actually think about this more than I do any other topic in bodybuilding.

The way I've come to look at is this, there's no definitive answer. I think there's too many variables to even answer this one way.

Volume
Workload
Frequency
Genetic Recovery ability
CNS recovery
Food
Sleep and rest! (This is by far the only thing that can keep me recovering even more so than tons of food. I have to sleep ALOT to be at my best in during my workouts.)

I think if you have to ask yourself if your training hard enough there could be a chance your not. But if your kinda messed up in the head like me while you train and you just want to drive yourself into the ground then maybe you could benefit from backing off a little. Just my point of view
 
Man this is what I was just talking about the other day. IF you can push a single set to 100% failure I believe that is the perfect ideal scenario. However, like you said, how do you know if you pushed it 100%

Well there is one way that I know of and that is to use machines, so that you can push yourself to the point of true failure without fear of injury. You can do so with a training partner also but they have to be a GOOD training partner.

For me personally, to take the guesswork out, I train like phil taught me years ago. I do 2-3 work sets on most exercises and I take them failure if on a machine or to what I feel is a rep left in the tank on free weights. Then I decrease the weight 10-15% and after a short rest I do the next set, and so on and so forth. I believe that this strikes a balance between volume and HIT training.

You want enough stimulus to get your body to adapt, but not more IMO. I MAY be overdoing it when I do more sets but my total set number is still very low so even if I'm doing "too much" it hopefully isn't enough to be detrimental, and these kind of workouts leave me feeling like I trained very hard and give me good results.

So I think it's important to push it 100%(as perceived by you), but almost as a failsafe, do a couple more sets to ensure as many muscle fibers as possible have been activated.

I try to do like Dante has been preaching forever and that is to choose exercises that work for ME and MY unique biomechanics and work the shit out of them till I plateau. at that point I swap out exercises.

I DON'T think it's necessary then to do 3 4 or more exercises per muscle. A muscle fiber is either contracting or it isn't. You want to find the exercises that for you cause the most activation and focus on that.

I don't think you are "confusing" your body by swapping exercises every 6 weeks or whatever. Your body is getting "confused" by having to do more work.

So in practical terms what this looks like is maybe a chest workout where you hit incline smith bench for a couple warmups and three work sets, and then maybe DB flys or cable xovers for 2 work sets. IF you push those sets to perceived failure you are DONE. If you have more in you for more work then you didn't push those sets like you thought you did.
 
Man I actually think about this more than I do any other topic in bodybuilding.

The way I've come to look at is this, there's no definitive answer. I think there's too many variables to even answer this one way.

Volume
Workload
Frequency
Genetic Recovery ability
CNS recovery
Food
Sleep and rest! (This is by far the only thing that can keep me recovering even more so than tons of food. I have to sleep ALOT to be at my best in during my workouts.)

I think if you have to ask yourself if your training hard enough there could be a chance your not. But if your kinda messed up in the head like me while you train and you just want to drive yourself into the ground then maybe you could benefit from backing off a little. Just my point of view

great answer to this thread.....

there is no answer.....just give 100% (when you can)....and that's the best
you can ever hope for....

:cool:
 
Man this is what I was just talking about the other day. IF you can push a single set to 100% failure I believe that is the perfect ideal scenario. However, like you said, how do you know if you pushed it 100%



Well there is one way that I know of and that is to use machines, so that you can push yourself to the point of true failure without fear of injury. You can do so with a training partner also but they have to be a GOOD training partner.



For me personally, to take the guesswork out, I train like phil taught me years ago. I do 2-3 work sets on most exercises and I take them failure if on a machine or to what I feel is a rep left in the tank on free weights. Then I decrease the weight 10-15% and after a short rest I do the next set, and so on and so forth. I believe that this strikes a balance between volume and HIT training.



You want enough stimulus to get your body to adapt, but not more IMO. I MAY be overdoing it when I do more sets but my total set number is still very low so even if I'm doing "too much" it hopefully isn't enough to be detrimental, and these kind of workouts leave me feeling like I trained very hard and give me good results.



So I think it's important to push it 100%(as perceived by you), but almost as a failsafe, do a couple more sets to ensure as many muscle fibers as possible have been activated.



I try to do like Dante has been preaching forever and that is to choose exercises that work for ME and MY unique biomechanics and work the shit out of them till I plateau. at that point I swap out exercises.



