NaterMania

To train them to be STRONG and FAST, you must do true isometrics, dynamic work, and plyometrics. Hmm, that sounds a lot like... the WODs!

That is exactly what I thought after reading like 50 pages of the wanna get fast post (where they talk about the training once you are done with the initial phase), but only they use weights and bars not rings or gymnastic movements.

Oh yea, absolutely! And what they do works! They do miss out on small things like bicep tendon conditioning, but all in all the programs are very intelligent.

I DO think that something more akin to the WODs, with weight training built in, would be excellent and perhaps more effective, but who knows? I think the superior joint integrity developed through proper GB training would make for more resilient athletes.

The important thing is that this foundational work can be used to make OUR training HERE more effective in the long run as well!

Gymnastics already has a fair amount of this built in, but by understanding the actual training effects we can apply the concept to a wider range of muscle groups and prepare the body to excel at pretty much anything.

The one thing we could add here, for higher level athletes, are some specific maximum contraction speed work. That is the one facet of athletic performance that, while not absent, is not developed to the same degree here, probably because that is less important in gymnastics for most muscle groups and movements. That's more of a polishing than anything else. It is truly amazing how sophisticated and complete the training Coach has designed is. The more I learn the more there is to appreciate about the GB program!

slizzardman said:

Somehow my reply to Brandon did not post.

I read the forum you mentioned, and the system mentioned is not what I am suggestiong. Parts of it is, but there is no fascial stretching or loaded stretches mentioned. There is also no mention of nervous system re-education. That means there is not complete anatomical adaptation, in the sense that there could be more done to prepare the body for greater strength and therefore untapped potential by not doing this. Obviously, this is speculative.

Your spring analogies are, for the most part, not relevant. Muscles are more like a cross between stranded ropes and pressurized hose.

The only time stretches are mentioned is when Sergey says he has his guys pause at the bottom of the ROM for 1-3 SECONDS, and that's just to make sure they're starting with dead weight and no elastic energy.

There is no mentioned use of isometrics whatsoever. I have emailed Sergey about his results, and if I get a reply I will ask further questions to make sure I am clear on what he is doing.

*************** The spring analogies come from Alex Vasquez of Evolutionaryathletics.com. He is on the WGF threads frequently.

Check out his site. There is an article there about tendons being likened to springs(stiffness and elasticity)

I will check it out, but considering that tendons are not designed to stretch at all, I just don't see it being a good analogy. Plus, we were talking about muscles, at least I thought we were lol!

slizzardman said:

I will check it out, but considering that tendons are not designed to stretch at all, I just don't see it being a good analogy. Plus, we were talking about muscles, at least I thought we were lol!

******** The Soviets years ago realized the force absorbing and producing potential of tendons. It's not all about muscles!

Verkhoshansky realized this in the 50s. The elasticity part at least.

Brandon Green

Oh yea, absolutely! However, that potential lies in their stiffness. A stretch of 7% will tear them.

I've just gone to the site and HOLY Crap Brandon! That's a very long blog to read.

I haven't posted an update in a while. I am starting to do isometrics for my scapular retraction and depression, and will be putting in proraction and elevation soon. I won't be putting any kinetic exercises into my routine until I feel that my shoulder movement and neural learning is up to par. I have started back with frogstand training. I am doing 2-3 sets of 60s, though it is far from perfect. My feet touch several times from losing balance, but I lmmediately get back into position. Each time I do better. This is somewhat different from the aggregate method, but the principle is the same. When I have 3x60s for at leas 3 weeks AND no longer feel it near my ribs at the end, I'll start with some tuck planche work. Howeve, I won't be starting any tuck planche until I feel like my shoulders are 100%.

I WILL be starting to do some heavy isometric holds on the basic exercises as my shoulder feels better. Wall handstands, shoulderstand, dips, pull ups, chin ups, the very bottom of tricep push ups, bottom of squat, squat at parallel, body row, body levers, reverse hypers, HLL, etc. These will be once to twice a week, much as the muscle groups would get worked in the WOD schedule. This will allow me to build good motor patterns AND re-build my basic strength.

