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Barbell Barbell over 50: Easier to do more than less

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North Coast Miller said:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Isometric blood flow restriction exercise: acute physiological and neuromuscular responses - PubMed

The present results demonstrate that isometric LL-BFR causes increased metabolic, neuromuscular as well as perceptual responses compared to LL alone. These adaptations are similar to dynamic exercise and therefore LL-BFR represents a valuable type of exercise where large joint movements are...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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Thanks!

It sounds like it would work:

The present results demonstrate that isometric LL-BFR causes increased metabolic, neuromuscular as well as perceptual responses compared to LL alone. These adaptations are similar to dynamic exercise and therefore LL-BFR represents a valuable type of exercise where large joint movements are contraindicated (e.g. rehabilitation after orthopedic injuries).
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LukeV said:
I'm hitting the MED for hypertrophy daily or nearly daily and my joints feel good, certainly better than they feel if I reduce the frequency and up the per workout volume.
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I'm curious what you find the MED for hypertrophy.

I'm sure it varies by exercise / body part, but would love to hear your thoughts and compare notes.
 
watchnerd said:
I'm curious what you find the MED for hypertrophy.

I'm sure it varies by exercise / body part, but would love to hear your thoughts and compare notes.
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A single hard set at or very close to failure repeated within about five days (along with protein, sleep etc) has consistently resulted in growth for me across all body parts, upper and lower. I've got superior results from multiple sets and more frequent workouts but that's been the MED for me. Classic HIT really.

I'm sort of convinced, but I've never had the guts to test it out, that the frequency could be dropped to weekly provided scrupulous attention was paid to protein consumption. I've built okay muscle on once weekly but that was using the brutal super slow method working beyond failure - that's too brutal for general application. But I've got a feeling that your Regular Joe with decent protein only needs once weekly HIT style workouts to look good and feel great. It will take them a while to build the physique but at once weekly with the right protein they should be building muscle quicker than they can lose it.
 
LukeV said:
But I've got a feeling that your Regular Joe with decent protein only needs once weekly HIT style workouts to look good and feel great. It will take them a while to build the physique but at once weekly with the right protein they should be building muscle quicker than they can lose it.
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I have zero science to back up my opinion, but I just have a hard time believing that once a week of anything is enough to build much of anything unless you start out untrained and/or use. To maintain - yeah, probably. But to build, my own personal experience with sports and training, says no.
 
Boris Bachmann said:
I have zero science to back up my opinion, but I just have a hard time believing that once a week of anything is enough to build much of anything unless you start out untrained and/or use. To maintain - yeah, probably. But to build, my own personal experience with sports and training, says no.
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I understand your scepticism. But what i'm arguing is actually very scientific, Studies tell us what it takes to build muscle and what it takes to lose muscle. Provided you stay on the building side of the equation ultimately you will do alright. As they say, if the maths works everything works. I'm convinced a decent hard workout weekly and adequate protein gets Regular Joe exactly where not only he wants to be but where he's going to end up anyway
 
LukeV said:
As they say, if the maths works everything works. I'm convinced a decent hard workout weekly and adequate protein gets Regular Joe exactly where not only he wants to be but where he's going to end up anyway
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Regular Joe is likely untrained to begin with, so yeah, you're probably right.
 
Boris Bachmann said:
Regular Joe is likely untrained to begin with, so yeah, you're probably right.
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If you're right Trained Joe decelerates the rate of muscle growth and/or accelerates the rate of muscle loss such as to result in overall muscle loss. That doesn't seem likely to me. I mean what would cause an individual in steady state muscle gain (untrained) to move to steady state muscle loss (trained)?
 
LukeV said:
If you're right Trained Joe decelerates the rate of muscle growth and/or accelerates the rate of muscle loss such as to result in overall muscle loss. That doesn't seem likely to me. I mean what would cause an individual in steady state muscle gain (untrained) to move to steady state muscle loss (trained)?
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I'm not following, I guess.
If I train once a week, I think it's likely I'm going to lose muscle. Now, if you meant I can train body parts or individual exercises once a week (while training more than once a week total), then you'll have zero disagreement from me.
 
Boris Bachmann said:
I'm not following, I guess.
If I train once a week, I think it's likely I'm going to lose muscle. Now, if you meant I can train body parts or individual exercises once a week (while training more than once a week total), then you'll have zero disagreement from me.
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What I'm saying is what's the theory of muscle building that says you can build at X but decline at Y. You seem to be assuming X and Y are the same. But science tells us what's easier to build is harder to lose. But it's not just about working out but also protein consumption that keeps us anabolic. So whether we're trained or untrained if we stay anabolic we grow. My post was about the minimum effective dose (for anyone) to stay anabolic
 
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LukeV said:
What I'm saying is what's the theory of muscle building that says you can build at X but decline at Y. You seem to be assuming X and Y are the same. But science tells us what's easier to build is harder to lose. But it's not just about working out but also protein consumption that keeps us anabolic. So whether we're trained or untrained if we stay anabolic we grow. My post was about the minimum effective dose (for anyone) to stay anabolic
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Maybe I'm too slow to follow and this is all above my head.
I'm not assuming that you build, maintain, or lose at the same rate at all. I'm saying that where you are now matters as far as how you need to train. I'm saying if you are already trained and want to build, it's going to require more than once a week. If you want to maintain, once a week will probably do. If you are untrained or detrained, once a week will probably do.
 
I’d say it comes down to how much FFM you have over a lean baseline. If you look at the HIT used by guys like Mentzer and Platz it wasn’t really HIT at all. What keeps working for your first 15lbs of lean, probably won’t cut it at 35+lbs. You run into a wall where the time needed to recover is very close to the point where the adaptive response is no longer robust.

All that said, I’ve gotten my strongest results from using a couple of easy sets upfront, RPE of 5 or 6, followed by a single hard set. This being done ABA, BAB. So every other week one of the workouts would be on its own for the week - four days before and after. I did find that yanking the lead-in sets really took the fizz out of my results, they were not an optional warmup.

I used a lot of single set work when I first got into KBs, and it did pretty good til I got around 175lbs or so at 5’10”. After that it was treading water for me. I can see that it works, but I don’t agree with Baye et al regarding genetics, or that over time HIT will take one as far as other methods. For a minimum effective dose it is definitely a strong contender, and possibly even at a 7 day frequency if taken to a high enough intensity. I’d need a spotter for everything.
 
Boris Bachmann said:
Maybe I'm too slow to follow and this is all above my head.
I'm not assuming that you build, maintain, or lose at the same rate at all. I'm saying that where you are now matters as far as how you need to train. I'm saying if you are already trained and want to build, it's going to require more than once a week. If you want to maintain, once a week will probably do. If you are untrained or detrained, once a week will probably do.
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A classic bro body part split, often advocated for advanced lifters, is to hit each body part really really hard (i.e. you might do 15 sets in one day) once a week.

I've never done that, but what I have noticed is that I can grow slowly with once a week isolation work for muscles I'm also hitting twice a week via compounds.

In other words, if I'm already doing chin ups and rows, I get slow growth from curls once a week.
 
watchnerd said:
A classic bro body part split, often advocated for advanced lifters, is to hit each body part really really hard (i.e. you might do 15 sets in one day) once a week.
I've never done that, but what I have noticed is that I can grow slowly with once a week isolation work for muscles I'm also hitting twice a week via compounds.
In other words, if I'm already doing chin ups and rows, I get slow growth from curls once a week.
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Absolutely. Agreed 100%
 
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