I DON'T think it's necessary then to do 3 4 or more exercises per muscle. A muscle fiber is either contracting or it isn't. You want to find the exercises that for you cause the most activation and focus on that.



I don't think you are "confusing" your body by swapping exercises every 6 weeks or whatever. Your body is getting "confused" by having to do more work.



So in practical terms what this looks like is maybe a chest workout where you hit incline smith bench for a couple warmups and three work sets, and then maybe DB flys or cable xovers for 2 work sets. IF you push those sets to perceived failure you are DONE. If you have more in you for more work then you didn't push those sets like you thought you did.



Love it!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Another great quote (or close) from Phil Hernon: "it's not a contest of who's training the hardest, it's about results".

Food for thought... ;)

Personally, I tend to think the biggest mistake most people do is to overtrain... how many guys do you see working out everyday for 2h straight using all kinds of techniques to reach failure set after set, yet not making a single progress in months? Plenty... :cool:

Sometimes the saying is true: less is more. :)
 
Instantly made me think of the Lee Haney quote, "stimulate, don't annihilate."

Which I've always taken as: listen to your body, go more/go harder when you can, do less when you can't, and check your ego at the door.


Another great quote (or close) from Phil Hernon: "it's not a contest of who's training the hardest, it's about results".

Food for thought... ;)

Personally, I tend to think the biggest mistake most people do is to overtrain... how many guys do you see working out everyday for 2h straight using all kinds of techniques to reach failure set after set, yet not making a single progress in months? Plenty... :cool:

Sometimes the saying is true: less is more. :)
 
Another great quote (or close) from Phil Hernon: "it's not a contest of who's training the hardest, it's about results".

Food for thought... ;)

Personally, I tend to think the biggest mistake most people do is to overtrain... how many guys do you see working out everyday for 2h straight using all kinds of techniques to reach failure set after set, yet not making a single progress in months? Plenty... :cool:

Sometimes the saying is true: less is more. :)


Here u go:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfU6fYEEZ0o&t=6s"]Workout hard - YouTube[/ame]
 

Damn good video

I find that days I'm mentally taxed or just tired...(after a 12 hour shift...I don't have the mental focus/energy to properly do D.C., rest pause or HIT. So I back off the intensity, and add a little volume by doing 1-2 more sets.

Dante made a comment years ago that stuck in my mind. He said "if you just incline barbell benched 315 for 16 rest pause reps, then grabbed the flat 100lb dumbells and cranked out 17 reps for a widowmaker, do you think sets of cable flys are doing anything other than cutting into recovery?
 
This is my honest opinion:

I believe you can always find your answers in

WWNMD

oh no more initials!!!

More on that down below....

I think the main difference in bodybuilding now vs 1990's and 2000's is

People trained HARD...really HARD in those decades. Everything was done to eke out one more pound of muscle mass in training. Guys got after it, there was alot of heavy slag iron ringing in gyms. Nowadays, I truly believe alot of these new guys dont even like training but they LOVE the look and attention the look gives them. So they dislike the training and dont train very hard but use enormous amounts of drugs to get to a point that the 90's and 2000's guys got with brutal training and less drugs. I was dumbfounded during the Palumbo interview with B.L. where B.L. said "he doesnt even like training, and doesnt even want to train when he is on low drugs because he doesnt feel like it is going to do anything....and then went on to say he is on 3-5 grams of test, something like 1400mg EQ, too much other stuff to name as far as anabolics, and 10IUs pharm grade GH and 16IU's chinese GH. I was listening to that on my cardio walk i take at night and was beyond shocked. And the sad thing is thats a normal mindset for these young guys now. Hate training but want to look like a bodybuilder...so they abuse themselves with the drugs. Man...If i get an injury and cannot train normally for a week I start going stir crazy.

Pro bodybuilding by and large is an even playing field...they all have access to all the same drugs for the most part. Who are the two strongest bodybuilders right now? Dallas Mcpherson and Akim Williams are the two strongest bodybuilders throwing around the most heavy slag iron in the IFBB....Bodybuilders coming back from Dubai keep saying Big Ramy is putting up poundages that are ridiculous (for some reason they dont show this much) but there are videos out there of him toying with 200lb dumbells and etc etc etc...so the 3 heaviest training bodybuilders of the 2010's are also the thickest and most heaviest muscled among their 400 or so counterparts.....who were the heaviest training bodybuilders of the 2000's? Ronnie Coleman, Chris Cormier, (even Jay Cutler trained with incredible heavy weights when he was coming up in size), Johnny Jackson, Branch Warren and some others....well they also happen to be the biggest thickest IFBB pro's of that time period....anyone figuring this out yet?.....who was the heaviest training pro's of the 90's? Yates, Mike Francois, Coleman again....who were the thickest and largest again of the 90's? 80's? Heaviest training bodybuilder? Bertil Fox......he was also the thickest bodybuilder of the 80's.....