Shoulder-girdle isometrics continue to be every day, with hard holds one day and easy holds the next. Progress is steady. I can now voluntarily contract my mid and lower traps on the right side, which is a massive improvement, and I am starting to feel the right lat working as well.

I have been negligent in my weighted stretches, I've only done them 3-4 times per week. Still, progress has been good! I am at 2 minutes on the chin up, 3-4 minutes depending on focus on the push up, and 3 minutes on the lunge. It's frikin' hard but it feels great!

I will start doing isometric contractions clse to those same positions as time goes on.

I am going to try these extreme isometrics for a while. The concept seems very interesting and I have a few thoughts on it. The 5min seems to be the goal so I am wondering if exercises should be altered to allow a 5min iso, i.e. treat it like a 5rep routine, you simply adjust the weight to get 5 reps, and in this case adjust the exercise to get to 5mins. So instead of a pullup you would progress doing bodyrows on rings where you can adjust the height. You can do pushups against a wall, for squats you could have bands on a chinup bar assisting you or a pulley system with counterweights.

If you do this stopping & starting to get to 5mins I am wondering if it is as beneficial, e.g. if I did chinups for 5mins with several breaks, then after 1 month of this would I be stronger than if I had progressed always doing a 5min hold with rings.

On the long WGF thread (don't think it was linked yet this is it http://wgfforum.llsint.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=62 )

they mention Kaatsu training which I found fascinating. What was also interesting was it said Kaatsu traing can be done using 20% of your 1RM. So I am left wondering if these extreme ISOs really have to be so tough, i.e. if you held an easy weight for 5mins would it still be quite beneficial? I would have no doubt higher loads would be better but say I was to hold 20kg on a dumbbell for a curl, if my strength increased 20% after a month Vs 18% after a month using a 10kg dumbbell I personally would go for the lighter one and sacrifice the small additional gains for the ease of training. So really do you really need all the pain of difficult long holds? I am a fan of negative only training since I find it very easy to do. I also wonder if doing proper 5mins holds will get your body used to it much faster, like the first day I got rings I was a shaking mess trying to do dips and got better very quickly, now if I did a low resistant 5min hold I might get used to it very quickly too.

People were saying the long ISOs might trap blood similar to Kaatsu, so if you are taking breaks instead of the full 5mins it might be missing out on the full effect -and so again I wonder if adjusting resistance to get to 5mins is a better idea.

I have to read up more on Kaatsu and finish reading the other long WGF thread as these might be answered already. I am also trying to lose fat so it will be interesting to see if it can produce the changes it claims.

these are 2 youtube channels which may be of interest

http://www.youtube.com/user/EvoSportBlog#g/a

http://www.youtube.com/user/evoathletics#g/a

I was planning on doing a overhead dumbbell press and was wondering should I hold the weight at shoulder level or up at the highest point.

a couple questions...

how is an isometric exercise going to reprogram a dymanic movement?

understanding energy substrate utalization, how can you expect type II fibers to be exhausted from long duration (+5 minute) holds?

if it works for you, great... but i don't understand the physiology behind the concepts. the science sounds a little thin.

Hope you don't mind be posting in the log again, I did more searching on Kaatsu and found it called occlusion training, and there is plenty about it in many forums.

http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/ABCocclusionpaper.pdf

The EMG data also revealed no difference between low intensity occlusion training and high intensity exercise (Moritani, Michael-Sherman, Shibata, Matsumoto, & Shinohara, 1992; Takarada, Tsuruta, & Ishii , 2004). This means that despite the light weight, the firing rate mimics that of heavy resistance training.

Occlusion training with low intensities has shown increases in lactate and growth hormone (GH). The increase in GH has actually been shown to be even higher than that seen with heavy resistance training. One study in athletes showed a 290x increase in GH over baseline

As far as occlusion for the upper body, an interesting paper from Madarame et al. (2008) has shown that one can receive benefits of occlusion for the upper body by occluding the lower body. This cross-over effect is likely attributed to the large increase in hormones due to the larger muscles of the leg musculature. The larger quadriceps will increase hormones more so than the smaller biceps. Madarame showed that when occlusion of the legs followed a light upperbody exercise, it resulted in significant hypertrophy.

