What do you fuckers want to know?

[Fookster1982]

F @Fookster1982 sorry for the seriously late reply. I honestly just now saw this.

Honestly, I can't answer your question because I don't know what it is you're looking for or want to achieve.

Is what you described a "good workout"? Depends...a good workout for what?

If your goal was to get strong AF, then no - it's not. There are much better ways to do it.

If your goal was to get big / put on size, then possibly - though I'd likely prescribe a few alterations that made it more conducive to hypertrophy.

If your goal was to just have a general state of overall "fitness", then it'd likely be fine.

See what I mean?

I can't really give you pros & cons of a workout program until I know what you're trying to accomplish. Gimme an idea on that and I'll help how I can.

W @Wiggy

Thanks for the response. I am currently 6’2” and weigh right around 220 lbs. body fat is a tad over 10%. My goal right now is to just maintain but maybe drop a little fat in preparation for summer. I’d like to get sub 10% again.

I was on a 5/3/1 program for strength and really liked it. I out on some decent strength for me and blew up to 220 lbs from 205 but I’m in TRT. It was awesome but everything just started hurting really bad, especially my joints, my elbows were the worst. I think I just put in too much size and strength for my tendons and shit to handle so I don’t want to go that route.

So, yeah, I want to stay around the same weight but drop some fat. I am cleaning up my diet now and I’m going back to BJJ twice a week for some additional cardio. I break my workouts as follows: chest/triceps, back/biceps, legs, and shoulders/abs. On my off days I will try to hit the treadmill unless I do BJJ and rest one or so days a week.

i want to rest my joints, maintain some semblance of size, and drop some fat. I know a lot of people say that it is hard to do that but I’m gonna try.

 

[Wiggy]

First of all, you done hurt my feelings. So, this puts me in an awkward space/place. Honestly, I'd rather be in Chyna. To answer your question-- I cannot close the #2, but can close the#1 for reps. The #3 being my bucket goal. Because of my advanced age(58), and my limited financial status and inacces to a gym(small-town Alaska), I would like a critique of my present program. Finger tip pushups(isometric/tendon ligament strength), crumbling LOTS of newspapers and gripper. All 3 times per week. Don't wanna over tax the connective tissue. I have a manual labor job. Plus, I'm not fancy enough to afford a bidet-- so I gots to wipe my nether regions. Maybe I'm asking your opinion of the efficacy of the Westside Barbell approach: fancy assistance exercises from angles perceived to benefit the main lift utilizing chains, wraps and rubber band etc. OR, the Bulgarian method: minimal assistance work, but train the shit out of the main lift(grippers) very often.

You'd rather be in Chyna? Far be it from me to kink-shame, but considering she died nearly a decade ago...ewwww.

lmao

Welp, sounds like you've got quite the conundrum. Grip strength is one of those things that takes a lot of work, since the forearms & hands are pretty resilient from all the normal daily work they have to do (same reason many have a hard time growing their calves...that and they don't train them for shit, but still). But at the same time, because they're smaller muscle groups, they can be easy(-ish) to overtrain...especially from a CNS perspective. Then throw in the literal metrick fuck-ton of ways to train them depending on what you're trying to do (forearms vs hands vs fingers vs extension vs contraction vs...).

Then for shits & giggles, throw in the fact that you have a manual labor job. And you've got a giant "fuck you" of a situation in general.

lmao again

not to tangent *too* much, but re Westside Barbell work:

RIP Louie, but a LOT of what he had his guys doing will never apply to anyone outside of who he specifically trained.

i.e. - geared (shirts, wraps, suits, etc) powerlifters PED'd to the gills

I mean, the stuff he would have guys doing there often wouldn't even apply to "raw" powerlifters (guys not wearing shirts, wraps, etc) simply because the gear changed what the guys were doing so much.

e.g. - WS guys would focus on Bench lockout much more than bottom ROM Bench, simply because the shirts they wore took care of so much of the bottom of the movement.

Point being, while Louie had his guys doing a shitload of variety, the idea that a shitload of variety is necessarily a "good" idea is incorrect. Can it work? Yeah. Does it work? Maybe. Is it needed? For about 99.9% of trainees? No.

Back to your specific situation:

Personally, I'm more akin to what you're already doing and think it's a good setup. You're training tendon & ligament strength, and are doing a bunch of submaximal work targeting the muscle groups / style of work that will help you with your grippers.