So....on an even playing field, heavy training weights results in the largest pros among individuals with elite genetics and the same access of drugs. Again you dont need to be doing triples here....you can do 8 reps, 12 reps, 15 reps, 20 reps as long as its progressive and heavy. Platz build monstrous legs with heavy weights and higher reps, alot of these guys named above were doing sets of 10-12 reps with these heavy weights.

So you observe the above scenarios and put it together for yourself. The more times you can train with progressive poundages for a bodypart and RECOVER in a years time (frequency).....the quicker this whole breakdown remodel breakdown remodel breakdown remodel process will happen. I dont understand why people ever worry about doing enough sets....a guy who goes to the wall and back on two productive exercises for his unique mechanical makeup and unique genetics would destroy a guy who goes in there and does 30 sets on foo foo exercises which dont work for him. There are guys in this very forum who STILL TO THIS FREAKING DAY use the same exercises over and over and over that have PROVEN not to work for themselves. "Its a barbell curl and i must curl it even though Ive done it for 8 years and still have shitty biceps"<---that in itself is the greatest mistake a bodybuilder can make far exceeding "did i do enough sets today?"....Did you beat last times results in your logbook? Yes you did? good. Are you able to recover to be able to train that bodypart again and beat the logbook again next time? Yes? Good now string about 104 of those workouts together over the next year and you will be very happy.

So back to WWNMD....in a side example: people use all these drugs to lose bodyfat and then give out advice to others on how to lose bodyfat without telling them they are using Clen, T3, GH and low dose DNP and they could eat franks and beans 7 times a day and still lose bodyfat. How is that going to help Joe Blow who is not going to be the walking pharmacy you are?
People give all kind of advice on gaining muscle mass, but forget to tell the person they are giving advice to about the 3 grams of test, 12ius of gh, 1000mg tren, and the other 2 anabolics and one oral they are boatloading. <---You could do the sloppiest most unproductive workouts with a newbie bodybuilder and gain muscle mass with those drugs.

So the telltale answer is this. WWNMD (What would natural me do)...answer that question and it will give anyone the best possible answers of what to do when enhanced. What would natural me do to diet down and get in shape....<---you figure that out and all the trials, tribulations and problems that come about when you are trying to get into incredible shape NATURALLY....youll be right on the money when you do use the drugs.

WWNMD to get big? What would natural me do to gain size. Ill tell you what can be thrown out the window...all the freaking foo foo exercises and bullshit that is being bandied about nowadays by people trying to create some kind of separating niche as a trainer...thats for sure. Heavy progressive weights in key productive exercises would have to be used by "Natural You"....to get larger. Want to see exercises like one handed reverse tricep pushdowns get thrown into a wastebasket? Hypothetical situation: Billionaire approaches the natural you and says Ill give you 10 million dollars if you can put an inch of muscle on your arms in the next year (youll be drug tested, DEXAed regularly).....all the foo foo exercises would be thrown into the wastebasket and a person would be grinding out dips, close grip bench presses, EZ bar extensions etc etc etc trying to get that 10 million dollars.....and they would do it with two things in mind...How can i train the most frequently to gain muscle mass and how can i recover to train frequently to get this 10 million dollars.

WWNMD can give a person all the right answers as to what to do while actually using drugs....its brutally hard to gain muscle mass clean....simple observation will tell you the thickest most densely muscle natural guys train heavy for reps....the natural bodybuilders who dont gain muscle? You see them in every gym in the world every single day....they are the 95% of gym goers who go and never make an iota of a muscle gains and look the same today as they did 5-10 years ago when you used to say "hi" to them then also. Thats unsuccessful natural bodybuilders. Comfort Zone bodybuilders.
 