The mTOR pathway has also been shown to be activated with low intensity occlusion training (Fujita, et al., 2007). This pathway is responsible for protein synthesis. Phosphorylation of S6k1 was increased by three-fold following occlusion training and remained elevated at 3 hours post exercise. This increase in protein synthesis means the body is primed for muscle growth.

Seems holding it for long times is important, so it might be advisable to change to lower resistance to get the full 5mins.

Having blood flow restricted is very uncomfortable, so our lab has directed efforts to find ways to increase the comfort to pain ratio. We investigated the lactate response to low-intensity exercise with blood flow being restored after each set. Our preliminary data has shown that when flow is restored to normal it does not induce a significant rise in lactate over control. This tells me that when blood flow is restored after each set, it doesn’t allow for the intensity of the exercise to change enough to see a rapid recruitment of additional fibers. So when prescribing occlusion training, it seems essential to keep the occlusion on throughout the exercise, to allow for the necessary intramuscular environmental changes to occur leading to muscular growth.

I am unsure how tight the bands should be. I had some bicycle inner tubes which I cut and wrapped around my thighs at the top, the tubes overlapped and the rubber on rubber friction kept them tight, I also tucked the end in under the tube which had gone around my leg twice -one tube was enough for both legs. I started with 15 BW squats, which were fine, then some lunges, then about 15 goblet squats with a 27.5kg dumbbell, these were tough enough but then I went for a lunge again and felt a pain in my left leg. I tried some partial BW squats and it was getting worse so I took them off.

I cycle to work everyday so might try them on my legs, I have read more about them working well just doing slow walking. It was also warned to stick to 20-50% RM, so this rules out chins and dips for me.

Also my theory on low intensity/resistance possibly being of good benefit.

http://www.musculardevelopment.com/arti ... world.html

Vascular Occlusion at low intensity has been shown to produce increases in muscle hypertrophy but what about high intensity exercise. At high forces, muscle contraction per se may restrict blood flow to a similar extent as external vascular occlusion, thus negating any additional effects of cuff occlusion to high strength training loads. Researchers assigned subjects to 4 groups: A. high intensity-no occlusion, B) High Intensity with occlusion, C.) Moderate Intensity- no occlusion, D.) Moderate Intensity-Occlusion. Both the HI and the MI groups performed unilateral knee extension exercise training. The HI group trained with a load of 6 RM and the MI group with a load of 12 RM, corresponding to ~ 80%

and 60% 1RM, respectively. At the end of the study, In the present study, they not find an additive training effect on muscle hypertrophy and strength gains when vascular occlusion was combined with training intensities that mimic a real

world setting. Strength gains and quadriceps hypertrophy increased without

any correlation to vascular occlusion. Therefore, they concluded that vascular occlusion in combination with high-intensity strength training does not augment muscle strength or hypertrophy when compared to high-intensity strength training

alone.

griffdrc said:

a couple questions...

how is an isometric exercise going to reprogram a dymanic movement?

understanding energy substrate utalization, how can you expect type II fibers to be exhausted from long duration (+5 minute) holds?

if it works for you, great... but i don't understand the physiology behind the concepts. the science sounds a little thin.

Great questions. There appears to be good science behind this. When the low-threshold, oxidative fibers can't get enough oxygen to function properly, the body is forced to rely on the anaerobic fibers. Work of this nature has been shown to increase the size of an-1 and an-2 fibers 20% in two weeks, and that's in college athletes, not untrained persons.

As for the reprogramming, I'm tackling specific positions. Bottom of the pull up/chin up with arms slightly bent and scapulae retracted and starting to depress. Top of the pull up/chin up with scapulae fully retracted and depressed. I will also start doing the same for the MU transition point in a little while. I do the top of the push up, shrugged forward to activate serratus a. I'm starting to do the bottom of the squat, just to develop a better bottom position and try to regain some of that childhood flexibility. I will be throwing in middle of the pull up soon. Just one or two 15-30s holds 3-4 times a week is working well so far. I can actually intentionally contract the mid and lower traps on my right side, and I can start to feel my lat work more.

