When are PRs reliable?

[Hanley]

Is MPS the sole factor in muscular recovery? Why don't we all just do 72 hrs worth of squat and deadlift stress every 72 hours? Twice weekly PRs forever sounds cool. I really want to know where you're going with this - again, it looks like you're saying gainz can be driven for basically anyone at an "advanced novice" type rate.

As far as I can tell, this is Hanley's point of view: that there's no sense in doing more work in one day than can be recovered from in 48-72 hours.

There's no guarantee that work is going to produce enough adaptation to get you a 5 pound PR or whatever. But you will get some adaptation, and enough of those adaptations should produce PRs eventually.

At least from the standpoint of maximizing hypertrophy this makes total sense given MPS is elevated at most 72 hours after a workout, and for a shorter interval for trained lifters. This is basically the reason bodybuilders think split routine suck now: you're only getting elevated MPS for at most 3 of 7 days of the week in each body part.

I don't know anything about the physiology of neural adaptation but I would guess it's like basically every other skill (piano, math, programming, whatever), where frequency is much more important than single-session practice volume. So again, you probably want to handle heavy weights as often as reasonably possible, and not blowing yourself out in one session permits you to do this.

Basically this, yeah.

Things get a bit tricky in practice. For example, the max-recoverable-volume for primary movers tends to be much higher than that for postural muscles (spinal erectors). So dosing single session stress for compound movements can be tricky. I could hit max-recoverable-volume for the erectors in the big movements, then target the primary movers with additional work. That's one solution.

If you tease apart the programming from good programmers (Andy, The Barbell Docs) you'll see (an intuitive?) optimization of all these gnarly competing issues.

(I had 3 finals yesterday. These walls of text are my decompression-rambles. Sorry).

[PatrickDB]

@Hanley, I have a dumb question about this concept. What's the point of doing a Heavy-Light-Medium scheme as opposed to a Medium-Medium-Heavy scheme, where the fatigue from the Heavy day is dissipated over the weekend and the fatigue from the Medium days in 48 hours?

At the very least, shouldn't it be MLH where the heavy day is arranged before the 2 day weekend break? I've never understood the zen of HLM.

[mgil]

@Hanley, I have a dumb question about this concept. What's the point of doing a Heavy-Light-Medium scheme as opposed to a Medium-Medium-Heavy scheme, where the fatigue from the Heavy day is dissipated over the weekend and the fatigue from the Medium days in 48 hours?

At the very least, shouldn't it be MLH where the heavy day is arranged before the 2 day weekend break? I've never understood the zen of HLM.

I always thought of the H day as being the "most fresh" in terms of training days simply because it's going to be the most demanding.

But the whole week-long cycle depends on that added dose on "M" day to increment the stress and then "fully recover" by "H" day. @Hanley what do we do about the inflammation issues?

[Hanley]

I've never understood the zen of HLM.

Probably because it's Arbitrary Zen.

I vote for auto-regulating the session focus (but doing this requires a good bit of lifting-intuition*).


Or software and a bar-speed device that evaluates fatigue (and perhaps other "fatigue metrics") and structures the day's session accordingly. I feel like Mike T might be going in this direction.

[SJB]

*Rule of Thom*

Blessed is he?

Thom hath borne our washing machine, and run the race on our behalf. Blessed is he!

May Lord Thrum Berant be always referenced, amen.

[mgil]

I've never understood the zen of HLM.

Probably because it's Arbitrary Zen.

I vote for auto-regulating the session focus (but doing this requires a good bit of lifting-intuition*).


Or software and a bar-speed device that evaluates fatigue (and perhaps other "fatigue metrics") and structures the day's session accordingly. I feel like Mike T might be going in this direction.

It would be fantastic if some app could take a person's TRAC-style feedback then use a user-specific set of bar speed data to alert the user as to when a certain bar speed threshold is met, monitor that level, and then keep them there with the TRAC feedback in mind.

Someone should write this app.

[Hanley]

@Hanley what do we do about the inflammation issues?

Tren/test stack.

more seriously:

maybe try:

- limiting the fatigue within each set (in velocity based training, I'd have you do little mini-sets of varying reps within a specified bar-speed zone). That's how you'd get your target tonnage for the session. Lots of quick little baby sets. I'm convinced moderating intraset fatigue reduces muscle damage and inflammation.

- more frequency. Spread the tonnage out better. MOAR smaller doses throughout the month.

[cgeorg]

I'm assuming this bar speed data would be unique to each individual? How is it initially collected - keep trying larger doses until you get not-recovery in 72 hours?

Does this stuff change over time for individuals?

[Hanley]

Someone should write this app.

That goal is -- in part -- what motivated me to go back to school at 39.

I actually think this community has the the weird mix of experience, coding chops and subject matter expertise (like modeling "bar-velocity profiles" that could be used for load selection) to write some very useful software.

[mgil]

I'm assuming this bar speed data would be unique to each individual? How is it initially collected - keep trying larger doses until you get not-recovery in 72 hours?

It's absolutely a specific to the individual. You've got dudes like Hanley that are pretty quick up until failure and guys like John Petrizzo that can have tectonic bar speeds and still get the lift.

Probably something like running a simple acclamation period, like an LP, over a few rep ranges (e.g. 8s, 5s, 2s) would be a sufficient data set to prime the model.

Does this stuff change over time for individuals?

Probably a little, but the data collection/analysis sorts this out.

[PatrickDB]

I've never understood the zen of HLM.

Probably because it's Arbitrary Zen.

I don't know, I just assumed the explanation you gave for your DUP template also applied here, which was that the H and M days were the important stimuli and the L day was just to reinforce motor patterns and boost MPS a bit.