Last edited:
im off everything now, just back to trt doses, keep my t level around 750 year round, up it to 1400 for the summer. thats it.
im back to dorian yates blood and guts routine, heavy 6-10 rep sets, 3-5 work sets per muscle, each muscle once a week. every work set to positive failure.
im making as much progress now in strength than when i was on 500 npp/750 test doing 12 hardass sets per bodypart.
or 1.2g test doing 12 sets.
and im leaner and eating around 500 cals less a day then when i was on.
at 47, im adding 10-20 pounds a week to every set and hitting the same reps as the week before for 4 weeks now and i cant believe it. so much more fun than eatiing like a pig, fuckin up my blood pressure, pinning eod, doing so many work sets....
less is more indeed. for me anyway. makes me wonder how id'a done doing low volume, high intensity workouts when i was younger and on gear, instead of listening to fellas saying volume is king, gotta put in the hours.
 
Last edited:
This is my honest opinion:

I believe you can always find your answers in

WWNMD

oh no more initials!!!

More on that down below....

I think the main difference in bodybuilding now vs 1990's and 2000's is

People trained HARD...really HARD in those decades. Everything was done to eke out one more pound of muscle mass in training. Guys got after it, there was alot of heavy slag iron ringing in gyms. Nowadays, I truly believe alot of these new guys dont even like training but they LOVE the look and attention the look gives them. So they dislike the training and dont train very hard but use enormous amounts of drugs to get to a point that the 90's and 2000's guys got with brutal training and less drugs. I was dumbfounded during the Palumbo interview with B.L. where B.L. said "he doesnt even like training, and doesnt even want to train when he is on low drugs because he doesnt feel like it is going to do anything....and then went on to say he is on 3-5 grams of test, something like 1400mg EQ, too much other stuff to name as far as anabolics, and 10IUs pharm grade GH and 16IU's chinese GH. I was listening to that on my cardio walk i take at night and was beyond shocked. And the sad thing is thats a normal mindset for these young guys now. Hate training but want to look like a bodybuilder...so they abuse themselves with the drugs. Man...If i get an injury and cannot train normally for a week I start going stir crazy.

Pro bodybuilding by and large is an even playing field...they all have access to all the same drugs for the most part. Who are the two strongest bodybuilders right now? Dallas Mcpherson and Akim Williams are the two strongest bodybuilders throwing around the most heavy slag iron in the IFBB....Bodybuilders coming back from Dubai keep saying Big Ramy is putting up poundages that are ridiculous (for some reason they dont show this much) but there are videos out there of him toying with 200lb dumbells and etc etc etc...so the 3 heaviest training bodybuilders of the 2010's are also the thickest and most heaviest muscled among their 400 or so counterparts.....who were the heaviest training bodybuilders of the 2000's? Ronnie Coleman, Chris Cormier, (even Jay Cutler trained with incredible heavy weights when he was coming up in size), Johnny Jackson, Branch Warren and some others....well they also happen to be the biggest thickest IFBB pro's of that time period....anyone figuring this out yet?.....who was the heaviest training pro's of the 90's? Yates, Mike Francois, Coleman again....who were the thickest and largest again of the 90's? 80's? Heaviest training bodybuilder? Bertil Fox......he was also the thickest bodybuilder of the 80's.....

So....on an even playing field, heavy training weights results in the largest pros among individuals with elite genetics and the same access of drugs. Again you dont need to be doing triples here....you can do 8 reps, 12 reps, 15 reps, 20 reps as long as its progressive and heavy. Platz build monstrous legs with heavy weights and higher reps, alot of these guys named above were doing sets of 10-12 reps with these heavy weights.

So you observe the above scenarios and put it together for yourself. The more times you can train with progressive poundages for a bodypart and RECOVER in a years time (frequency).....the quicker this whole breakdown remodel breakdown remodel breakdown remodel process will happen. I dont understand why people ever worry about doing enough sets....a guy who goes to the wall and back on two productive exercises for his unique mechanical makeup and unique genetics would destroy a guy who goes in there and does 30 sets on foo foo exercises which dont work for him. There are guys in this very forum who STILL TO THIS FREAKING DAY use the same exercises over and over and over that have PROVEN not to work for themselves. "Its a barbell curl and i must curl it even though Ive done it for 8 years and still have shitty biceps"<---that in itself is the greatest mistake a bodybuilder can make far exceeding "did i do enough sets today?"....Did you beat last times results in your logbook? Yes you did? good. Are you able to recover to be able to train that bodypart again and beat the logbook again next time? Yes? Good now string about 104 of those workouts together over the next year and you will be very happy.