The dynamic movement won't be reprogrammed completely, but the muscle activation patterns at the important points will be. If I try and just do dynamic movement, the engrained patterns will take over. It's much easier, and more effective, to start with isometrics at critical positions and let that get engrained first. As another plus, I'll be able to start directly targeting my middle-upper back muscles that are so critical for nearly all the gymnastic movements! I will be using these holds to maintain muscle balance, since even front lever becomes something of an internal rotation and anterior chain exercise. This, plus diligent manna work, will really help me out.

As for the energy substrates, consider this: The load the muscles are under is very, very light compared to maximal load. Much lower than most of the anaerobic fibers would usually be called into action to handle. What happens is that as the few motor units that ARE called into action fatigue, OTHER anaerobic motor units are activated, from the low end steadily up to the high end. That's why at the end you start shaking uncontrollable as the motor units switch rapidly to try and allow some to replenish. At some point you just collapse when not enough motor units can process pyruvate or replenish the creatine phosphate fast enough to keep up with the demand. It's quite strange, and hard to push through to.

slizzardman said:

When the low-threshold, oxidative fibers can't get enough oxygen to function properly, the body is forced to rely on the anaerobic fibers. Work of this nature has been shown to increase the size of an-1 and an-2 fibers 20% in two weeks, and that's in college athletes, not untrained persons.

can you post a link to the study?

rubadub said:

I am going to try these extreme isometrics for a while. The concept seems very interesting and I have a few thoughts on it. The 5min seems to be the goal so I am wondering if exercises should be altered to allow a 5min iso, i.e. treat it like a 5rep routine, you simply adjust the weight to get 5 reps, and in this case adjust the exercise to get to 5mins. So instead of a pullup you would progress doing bodyrows on rings where you can adjust the height. You can do pushups against a wall, for squats you could have bands on a chinup bar assisting you or a pulley system with counterweights.

Keep in mind that calling "extreme isometrics" isometrics is actually a misnomer. They are essentially weighted stretches. Isometrics hold a position, which requires active resistance against gravity. These extreme isos are NOT supposed to have any resistance. You should actually be trying to pull yourself DOWN. This will be hard to do with dumbbells. These will also, for many people, not produce absolutely stunning strength gains. I've felt the difference, but it's not life changing. What IS life changing are the long-term results when you do these right. You will have much longer muscles and most likely quite a lot more muscle FIBERS, which means you can BECOME stronger with training.

These are loaded stretches, and like anything else the body becomes used to them. You have to keep upping the load to keep getting more and more benefits.

The loaded stretches should be considered a base because you build flexibility, strength in the most stretched position possible for the given athlete,

Now, TRUE isometrics can ALSO be done for longer holds like 4-5 minutes to get strength benefits.

The isometrics should be considered a base, since you can learn good neural patterns, artificially change the ratio of high threshold to low threshold fiber area in targeted muscle groups, become more neurally efficient and powerful, and help build up the connective tissue.

All of these adaptations are GREAT for building a base from which to become enormously powerful in dynamic movements, and in my opinion should be considered essential. Properly done, these guarantee that any given athlete will reach their maximum potential, and may even be able to positively alter what that upper potential actually is.

Once this process builds a sufficient base you can start working on reactive elements, like drops and plyometrics. They will complement the isometrics, both by providing new stimuli for the body to adapt to by becoming even MORE powerful, but also by helping to fine tune the nervous system to USE the strength the body has developed!

Finally, there's dynamic work. Maximal efforts are positively affected by both isometrics AND reactive training. In turn, the maximal strength work allows for higher performance in the isometrics and the reactive elements.

By using these things first as bases for each other and later as a cyclical system that just keeps producing higher and higher pinnacles of physical achievement, you can create what is literally the ultimate training philosophy, at least in terms of creating a physical being with the ultimate abilities. To craft an athlete in a sport requires skills to be acquired, but by separating the physical performance development process from the skill performance development process you can create a far more capable athlete than by using "sport specific" strength training.

