Plan for hypertrophy

Hi everyone,

Need some advice.

I want to stick to the F1 plan but wish to replace the 10lbs muscle i lost. Had a year of upperbody inactivity to let some injuries heal. I feel im finally ready, i can do pushups and my shoulder only bothers me occasionally now  .

So i dont want to change the program and wish to keep things mainly on the calisthenic route so, would adding a lot of volume with pushups, recline rows, pullups, etc. ruin F1/H1?

I do ladders and GtG type stuff so im not really pushing it to failure often. I like the higher rep stuff for the endurance it gave me for Boxing.

1-2 days a week of volume, in addition to F1/H1 sound good?

Thanks,

Gabe

I would just keep the program as it is, push yourself harder (you need to fatigue the muscles if you want them to grow), maybe up the frequency (try 4 days if you are doing 3, 5 if you are doing 4, 4 days of F7 rather than 3 of the traditional split, etc...) if you feel like you still have more left in the tank, and above all make sure that you are eating enough of the right (muscle building) foods and getting enough good sleep to allow your body to repair and improve itself.

I'm no expert here, but I would think you could maintain the integrity of the program and prioritize your upper body at the same time:

1.) Maintain integrity of the program by not adding or changing anything.  Just work through the progressions.  Five sets is actually a pretty significant amount of volume if you are working through the progressions.

2.) Prioritize just by changing the order.  On F7 days, do your HBP progression first and your RC progression second.  You can push those hard at the beginning of the workout while your fresh, and then do your FL, sPL, SL, MN, and SLS after.

F7 is pretty brutal for me, and I haven't taken a year off.  I'd imagine for you just getting back to it, it'll be plenty for you too.  

Enjoy!

Let me get this straight: You took a year off due to injuries, and now you want go back to Foundation AND increase the volume?

Sorry, but that sounds just ridiculous. If you've been injured previously, your number one priority should be to remain injury free. When you train, you gain muscle. When you're injured you lose muscle. Yeah, that's how it works, not exactly rocket science, but like you wrote, you lost ten pounds in that year off.

Like me, you probably injured yourself because you didn't know what you were doing. What makes you think that after a one year break, NOW you suddenly know what your body needs? Coach does know, however, after all that's why we're buying his programs. Your number one hypertrophy strategy should therefore be, I repeat, to remain injury free. Foundation will give you hypertrophy as it is, no need to tamper with it.

Ravn said:

Let me get this straight: You took a year off due to injuries, and now you want go back to Foundation AND increase the volume?

Sorry, but that sounds just ridiculous. If you've been injured previously, your number one priority should be to remain injury free. When you train, you gain muscle. When you're injured you lose muscle. Yeah, that's how it works, not exactly rocket science, but like you wrote, you lost ten pounds in that year off.

Like me, you probably injured yourself because you didn't know what you where doing. What makes you think that after a one year break, NOW you suddenly know what your body needs? Coach does know, however, after all that's why we're buying his programs. Your number one hypertrophy strategy should therefore be, I repeat, to remain injury free. Foundation will give you hypertrophy as it is, no need to tamper with it.

Great post.

And that last line, most definitely.

I will not question your priorities even though staying injury free is probably is always a good idea. As for hypertrophy high volume is not what you need. In general to get big you want to get really strong in exercises that involve large groups of muscle and designed to move heavy weights. You should not be looking at push-ups, pull-ups and dips unless they are weighted variation. And probably as far as hypertrophy only is considered Bench press, Deadlift and squats will put much more muscle mass on your frame than bodyweight exercises. To maximize hypertrophy gains you want to get strong in 8-10 reps range. There are many ways to approach it depending how well you can handle heavy weight volume. DC training methods is one such a good program. You do not have to follow it to a tee, but you can learn principals.

But whatever approach you take it will be a compromise between F1 and anything else. Having said that high volume BW together with F1 is a very bad compromise. Your F1 training approach should be always give it the best you can and that is just impossible if you do a lot of extra high volume BW stuff even if you do not feel tired after doing all your programming. it just means that you did not do a max effort in F1 today and probably just going through the motions.

