Can you train strength + hypertrophy at the same time?

[asianbboy]

Coach: I've got a question for you. Jack LaLanne advocated "training to failure". Would you recommend this method of training? From what I've read you advocate doing half of your max reps for 10 sets (a high number). Also, I just want to say that is training separate muscle groups on different days a good idea? I usually find that I tire quickly after 2 sets, max 3, of a muscle group but can continue to work on other groups.

[Coach Sommer]

- For beginners no, I do not recommend training to failure. For intermediate and above, it can be a valuable training tool. But the body must first be adequately prepared to handle the rigors of this training methodology or injury is not only a possibility; but likely.

- I only recommend 10x3 in certain situations for certain athletes and not as a daily training protocol.

- I do not train muscle groups, but rather families of movement.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Joshua Naterman]

The bottom line is the same, though: The nutrition is 100% in control of how your body responds to the exercise you do.

Good discussion, however once again I feel that this is far too strongly stated as I have seen far too many real world results to the contrary. And this is from someone who is absolutely in favor of heathier eating.

The fact remains that many gymnasts have both great physiques as well as abysmal eating habits. If nutrition was 100% in control of how their body responded to exercise than their results should not have been possible. But the results did occur and so the basic premise that "nutrition is 100% in control of how the body responds to exercise" is false.

The body adapts to the environmental demands placed upon it. Gymnasts look the way they do not in an attempt to procure a certain aesthetic, but because the body was forced to develop this way to survive and then thrive under the demands of GST.

If perfect nutrition was the primary key to success and not exercise, then those people in the world following such a nutritional protocol would possess gymnast-like physiques without the necessity of GST . . . but this is clearly not the case.

Now do I agree that better nutrition could have resulted in even more impressive results? Absolutely. Or that a more balanced nutritional approach would allow fitness enthusiasts to progress with less effort? Yes, again. But let's be quite clear that exercise is the primary stressor to which the body is responding with physical adaptations. Perfect nutrition in and of itself may magnify the results of that adaptation, but is in no way a substitute for that primary stressor.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Sure, but I'm not saying that perfect nutrition is required to get results. Just that it gets maximal results. The results you see from people with moderately decent nutrition are largely a function of them A) getting enough energy and B) being so small that they only need 60-70g of protein per day to function optimally and improve as an athlete, and that's as a fully grown adult. A gymnast's protein requirements are lower than a bodybuilder's, and even advanced natural bodybuilders who are pushing their bodies to the limit in terms of actively promoting muscle synthesis achieve nitrogen balance at 1.2g/kg. In other words, as much room as many of these athletes have for improvement, what they are already doing is "good enough" to support their basic needs. They could certainly be doing better, and would be better athletes as a result, but many will say "why bother? I'm already kicking butt." It's hard to get them out of that mindset.

If their nutrition was truly crap (ie not getting enough protein, calories, or long term micronutrient deficiencies) you would see an unexplained abnormally slow progression and possible stagnation, along with injuries in the case of certain micronutrient issues. If they are continuing to succeed, they are doing enough things right to meet their very basic needs.

It's also true that when we are young we can eat almost whatever we want and still look pretty good as long as large quantities of physical activity are present in our lives. As we get older and our hormonal profiles change this becomes a different story, which is also something that a lot of athletes have noticed in their lives, although staying lean throughout adolescence provides a number of advantages compared to someone who is starting their athletic career as a somewhat over-fat post-adolescent.

I think that the protective nature of childhood's immense growth, along with the naturally high level of activity associated with gymnastics, creates a childhood environment that appears to essentially turn clinical nutrition onto it's left ear! Children are just so resilient that you really have to go out of your way to break several major rules to significantly impair development.

Adults aren't so lucky, so I'm not sure that much good can come from trying to compare such different stages of life in terms of nutrition.

I think we are saying much the same thing in very different ways, but I am unsuccessful in bringing that across in written words

[Julekman]

And what about use of anabolic steroids? Back when communists ruled things around here in Czech republic, almost every professional athlete, man or woman, was "juiced". This was just how things went around here, we just had to represent our country in the best way possible, failure was not accepted.

This might be a good time to point out that there has not been a world class Czech gymnast since Miroslav Cerar in the 1960s.