Think about it: nearly all popular sports require sprints, lateral movement, changes in direction, fast upper body movements, and the ability to absorb force with the upper body, either through the arms or directly through the torso, without getting injured. Sometimes that's just the athlete catching themselves after a bicycle kick. Other times it's a second baseman diving for a line drive. Sometimes it's a lineman slamming palm-first into the defensive tackle's chest! These movements exist in nearly all sports, from individual sports to team events. They are in soccer, gymnastics, football, baseball, boxing, Judo, track and field events, swimming (though to a lesser extent with some of these, like upper body impact), wrestling, lacrosse, water polo, I mean the list really goes on and on. HOW you use these abilities, and to what extent, certainly varies dramatically from one of these sports to the next, but the basics are all there. This basic human ability, whether obtained by hard work, drugs, genetics, or some combination of these factors is what allows an athlete to perform at the top of nearly any sport. Why? Simple: the skills sought after in most sports depend HEAVILY on these basic abilities. Without these abilities it is not possible to develop your skills to the highest degree.

If you do this stopping & starting to get to 5mins I am wondering if it is as beneficial, e.g. if I did chinups for 5mins with several breaks, then after 1 month of this would I be stronger than if I had progressed always doing a 5min hold with rings.

I honestly have no idea what you are asking here lol! I WILL say that the ability to stay in position for at least 3 minutes straight is important. With low intensity Isometrics, holding position for 3 minutes is important. It is also very important to keep in mind that adaptation happens slowly and only with consistency. There aren't that many true loaded stretches that can be done, so the daily time commitment isn't very high compared to the return on investment over time. For those who also only care about a few muscle groups, like sprinters, it's worth spending a year doing 20 minutes a day. It's honestly even more worth it to keep the loaded stretching up long-term, but even one year will bring about significant fundamental changes in fiber number and fascial stiffness as well as flexibility and starting speed, along with proper training. For male gymnasts it's even easier, since the shoulder girdle is what matters. Loaded body row stretch, push up stretch, shoulder stand (eventually) stretch, and chin up stretch would be all that is needed since lower body hypertrophy is not desired for most events.

On the long WGF thread (don't think it was linked yet this is it http://wgfforum.llsint.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=62 )

they mention Kaatsu training which I found fascinating. What was also interesting was it said Kaatsu traing can be done using 20% of your 1RM. So I am left wondering if these extreme ISOs really have to be so tough, i.e. if you held an easy weight for 5mins would it still be quite beneficial? I would have no doubt higher loads would be better but say I was to hold 20kg on a dumbbell for a curl, if my strength increased 20% after a month Vs 18% after a month using a 10kg dumbbell I personally would go for the lighter one and sacrifice the small additional gains for the ease of training. So really do you really need all the pain of difficult long holds? I am a fan of negative only training since I find it very easy to do. I also wonder if doing proper 5mins holds will get your body used to it much faster, like the first day I got rings I was a shaking mess trying to do dips and got better very quickly, now if I did a low resistant 5min hold I might get used to it very quickly too.

This shows the confusion between loaded stretches and true isometrics. The extreme isos are not really isometrics, because you are expected to move deeper into the stretch as time passes during the 5 minute block. An isometric holds the EXACT SAME POSITION, there is no movement whatsoever. So, in terms of isometrics, at first you'd want to master just bodyweight, and then you would want to slowly add resistance to whatever degree you can manage for 5 minutes. An extra 30% BW isn't jack shit. Even for me, that's 70 lbs. Baby weight in the grand scheme of things. That is just to get basic physical adaptation in terms of fiber area ratios. This will not, by itself, provide the best increases in strength. For that, you're going to need heavier isometrics with shorter holds. 10-15s for AN-1 and up to 40-60s for AN-2. Those target specific groups of muscle fibers, and help directly develop the targeted energy system as well as hypertrophy those fibers dependent on the targeted energy system!

The stretches will be uncomfortable no matter what, quite honestly. Despite my times going up they haven't felt much better. I don't expect that to change, and I don't care if it does one way or the other! WIth loaded stretches, your body eventually adapts enough to maintain stasis with the added weight. That's why the proper term for this is Progressive Loaded Stretching. You must regularly increase the added weight to keep getting adaptation in terms of muscle fibers and fascial thickness. I do not know if there is a ceiling here.