Consider adding Simplefit after your workouts. Scale the exercises as necessary.

Jay B. said:

Consider adding Simplefit after your workouts. Scale the exercises as necessary.

I don't see this helping.

Hypertrophy will come with adequate nutrition and progressive training. Foundation provides plenty of progressive training. Many people will try to add a lot of stuff to it in an effort to speed hypertrophy along. You will soon realize this is counter intuitive and will slow you in the long run. Put your focus on getting through the foundation program.

Daniel Burnham said:

I don't see this helping.

Hypertrophy will come with adequate nutrition and progressive training. Foundation provides plenty of progressive training. Many people will try to add a lot of stuff to it in an effort to speed hypertrophy along. You will soon realize this is counter intuitive and will slow you in the long run. Put your focus on getting through the foundation program.

I agree with you, but if he wants to add something Simplefit is a great muscle builder (provided he scales the exercises for the correct difficulty).

Jay B. said:

I agree with you, but if he wants to add something Simplefit is a great muscle builder (provided he scales the exercises for the correct difficulty).

I read through simple fit. It seems like a metallic exercise more an anything. There are much more efficient ways to gain strength and hypertrophy. In fact id go so far to say simple for is a poor method for achieving these goals.

Daniel Burnham said:

I read through simple fit. It seems like a metallic exercise more an anything. There are much more efficient ways to gain strength and hypertrophy. In fact id go so far to say simple for is a poor method for achieving these goals.

I 100% vehemently and absolutely disagree. Day 1 is based on EDT training, which might be the single best workout for might and muscle I've ever tried. That's where the hypertrophy will come from. Days 2 and 3 are really just days to perfect what you're doing and maybe advance a level. They're much less strenuous than Day 1, which means you can do them without cutting into your effort on Foundations.

The only way to make it better for hypertrophy and strength is to do a pure EDT workout, but then you take away it's ability to work alongside Foundations without interfering.

Simplefit. Holly .....!!! "Cindy" (benchmark crossfit WOD) with strict PU every week would be just brutal! Although the program like that will never create much hypertrophy it still seems like a very good and simple idea for general fitness.

Trying to do anything resembling an EDT workout is going to interfere with Foundation, and EDT is far from being optimal for hypertrophy or strength gains.

It's a nice conditioning method that has built in progression, keeps the user focused on increased performance/more volume, and alleviates the obsession with finding the "right" set rep schemes for lifting (which many beginners are obsessed with), but it is far from being compatible with performing Foundation and is not going to increase the muscle mass you would develop if you simply pushed yourself hard with F, ate enough of the right foods, and got good rest to allow your body to adapt.

And really, nothing else is going to be either. There are better routines for building muscle that have been proven effective by professional and amatuer bodybuilders like DC Training, Max OT, Mountain Dog, etc... But pretty much all of these are going to be capable of being done while also doing Foundation. As the saying goes, "you cannot serve two masters." Trying to "tweak" Foundation or any of the bodybuilding routines to be able to do both will inevitably lead to neither being done correctly and you not getting the results from either that you had wanted.

Just stick to Foundation and eat and sleep right for muscle growth if you want to build some muscle while progressing with your GST strength, or go all in and do a bodybuilding routine if you are really solely focused on muscular growth. The fact that you are coming back from an injury is even more reason not to try to "Frankenstein" Foundation.

Echoing a point that's already been made: don't try to add a strength program to your strength program. At best that will result in stalled progress, and at worst you'll injure yourself. Foundation builds muscle mass. If it's too slow for you, then pick up a dedicated body-building program instead. 

With Foundation and GBodies curriculum you'll put on mass; the right muscle mass. Nothing spectacular neither bodybuilding style, but it creates a good proportional body. 

I'm the living proof of that apart of so many members on this forum.

Like others have said, I find that F1 is plenty enough to cause hypertrophy, especially if you're regaining lost muscle. Since you had it once you'll get it back faster than otherwise. I started F1 after what was essentially a three year period off of strength training of any kind. Within a year I had regained lost muscle, and then some, all on the most basic progressions. I generally use Naterman's eating guidelines in the Nutrition forum, and they definitely work for me.