I can't imagine that the difference between this and spreading the volume out more evenly is that large (assume total volume is equal). My reference point here is an article by Greg Nuckols where he looks at a meta-analysis of periodization studies. The effect size for complicated periodization schemes versus dumb things like "three months of 3x6 every day" was like .15 of a standard deviation after correcting for publication bias.

The claim that periodization has this small of an effect seems sort of false, and I guess my working explanation of this result is that periodization is "just" a vehicle for fatigue management and ultimately allows you to do more volume, so "controlling for volume" is really controlling for an important intermediate variable and hence inappropriate. This also explains why the literature doesn't favor any one periodization scheme over another. The relatively young training age of the subjects probably also has something to do with it.

Nonetheless, HLM, MMH, MLH, whatever, I would guess the exact splitting doesn't matter as long as you perform a roughly equivalent amount of work. In this vein @mgil's explanation makes the most sense to me. You're trying to get in the majority of your "quality" difficult work on Monday, so you wanted to be maximally rested in order to do that.

[mgil]

Someone should write this app.

That goal is -- in part -- what motivated me to go back to school at 39.

I actually think this community has the the weird mix of experience, coding chops and subject matter expertise (like modeling "bar-velocity profiles" that could be used for load selection) to write some very useful software.

It would be nice to have this analytical tool. Logistics may be difficult. We should start a *slack* group.

[mgil]

I can't imagine that the difference between this and spreading the volume out more evenly is that large (assume total volume is equal). My reference point here is an article by Greg Nuckols where he looks at a meta-analysis of periodization studies. The effect size for complicated periodization schemes versus dumb things like "three months of 3x6 every day" was like .15 of a standard deviation after correcting for publication bias.

The claim that periodization has this small of an effect seems sort of false, and I guess my working explanation of this result is that periodization is "just" a vehicle for fatigue management and ultimately allows you to do more volume, so "controlling for volume" is really controlling for an important intermediate variable and hence inappropriate. This also explains why the literature doesn't favor any one periodization scheme over another. The relatively young training age of the subjects probably also has something to do with it.

Without digging through Knuckols stuff (his analysis seems to be lacking at times), does this meta-analysis cover non-novice trainee populations? DUP and LP are going to be similar in end effect on novice populations.

[Hanley]

keep trying larger doses until you get not-recovery in 72 hours?

Pretty much, yeah. You can use user-provided historical data to set the initial session doses. You measure fatigue (reduced force production in the movement) the next session and adjust the stress-dose as necessary.

Does this stuff change over time for individuals?

Bar-speed profiles are VERY stable. In other words, your 1rm squat might remain .17-.20 meters a second for 1-2 years. The 1rm itself might increase by 100 pounds, but the velocity at 1rm is stable.

The equation that describes a lifter's barspeeds at varying intensities also remains stable.

MY profile will look very different than - say - John Petrizzo's (have you seen John Petrizzo grind?) but our respective profiles are stable over time.

As a given lifter get more skilled (squat 1rm at .15 m/s), the profile shifts a little.

[cwd]

I've never understood the zen of HLM.

Probably because it's Arbitrary Zen.

Nonetheless, HLM, MMH, MLH, whatever, I would guess the exact splitting doesn't matter as long as you perform a roughly equivalent amount of work. In this vein @mgil's explanation makes the most sense to me. You're trying to get in the majority of your "quality" difficult work on Monday, so you wanted to be maximally rested in order to do that.

I notice that Baker often moves heavy deadlifts from H day to L day. So apparently he doesn't think it's important that the work be heavily "clumped" rather than spread through the week.

Maybe the "clumpiness" of HLM is based on Bill Starr's desire to not leave his athletes too sore on Friday (game day).

[PatrickDB]

Without digging through Knuckols stuff (his analysis seems to be lacking at times), does this meta-analysis cover non-novice trainee populations? DUP and LP are going to be similar in end effect on novice populations.

It was in one of his MASS reviews. The original study, which I have not looked at, is "Comparison of Periodized and Non-Periodized Resistance Training on Maximal Strength: A Meta-Analysis," Williams et al. (2017). Probably available on sci-hub.

The novice thing is why I included the caveat about training age. And there's a whole other host of issues that probably make these studies ecologically invalid.

Nonetheless, within the available literature, the effect sizes for volume, frequency, and intensity are huge, while the effect size for periodization seems small, and the various schemes are apparently indistinguishable. So my working mental model is that periodization is more or less just a vehicle for allowing you to do optimal amounts of the first three.

[Hanley]

MY profile will look very different than - say - John Petrizzo's (have you seen John Petrizzo grind?)

You've got dudes like Hanley that are pretty quick up until failure and guys like John Petrizzo

That's funny.

[mgil]

MY profile will look very different than - say - John Petrizzo's (have you seen John Petrizzo grind?)

You've got dudes like Hanley that are pretty quick up until failure and guys like John Petrizzo

That's funny.

Our minds are synced through the gravitational field.

[Hanley]

The claim that periodization has this small of an effect seems sort of false, and I guess my working explanation of this result is that periodization is "just" a vehicle for fatigue management and ultimately allows you to do more volume, so "controlling for volume" is really controlling for an important intermediate variable and hence inappropriate. This also explains why the literature doesn't favor any one periodization scheme over another.

Very good point.

In this vein @mgil's explanation makes the most sense to me. You're trying to get in the majority of your "quality" difficult work on Monday, so you wanted to be maximally rested in order to do that.

I agree. I've always done HEAVY on the day with lowest fatigue (usually determined by life schedule).

[Hanley]

are synced through the gravitational field.

You know what Deepak says:

"“The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.”

Wait. Fuck. No. Erwin Shroedinger said that.