People were saying the long ISOs might trap blood similar to Kaatsu, so if you are taking breaks instead of the full 5mins it might be missing out on the full effect -and so again I wonder if adjusting resistance to get to 5mins is a better idea.

I have to read up more on Kaatsu and finish reading the other long WGF thread as these might be answered already. I am also trying to lose fat so it will be interesting to see if it can produce the changes it claims.

5 minute true isometrics will absolutely have a similar effect in the targeted muscle groups. Keep in mind that Kaatsu training caused a size increase but not a corresponding strength increase, at least according to the study referenced in the WGF thread. The Kaatsu protocol specifically targeted anaerobic glycolytic fibers, which rely on sugar. Therefore it is not surprising that the size increase was primarily due to the need for more sugar capacity in muscle tissue, or that there was not a significant strength increase. Kaatsu training is primarily an anaerobic endurance booster, not an anaerobic power booster, according to these results. Some people may NEED that endurance boost, so it's not a bad thing if used properly.

I was planning on doing a overhead dumbbell press and was wondering should I hold the weight at shoulder level or up at the highest point.

Depends on your goal! The bottom and top isometric will absolutely help improve your strength and handstand ability, though for handstands direct HS isometrics will work better. For a stretch, you'll need to have your elbows braced against the side of your ribcage, curl the weight up with your biceps to keep it near the shoulders, and shrug DOWN towards the ground with all of your might!

griffdrc said:

slizzardman said:

When the low-threshold, oxidative fibers can't get enough oxygen to function properly, the body is forced to rely on the anaerobic fibers. Work of this nature has been shown to increase the size of an-1 and an-2 fibers 20% in two weeks, and that's in college athletes, not untrained persons.

can you post a link to the study?

Ugh... yea man. Let me go find it. It could be a few days!

I remember a study on birds increasing the number of muscle fibres with a similar approach, but as far as I'm concerned, this has never been proven to happen on humans.

RandomHavoc said:

I remember a study on birds increasing the number of muscle fibres with a similar approach, but as far as I'm concerned, this has never been proven to happen on humans.

Do you know why it "can't" be proven in humans?

..........

Don't worry, I didn't realize this until I started reading the methods of some hyperplasia studies on PubMed. Apparently there are only two ways to ACCURATELY test muscle fiber count, and both involve killing the subject, though I suppose that you *could* "just" sever or remove the muscles in question.

Method 1: This is the preferred method, as it is 100% accurate. You cut out the muscles in question and put them in a nitric acid bath so that the connective tissue is destroyed, and all you have left is a bowl of loose muscle fibers. Now you count! This clearly would not be ethical even with volunteers, not that you would ever have any. Therefore it will never happen with humans. You'd have to cut out the muscles on the trained side and untrained side, which means(and is why you MUST have) a unilateral hyperplasia training program for the subject, and the muscles would HAVE to be from the same subject because each person has a different fiber count.

Method 2: Take a histological cross section. This means that you have to take a slice of the muscle through the widest part and then count the muscle fibers in that. It's like cutting a slice of sausage off of a link. This is also completely unethical, and you'd never have volunteers for this either.

This is why hyperplasia can not be proven in humans. It's not that we have some sort of problem processing the information or figuring out how to make it happen. The problem is that our only current methods of getting accurate counts of muscle fiber hyperplasia involve the subject being permanently disabled. That's just not going to work these days! However, there are less accurate methods that have provided strong suggestions that skeletal muscle hyperplasia does happen in humans.

The closest study I am aware of in humans used biopsies to compare the individual muscle fiber size of bodybuilders with active people who were not bodybuilders. Despite a massive difference in muscle size, the individual fibers of the bodybuilders were not much bigger. This suggests, but does not prove conclusively, that the bodybuilders' hypertrophy was induced by skeletal muscle hyperplasia.

There IS another study that compared the number of muscle fibers in the biceps of a number of recreational fitness enthusiasts over time, and some had no hyperplasia while a few had significant hyperplasia. The inaccuracies inherent to the measurement methods used in humans could be partially to blame for the seemingly odd results, though the level of resistance employed may also be a factor. Hyperplasia seems to be induced by higher intensity, lower rep work to a much greater degree than lower intensity, more endurance oriented work.