Have to disagree with you there, Keegan. EDT is excellent for building mass, I don't know any better methods.
BUT it would be foolish to add that to F1. You'll end up injured. The volume necessary in EDT is toeing the line already and you'll quickly see that F1 goes from chilling out with a few reps to an all out draining suck-fest in a few weeks.

I'd stick to one of the approaches. And seeing as you are here, looking for advice, I think the answer just gave itself. Go for F1 and rather switch up the weekly split, like Keegan said (I most definitely agree with you there). And eat a lot of good food, stress down & sleep around 8 hours every single night.

Thanks for the replies.

A bit more background, because, i get what most people are saying about just sticking to F1/H1 and let the size come back on its own.

But i have to get pushup and pullup endurance back(i will be teaching a bootcamp class and would like to walk-the-walk), and how i did it before was lots of calisthenic work. Couple hundred pushups every few days. I liked how it helped my boxing.

I already had a strength base built from lifting over the years, basically 5x5 stuff.

So, injury- wise:

In middle school i tore some of my bicep tendon and some shoulder ligament and have for the last 20 years had anterior instability. During the xray the doctor said my GH head was too big(insert joke here) and i was/am very prone to impingement.

Did rehab but no surgery, they said put it off till later if it gets worse.

So about a year and a half ago, my training was fine, had one 'heavy' lift followed by lots of calisthenic volume, x3/week, and things were going very well. Got decent at pistol squats and handstand pushups(not the full range kind though-face to floor kind)

I noticed some lack of hip mobility so i added more mobility work, figured i would work itself out. Well i was deadlifting a few weeks later and 'pop' on my last warmup set of 350, my leg went numb. That was scary. Short story long i stopped lifting for a while, sought help, and started rehabbing it. S1 disk bulge and through nerve flossing, SMR, and LOTS of traction it is pretty healed. I do not deadlift much anymore- i only just 'groove' the pattern with about 225 and my back seems fine. So thats one part of the year off.

The other injury was after my back got better, i hurt my shoulder either at boxing or in my sleep. I somehow sprained my AC joint. I had a PT friend look at it and he gave me some advice that i followed. Rotator cuff exercises and light low cable rows for the lower traps. Some static work as well. Thats it. After about a half year it seems better and can handle some pushups.

Im slowly plodding through F1/H1 making steady progress.

I can do a set of 20 pushups now with little problem and only sometimes does my shoulder get bothered.

I wanted to get the size back, not so much for show(you cant fix ugly anyway) but rather, when i was doing high volume pushups/pullups and my endurance was better, i grew from it as well and kinda used that as a metric.

So, i wanna get back to 50 pushups and 10 pullups and regain the lost size.

Ill be doing F1/H1 and im asking if its a good idea to add 2 days of more pushups and pullups. Not pushing to failure, just extra volume.

Not looking for bodybuilding or powerlifting.

No it's not a good idea - your muscles grow during rest periods. Adding in extra training will reduce the amount of rest and growth, and will probably pre-dispose you to injury. The only thing you may gain, if your body can handle it, is endurance.

At the risk of being redundant, I think it's still worth reiterating:

After a long layoff, you want to do less, rather than more.  Patience is your best friend, when coming back from an injury.  I worked in a physical therapy office for 3 years, and trust me, the #1 problem with athletes is trying to "get back to where they were before" too fast.

You can't cram for strength and fitness.  

What ever program you decide on, F1 or something else, make sure to come back slowly, patiently, and consistently.  Consistency beats intensity in the beginning.

Well, i guess ill slow things down and stick to F1/H1. I still have to participate in my bootcamps and, ugh, do 'cardio' though(prepping for an easy 5k).

So, you box (which is a sport where you tend to remain in a constant Kyphotic posture much of the time and do tons of work for the anterior muscles and not much for the posterior muscles) and used to do tons of push-ups and wound up with anterior shoulder joint instability? It sounds to me like your have/had some serious muscular imbalances that contributed to your injuries. It also sounds like trying to rush to get back to that point would likely only result in a similar outcome.