So back to WWNMD....in a side example: people use all these drugs to lose bodyfat and then give out advice to others on how to lose bodyfat without telling them they are using Clen, T3, GH and low dose DNP and they could eat franks and beans 7 times a day and still lose bodyfat. How is that going to help Joe Blow who is not going to be the walking pharmacy you are?
People give all kind of advice on gaining muscle mass, but forget to tell the person they are giving advice to about the 3 grams of test, 12ius of gh, 1000mg tren, and the other 2 anabolics and one oral they are boatloading. <---You could do the sloppiest most unproductive workouts with a newbie bodybuilder and gain muscle mass with those drugs.

So the telltale answer is this. WWNMD (What would natural me do)...answer that question and it will give anyone the best possible answers of what to do when enhanced. What would natural me do to diet down and get in shape....<---you figure that out and all the trials, tribulations and problems that come about when you are trying to get into incredible shape NATURALLY....youll be right on the money when you do use the drugs.

WWNMD to get big? What would natural me do to gain size. Ill tell you what can be thrown out the window...all the freaking foo foo exercises and bullshit that is being bandied about nowadays by people trying to create some kind of separating niche as a trainer...thats for sure. Heavy progressive weights in key productive exercises would have to be used by "Natural You"....to get larger. Want to see exercises like one handed reverse tricep pushdowns get thrown into a wastebasket? Hypothetical situation: Billionaire approaches the natural you and says Ill give you 10 million dollars if you can put an inch of muscle on your arms in the next year (youll be drug tested, DEXAed regularly).....all the foo foo exercises would be thrown into the wastebasket and a person would be grinding out dips, close grip bench presses, EZ bar extensions etc etc etc trying to get that 10 million dollars.....and they would do it with two things in mind...How can i train the most frequently to gain muscle mass and how can i recover to train frequently to get this 10 million dollars.

WWNMD can give a person all the right answers as to what to do while actually using drugs....its brutally hard to gain muscle mass clean....simple observation will tell you the thickest most densely muscle natural guys train heavy for reps....the natural bodybuilders who dont gain muscle? You see them in every gym in the world every single day....they are the 95% of gym goers who go and never make an iota of a muscle gains and look the same today as they did 5-10 years ago when you used to say "hi" to them then also. Thats unsuccessful natural bodybuilders. Comfort Zone bodybuilders.


Excellent! Such a great way of looking at this endeavor..
 
Another great quote (or close) from Phil Hernon: "it's not a contest of who's training the hardest, it's about results".

Food for thought... ;)

Personally, I tend to think the biggest mistake most people do is to overtrain... how many guys do you see working out everyday for 2h straight using all kinds of techniques to reach failure set after set, yet not making a single progress in months? Plenty... :cool:

Sometimes the saying is true: less is more. :)



Well the person with better genetics is going to have better results.

So while that person may only lift 3 days a week for 30 minutes, if they were to lift for 1-1.5 hours intensely they would have even better results given their genetics.

I think the biggest mistake is lack of adequate nutrition, and for the genetically gifted lack of intensity/nutrition because gains come easy for them.



In some situations less is more though yes.
 
Well the person with better genetics is going to have better results.

So while that person may only lift 3 days a week for 30 minutes, if they were to lift for 1-1.5 hours intensely they would have even better results given their genetics.

I think the biggest mistake is lack of adequate nutrition, and for the genetically gifted lack of intensity/nutrition because gains come easy for them.



In some situations less is more though yes.
The person with good genetics is always going to have better results. To say that doubling or tripling the time in the gym is going to be better is showing that you dont get it. This is EXACTLY how you should train with "bad" genetics. Maximize your training.
 
Another great quote (or close) from Phil Hernon: "it's not a contest of who's training the hardest, it's about results".



Food for thought... ;)



Personally, I tend to think the biggest mistake most people do is to overtrain... how many guys do you see working out everyday for 2h straight using all kinds of techniques to reach failure set after set, yet not making a single progress in months? Plenty... :cool:



Sometimes the saying is true: less is more. :)



So true brother! I find that I go overboard when I train. Recently stepped back to 3 full body workouts a week. Not pushing my self like I usually do. # are going up again. I think most of us on pm probably are mentally the same and push to far. Or maybe I'm just getting old[emoji6]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Instantly made me think of the Lee Haney quote, "stimulate, don't annihilate."

Which I've always taken as: listen to your body, go more/go harder when you can, do less when you can't, and check your ego at the door.

Truer words have never been spoken!
 

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