Here is a quote from a very interesting study. This is from the abstract of http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/81/4/1584:

Increases in fiber number partitioned according to species were greatest among those groups that used an avian vs. mammalian model (avian = 20.95%, mammalian = 7.97%; P = 0.07). Stretch overload yielded larger increases in muscle fiber number than did exercise and compensatory hypertrophy (stretch = 20.95%, exercise = 11.59%, compensatory hypertrophy = 5.44%; P = 0.06). No significant differences between changes in fiber number were found when data were partitioned according to type of control (intra-animal = 15.20%, between animal = 13.90%; P = 0.82) or fiber arrangement of muscle (parallel = 15.80%, pennate = 11.60%; P = 0.61). The results of this study suggest that in several animal species certain forms of mechanical overload increase muscle fiber number.

This, combined with the inconclusive yet compelling research done with humans ABSOLUTELY suggests that hyperplasia happens in humans under the right conditions.

Because progressive overload stretching is the most powerful stimulus for hyperplasia, it would be foolish for the aspiring athlete to not perform overload stretching 2-3 times per week OR to focus on high intensity work at least once every 10 days for the muscle groups that are the most crucial to his/her sport.

This is why I have begun performing the overloaded stretches. I am still deciding what my best schedule for this is, but I'm leaning towards doing it 7 days a week and just switching between set 1 and set 2 of stretches, with an extra 1-4 lbs added maybe once every 2-3 weeks for exercises I am already at bodyweight on. For German hang I will just decrease the assist every so often.

I plan to do a 5 minute block of each stretch.

My current prototype plan is:

Group 1:

push up

chin up

Standing pike

Rear leg supported quadriceps stretch (basically a split squat with the rear foot up on a bench. All weight is on rear leg. This is two hells of a stretch!)

lunge

Group 2:

German hang

Dip

Shoulder stand

straddle pike

I figure 20-35 minutes of stretching a day isn't a big deal. We'll see. Most muscle groups are getting stretched every day, but at different angles and different intensities due to the mechanical differences in the stretches used. We will see.

I am also currently planning to use isometrics, more or less in line with how muscles get used in the WODs, and slowly transition WOD work in. Eventually I will be doing heavy isometrics once every 7-10 days, the WODs, and some very limited heavy lifting once every 7-10 days.

As soon as I feel like I can hold my shoulders in a proper position I will be doing my statics every WOD day for warm up. I believe that this will lead to massively superior development due to the activation and elicitation of all possible bodily processes and adaptations related to athletic success. I may reduce my heavy upper body lifting to twice a month. We'll see once I get there.

always something new and exciting going on in this log

Lol, nothing new here hahaha! Just trying to be the best.

Perhaps there is something novel in my approach to utilizing all known aspects of exercise-induced performance enhancement. Coach's WODs are practically perfect. The only thing that isn't there to the fullest extent is basic heavy isometric work for the major muscle groups, though it could be argued that advanced ring strength routines have that in them by their very nature to a reasonable extent, and progressive loaded stretching as a means for physical development of fundamental skeletal muscle attributes such as tendon and fascial strength/thickness and muscle fiber count.

In gymnastics you have to wait a long time to start working maximal isometrics, primarily because of the low-leverage nature of our isometric training. You are limited by bicep tendon integrity and the supporting muscle strength necessary to maintain a position, both of which severely limit the load that can be placed isometrically on the muscle tissue itself. So, from a pure performance perspective that is not influenced by the performance limitations of high-scoring gymnastic elements, more can be done isometrically by including a few basic holds. Top and bottom of pull up, bench press/weighted push up(though you'll soon have trouble loading the push up sufficiently), chin up, inverted sit up,full squat, bicep curl (though this can be done with bodyweight for a long time), GHR/ NLC( can be done with natural GHR quite well) , and deadlift or back extention.

At 10-20s per hold this can be done fairly easily in 30-40 minutes, and doing this three times a month will be quite enough to see massive gains from session to session for a looooooooong time. This is primarily to maximize neural efficiency and number of action potentials. There is very little protein damage from this. I do not know how this would affect hypertrophy, but because hypertrophy seems to be driven primarily by protein damage even progressively loaded heavy isometrics would cause minimal hypertrophy.