I think that your background info lends even more credence to the advice to not add additional volume to Foundation and to instead simply focus on fixing your strength and mobility deficiencies (which Foundation is designed to do) while making sure to get your nutritional and rest practices in order.

And if you are concerned with teaching a bootcamp class, just have the participants perform Foundation quality push-ups and it should make them plenty challenging, even with less reps. :-)

Keegan said:

So, you box (which is a sport where you tend to remain in a constant Kyphotic posture much of the time and do tons of work for the anterior muscles and not much for the posterior muscles) and used to do tons of push-ups and wound up with anterior shoulder joint instability? It sounds to me like your have/had some serious muscular imbalances that contributed to your injuries. It also sounds like trying to rush to get back to that point would likely only result in a similar outcome.

I think that your background info lends even more credence to the advice to not add additional volume to Foundation and to instead simply focus on fixing your strength and mobility deficiencies (which Foundation is designed to do) while making sure to get your nutritional and rest practices in order.

And if you are concerned with teaching a bootcamp class, just have the participants perform Foundation quality push-ups and it should make them plenty challenging, even with less reps. :-)

Yes, there is some posterior shoulder work involved in retracting punches, but it is hardly an even amount to the stress experienced and work done by the anterior muscles. My boxing lineage traces back to Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Willie Pep, Jack Dempsey and Eddie Futch, so I am well aware of the correct mechanics involved in throwing boxing punches and it is absolutely an anterior shoulder heavy activity.

I'm also not suggesting that push-ups automatically lead to shoulder instability or muscular imbalances. But I know quite a few Martial Artists, boxers, and kick boxers who wound up with Kyphotic postures and subsequent shoulder issues from years of punching and push-ups and not enough posterior shoulder work to balance them out.

I'm also not saying that boxing and push-ups were the sole cause of your shoulder issues, you very well might have a congenital malformation in your shoulders that predisposed you to being at a greater risk of shoulder injury, and I hear you about poor posture while sitting contributing as well. But again, the heavy volume of anterior shoulder heavy work from boxing and lots of push-ups without balancing that stress out with an appropriate amount of posterior shoulder work most likely contributed to your shoulder injury. I've seen it many times with fellow fighters.

Keegan said:

Yes, there is some posterior shoulder work involved in retracting punches, but it is hardly an even amount to the stress experienced and work done by the anterior muscles. My boxing lineage traces back to Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Willie Pep, Jack Dempsey and Eddie Futch, so I am well aware of the correct mechanics involved in throwing boxing punches and it is absolutely an anterior shoulder heavy activity.

I'm also not suggesting that push-ups automatically lead to shoulder instability or muscular imbalances. But I know quite a few Martial Artists, boxers, and kick boxers who wound up with Kyphotic postures and subsequent shoulder issues from years of punching and push-ups and not enough posterior shoulder work to balance them out.

I'm also not saying that boxing and push-ups were the sole cause of your shoulder issues, you very well might have a congenital malformation in your shoulders that predisposed you to being at a greater risk of shoulder injury, and I hear you about poor posture while sitting contributing as well. But again, the heavy volume of anterior shoulder heavy work from boxing and lots of push-ups without balancing that stress out with an appropriate amount of posterior shoulder work most likely contributed to your shoulder injury. I've seen it many times with fellow fighters.

Yeah, ive cooled it quite a bit with boxing. Im not hitting the heavybag much these days. Ill do light drills just to keep the skills.

The defect is congenital, well, at least thats how the doctor interpreted the xrays. The injury was from middleschool football when i tried a swim move and thought i pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Pain went away in a week, no problem. Except the next few years my bench didnt go up and the arm in question had a habit of going out on me in an incline dumbbell press. I would do fine then just drop the dumbbell for no reason. fast forward to college where i had no sports for a few years. Then a friend got me into martial arts,boxing,kickboxing. Rest is history until i became a trainer and became aware of some of the physio concepts involved.

I have fixed a lot of the khyphotic postural problems, and the interior rotation ones as well.

The F1/H1 program and Coach's interviews have made me rethink a lot of what ive learned. Funny that.