Would I take a Bulgarian-style approach of as much high-itensity (near maximal) work as possible?

While that can work (this style has been adapted across many lifting styles), I wouldn't do it for this because of a few of the things I outlined above.

Treat the #2 as low-volume, high intensity work - do a couple-few sets of half-reps a time or two / week. Do Yielding Isometric holds (use both hands to close, hold as long as you can with working hand, then release as slowly as possible) a time or two per week. Then your submaximal work.

 

[Wiggy]

By the way, props to your critique of the Mentzer/Dorian Yates/ HIT/Heavy Duty/Blood and Guts schtick. As much as I respect what Arthur (Nautilus) Jones accomplished-- he was an innovator and made a ton of money. The Colorado experiment was a brilliant marketing facade. And Mentzer's heavy-duty schtick was pretty much the same. A pendulum-like reaction to the Weider BS perpetrated in his glossy publications designed to sell his merch by juiced-up models kowtowing to his BS training methods all the while pretending to be drug-free. BUT... IMO.. Meltzer was robbed at the 80 Olympia. May he RIP.

Mentzer (RIP) shoulda definitely won the '80 Mr. O, but Arnold was never not gonna win it.

Credit to Jones for inventing Nautilus, but calling the Colorado Experiment a "facade" is being extremely generous...it was disingenuously presented at best and all-out fraud at worst.

Speculation was that Mentzer didn't build his best physique with the HIT principles he espoused, and rumor is that after he got his monthly HIT writing gigs with the magazines, Casey Viator started saying he'd write similar if it'd also land him writing gigs...which is kinda hilarious considering he apparently dropped HIT completely after the Colorado Experiment, going back to '60s-'70s style high-volume bodypart splits.

If Viator actually did HIT in the first place, as other rumor was that while Jones had Viator doing his flavor of one set to failure HIT during the day at his compound in Florida, that Viator would sneak back in at night for additional workouts while Jones wasn't around.

 

[Wiggy]

W @Wiggy

Thanks for the response. I am currently 6’2” and weigh right around 220 lbs. body fat is a tad over 10%. My goal right now is to just maintain but maybe drop a little fat in preparation for summer. I’d like to get sub 10% again.

I was on a 5/3/1 program for strength and really liked it. I out on some decent strength for me and blew up to 220 lbs from 205 but I’m in TRT. It was awesome but everything just started hurting really bad, especially my joints, my elbows were the worst. I think I just put in too much size and strength for my tendons and shit to handle so I don’t want to go that route.

So, yeah, I want to stay around the same weight but drop some fat. I am cleaning up my diet now and I’m going back to BJJ twice a week for some additional cardio. I break my workouts as follows: chest/triceps, back/biceps, legs, and shoulders/abs. On my off days I will try to hit the treadmill unless I do BJJ and rest one or so days a week.

i want to rest my joints, maintain some semblance of size, and drop some fat. I know a lot of people say that it is hard to do that but I’m gonna try.

Well firstly, if you're looking to drop fat, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that's going to be primarily a diet thing. So you'll have to get that in check.

I can dig into that a little if you like.

If you really liked 5/3/1, then I see no reason to go away from it. You'll certainly not maintain the strength you built on it with the Athlean X thing you described.

That said, staying on 5/3/1 doesn't mean you have to stay on *all* of 5/3/1.

When people talk 5/3/1, they always consider the actual 5/3/1 sets themselves. However, I firmly believe the AMRAP sets are just as, if not more, responsible for the growth & gains as the 5/3/1 sets are.

You could 5/3/1 while dropping the AMRAP sets and be fine. You'd likely be able to keep a fair amount of the strength due to maintaining CNS efficiency with heavy(-ish) loads...relatively, that is since Wendler always espouses going too light. If you didn't wanna drop the AMRAP completely, cap them off.

e.g. - you should probably have a general idea of what your AMRAP max / capabilities are, so cap those sets at 50-75% or so. So if you think you should be able to get say 12 reps or so on your AMRAP set, don't so more than 6-8.

Or you could use a variation of Wendler's (weighted) WALRUS stuff as not only assistance, but in place of AMRAPs. So Bench, Squat, DL, or OHP your 5/3/1 sets, then do a WALRUS variation after.