Seriously though, there is no anabolic in the world which can increase coordination and agility.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Miroslav Cerar was a Slovenian and Yugoslavian gymnast, not Czech. He was a Yugoslavian sportsman of the year in 1961,63 and 64. As a member of Yugoslavian gymnastic team he won a many medals on the Olympic games, World and Europian championships from 1958 to 1971

[Joshua Naterman]

Hi everybody,

this is my first post to this awesome forum. I'm frequently reading here for over a year now and learned a lot of you guys.

Currently my training regime follows more or less the killroy70 style. So each FBE plane only once a week.

I go for max strength in one week and hypertrophy the next week and so on.

I try to follow the plan of Joshua in this thread: Martin Berkhan: Bodyweight training is worse for hypertrophy

I currently do 10 sets of 3 reps of my 6rep max like: 10*(3push, 3pull, 30sec rest)

I will try to add one extra set every time.

I gave my opinion in the other thread Rag, but to put it succinctly, you would simply have one workout where you focused on basic strength movements and used more TUT per set with 3-5 sets per exercise. We're looking at 30-45s of TUT for your hypertrophy specific goals. That could be ten reps at 202 tempo (up/pause/down in seconds) or five 404 reps. Typically muscles produce more overall force when moving slowly because there is no momentum to detract from the total force needed at any given moment in the ROM, and this leads to greater motor unit recruitment for greater periods of time, which leads to more growth.

What would you recommend for TUT/tempo for the above plan (10 or more sets * 3reps)?

I also somewhere read that it would be good to add some high rep training. But I don't know where to put in in.

Perhaps Week 1 Strength, Week 2 Hypertrophy, Week 3 Low intensity high rep?

Thank you!

First, a disclaimer: This method works well with one or two exercises per workout. It is not a good idea to try and perform for many different exercises at once since the energy output is high and CNS demands are high. This will lead to poor results.

This is also a good pre-peaking strategy, as you build up the volume capacity of the high threshold motor units and prepare then for a peaking phase which will be where you reduce the volume as you focus on best efforts. Again, this works much better on specific exercises than it does for entire routines. This would be where someone who can already safely perform planches or malteses could dramatically increase their strength in the movement to the point where they could perform higher-rated strength moves without decreasing their ability to perform the rest of the routine.

I don't recommend the 10+ sets of 3 reps for any straight arm work at all. There are specialized cases where an advanced rings athlete would probably benefit from doing this once per week but the physical preparation for something like this is such a big deal that virtually no one here will really benefit from such training. In the future I might entertain talking to Demus (Nic Shillings?) or John Sapinoso about something like this because they are probably ready, but I won't talk about this on the forums.

For the vast, vast majority of us... and honestly probably for the strong guys mentioned above (and others who I didn't mention like Alex87 and the Super Saiyan) the best results will come from bent arm work. And, to be quite honest, probably from weight lifting as a training aid for the strength moves. Body weight is just a very hard thing to control this precisely.

The goods:

With this kind of work you are really focusing on your absolute largest motor groups, which fatigue easily. They aren't good for more than 15-20s of work so I would never do a set longer than 10s for those sets. That could be one rep of 5s down, 5s up or two reps of 2.5s down, 2.5 up, or 3 reps of about 1.5 down and 1.5 up. OR, 1s down and 4s up for 2 reps. TUT doesn't have to be even on the eccentric and concentric sides.

You basically want to look at the 6 RM weight and how long that set takes. Then you would want to take 50% of that time and design your TUT to reflect that time period. It doesn't HAVE to be 3 reps, but the set does have to be done in that period of time. It pays to A) have a metronome app or a real metronome, so that you can hear the seconds ticking, and B) to design the TUT so that you can get the reps you want to get with good form. There's no sense in trying to force a 1.5s squat eccentric if you can't move that quickly with good form. Please use common sense!

[Boris Wetzel]

First, a disclaimer: This method works well with one or two exercises per workout. It is not a good idea to try and perform for many different exercises at once since the energy output is high and CNS demands are high. This will lead to poor results.