The statics we do can not be considered maximal in nature. That is partly because we simply do not perform them in a high intensity fashion because that leads to injury, which is mostly because of the low leverage positions. The isometric positions I have chosen are mostly high leverage in nature, with the exception of natural GHR. That means I can load them much more heavily without damaging my connective tissue. The one thing I will be very careful of and progress slowly with is my bicep curl, because I have a lot of healing to do in my bicep tendon.

There will also be tendon recovery days(ultra high reps with very, very low resistance), which I may very well perform on these high intensity isometric days. I don't know yet.

What I wonder is if doing deadlifts on an elevated platform would be enough to stimulate hyperplasia. I can think of a couple of world class lifters that have used that method successfully.

Just regular exercise is potentially enough. To MAXIMIZE, now that requires a more focused and intelligent approach!

The bottom position of what you are describing, if done with straight legs, is essentially what a weighted pike stretch is. You stand on something higher than the ground, hold something heavy, and reach for the ground!

Deficit deadlifts, which is what most lifters call the exercise you describe, is a technique used specifically to develop the starting strength on deadlift pulls. It doesn't reach a critical joint angle unless you have serious flexibility issues that require immediate attention, and therefore shouldn't much of any additional effect versus regular deadlifts. After all, it IS a regular deadlift, just with a greater ROM. Not a bad exercise, mind you, for the people who are conditioned well enough to not get hurt doing it!

Well, I have done my first official WOD! I'm quite happy. I made video, which will be patched into this post and the WOD post tonight, since I have a very nice way to scale the XR muscle ups.

I also had a weird schedule, so my warm up is being done after the workout! Not ideal lol!

My sets:

FX L sit on cinder blocks: 17, 17, 17. All slightly below parallel.

MU: 4,4,3. Feet on the floor, leaning back. Watch the video tonight!

BL: 17, 15s tuck. My left elbow wasn't quite right after the second one so my third BL was a 60s planche lean with fingers back. My current hand position is starting to get very easy.

HeS RLL: 5 wall press handstand, 5 wall press handstand, 5 reps of 8.8 lb ankle weight HeS RLL. I have found that my HeS RLL is weak on the way down. My lower back is not used to eccentric movement, and it is difficult for my sacrum area to open up. This should prove to be quite therapeutic! I could not keep my legs completely straight on the way down, but tempo was fine.

FL: 15, 17, 17s. 90/90 flat tuck. My hips were slightly high on the set I video'd, sadly. My other sets were correct.

HLL: 5, 5, 5. Not quite full ROM, but I'm not using hardly any lat assistance for what I do. These are in the video as well.

Bridge wall walks: Tough. I get my hands close to a foot below the door handle.

You know, doing all the statics as warm up is actually really easy when you're just doing 20-30s sets!

I also did 50s of wall handstand and 40s of freebalancing handstand. Not much, and it's easier now that I've finally figured out that I should be shrugging so that my traps feel like a ball atht he base of my neck thanks to someone's post at some point in the recent past. I thnk it was Handbalancer commenting on Yuri's one arm handstand stuff. Anyhow, that is awesome and makes a big difference. It also lets me work my upper back in the handstand! Yay!

I'm going to eat and then go to my girlfriend's place so I can upload my WOD video.

gSLaxSkZmbA

I'll also put this in the 19July2010 WOD thread.

Thanks for posting the video Slizz. I think if you edit the MU variation, that it should be more prominent as many of us could find it helpful.

I'm not sure if you are doing a WOD or running an obstacle course, i thought i had to work with a tight space. :shock:

Mr Brady said:

Thanks for posting the video Slizz. I think if you edit the MU variation, that it should be more prominent as many of us could find it helpful.

I'm not sure if you are doing a WOD or running an obstacle course, i thought i had to work with a tight space. :shock:

LOL! It is... a challenge to maneuver, at times. I pull the power rack out and in depending on what I do, but to be honest it is surprisingly quick to maneuver things! Set up time for the next exercise is just about perfect for rest periods between the static and the FBE, CPP, or whatever: 20-30s.

You think I should do some sort of a MU progression video?