If you listen to Wendler talk about how he trains his football team, it's decently high frequency, in that movements / bodyparts are typically trained 2-3x/week...once as a "focus" lift, then as an assistance lift. So maybe one day has TBDL has main lift with Bench & Rows as couplet for assistance, then another day has Bench as a main lift with Goblet Squats, Rows & RDLs as assistance. That sort of thing.

Go too light, but get "excellent" reps. Focus hard on CAT (Compensatory Acceleration Training)., which is essentially completely the concentric of every rep of every set as explosively as possible throughout the entire range-of-motion.

As an aside, I 1000% believe CAT is the most underrated style of lifting out there, especially for us "regular guys", in that it can help you develop both strength & explosive power at the same time. You also never have to go extremely heavy in relation ot your max, either.

For reference, "Dr. Squat" Fred Hatfield (RIP) used primarily CAT to build up to his 1000+ lbs Squat, and I think only ever went above 80% in training twice. Or some crazy thing like that.

Point being, you could continue to 5/3/1, CAT your reps, limit the intense AMRAPs or go WALRUS instead / for assistance and likely be good.

That + diet should get you what you're looking for.

Hope that helps.

 

[Tuc Ouiner]

Wiggly. Pretty much agree with you. Thank you for your comments. Other than the Chyna necropolis implication. Forgot to include infrequent negatives for low reps on a bi-weekly basis(approx.) I'd have to say that Viator was one of my favorites. Methinks if he coulda had the time and push, he would definitely had a couple of Olympias under his belt. I think he worked on oil rigs and shit. At 19 y.o. he was a beast. I'm sure you know that. Although his hip to shoulder ratio was nowhere close to Haney, Sergio etc., his insertions, proportions and overall shape, ruggedness were second to none IMO. I wonder why Weider never took him under his wing. Any idea?

 

[Wiggy]

Oh who knows - with Weider, it was always a business, so politics & marketability were always at the root of everything.

Arnold shouldn't have won in '80, and Franco (RIP) shouldn't have won in '81. But if we're honest, Arnold shouldn't have won in '75, either - Serge Nubret should have. You could easily even make a case that Arnold could (should?) have come 3rd behind Nubret & Louie.

I'm a huge Dorian fan, but he shouldn't have won at least his last title...maybe the last two. Especially after his massive biceps injury.

If we're talking hip to shoulder ratio, look at Arnold...his was terrible. You almost never see a straight on shot of him (from the front or back) because he had a waist as thick as a tree trunk, lol. That's why the vast majority of his poses were twisting - to hide his wide waist.

I'm surprised that Flex nor Levrone ended up winning it at some point. I can't say much after Dorian's reign, as I stopped really paying close attention after that.

As for why Weider never took to Viator, who knows...just not in the right circles, I guess.

Or maybe it was as simple as Viator was Jones' poster boy for the Colorado Experiment and Weider wouldn't wanna put that much press, push, etc, into someone that could directly link fans (& in turn, customers) to someone else instead of the "Weider Principles"? I mean, that's kinda what ended up happening with Dorian, but I think Dorian was also so good early on that he couldn't be ignored, either.

 

[Tuc Ouiner]

I think you're right. Casey took the short money with the Colorado experiment. That pretty much sunk his career. I don't, however think as highly of Nubret as you. Not saying you're wrong. Just my opinion. Some of the people who I felt were overlooked in the whole scheme of things were: Jeff King, Tim Belknap, Jorma Raty, Sonbaty, Padilla(obviously), Priest, Sergei Federov, Ruhl, Fox..just off the top of my head. Appreciate your input. You DO know your shit.
.

 

[Wiggy]

Thanks, man - I appreciate it.

Padilla was awesome, for sure. Not sure why he never did better than he did, but I can only guess that it's because he was just too short. I think that's a reason Vince Comerford never placed great well, either.

Fox...you mean Bertil? (I didn't pay much attention after Ronnie took over, so no idea if there was another Fox then. lol) If so, that guy was a fucking legend. Awesome.

Belknap's vascularity was nuts. He was freaky before freaky was a thing...before his time.

Same with Nasser, IMO. He was huge before being huge was the main thing. Had he competed maybe 15 years later, he'd have done much better. RIP

I've always been a Priest fan. Early in his pro career, he was the only guy that pull of the Sergio pose. Dude was a monster. Went absolutely off the deep end, though. hhahahaha...the guy is crazy & I like how he has absolutely *zero* fucks to give...ever. lmao