This is also a good pre-peaking strategy, as you build up the volume capacity of the high threshold motor units and prepare then for a peaking phase which will be where you reduce the volume as you focus on best efforts. Again, this works much better on specific exercises than it does for entire routines. This would be where someone who can already safely perform planches or malteses could dramatically increase their strength in the movement to the point where they could perform higher-rated strength moves without decreasing their ability to perform the rest of the routine.

I don't recommend the 10+ sets of 3 reps for any straight arm work at all. There are specialized cases where an advanced rings athlete would probably benefit from doing this once per week but the physical preparation for something like this is such a big deal that virtually no one here will really benefit from such training. In the future I might entertain talking to Demus (Nic Shillings?) or John Sapinoso about something like this because they are probably ready, but I won't talk about this on the forums.

For the vast, vast majority of us... and honestly probably for the strong guys mentioned above (and others who I didn't mention like Alex87 and the Super Saiyan) the best results will come from bent arm work. And, to be quite honest, probably from weight lifting as a training aid for the strength moves. Body weight is just a very hard thing to control this precisely.

The goods:

With this kind of work you are really focusing on your absolute largest motor groups, which fatigue easily. They aren't good for more than 15-20s of work so I would never do a set longer than 10s for those sets. That could be one rep of 5s down, 5s up or two reps of 2.5s down, 2.5 up, or 3 reps of about 1.5 down and 1.5 up. OR, 1s down and 4s up for 2 reps. TUT doesn't have to be even on the eccentric and concentric sides.

You basically want to look at the 6 RM weight and how long that set takes. Then you would want to take 50% of that time and design your TUT to reflect that time period. It doesn't HAVE to be 3 reps, but the set does have to be done in that period of time. It pays to A) have a metronome app or a real metronome, so that you can hear the seconds ticking, and B) to design the TUT so that you can get the reps you want to get with good form. There's no sense in trying to force a 1.5s squat eccentric if you can't move that quickly with good form. Please use common sense!

Thank you Joshua for taking the time.

I do the 10x3 only for the push/pull fbe of the day. My FSP, legs and core stay the same. I did my reps pretty slow with a short static hold - my TUT was about 30sec and it was getting really hard in the later sets. I think I try to do 2reps@2/1/2 or 3reps@1.5/1.5 and add more sets over the time.

[sam.hall]

And what about use of anabolic steroids? Back when communists ruled things around here in Czech republic, almost every professional athlete, man or woman, was "juiced". This was just how things went around here, we just had to represent our country in the best way possible, failure was not accepted.

This might be a good time to point out that there has not been a world class Czech gymnast since Miroslav Cerar in the 1960s.

Seriously though, there is no anabolic in the world which can increase coordination and agility.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Last Czech world class gymnast was Alois Hudec back in 1936, I think . Nevertheless we have here, in Czech republic, some world class rope climbers .

[Andrew Komarnyckyj]

But I don't know what you mean by saying that gymnasts from your gym outshine bodybuilders in terms of physique? Bodybuilders have the best combination of the most muscle, symmetry and the lowest fat% of all the athletes. If it's your personal opinion that a gymnasts physique is better looking than a bodybuilders it's like a long distance runner to say that he thinks long distance runners outshine gymnasta in terms of physique. It's just an opinion.

"The mass monsters who had grown up during the Era of the Freak were finding that 300 lb physiques come at a price. One of them was that when you took growth-promoting hormones, it was impossible to dictate exactly exactly what grew. It wasn't just muscle....also increased the size of the stomach. As a result, the great new plague of modern bodybuillding was the 'gut', a gross distension of the belly that was very visible when the athletes were in contest shape....it was to do with what was deeper inside, a growth of the stomach and intestines...poor old Ronnie Coleman often looked like he'd swallowed an armadillo."- Quote from the book 'Muscle' by Jon Hotten.

"...Dorian had told me that it was permanently uncomfortable hauling all of that bulk about. The heart was working hard. So was the metabolism and the digestive system. It was all high maintenance in there. Dorian had taken Ronnie to a restaurant near the Luxer. He said that Ronnie had struggled with the walk there." - Another quote from the book 'Muscle' by Jon Hotten. (Dorian = Dorian Yates; Ronnie = Ronnie Coleman; The Luxer was the hotel where Ronnie had a room).

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