Rest days, How many are required for optimum growth ?

[poos_n_wees]

My brain hurts.

[Paul]

Im with u P & W :shock: wow

[Cammo]

splinter - lighten up bro :nod:

Your post was rather long winded & unnecessary - I'm going to have a little lay down now....

Actually, one more thing....

I was on medication (a benzodiazapine (clonazepam to be exact) - I have a feeling you were on something similar, diazepam (valium) maybe?) for a while to help with sleep - I quit the meds when I had my sleeping under control but got serious withdrawal symptoms (anxiety attacks, panic attacks etc.) I had my blood tested one day & had 6 time the amount of adrenaline in my system that many people have after major car accidents.

This went on for most of last year & I managed to make more gains in the gym than any of my friends...... think of all that cortisol I had in my system.....I am far from a genetic freak too.

[ExpensiveUrine]

#1 - I didn't change the content of my post nor did moderators/pseudo ask me to edit it. So I don't know where you're getting your information from?

#2 - I don't take internet threats seriously.

#3 - I didn't critize you, I critized your training. Your "personal research" make your observations subjective, these sadly aren't facts. All your responces are vague that draw conclusions from a lot of different subjects.

#4 - How about you address the points in my post.

#5 - Cortisol: "Endurance sport" =/= Resistance training. Car crash/fight example I used are ACUTE, you can not compare them to long term depression/prolonged anxiety (this will change things a bit, depending on what you have and where your levels of Test/Cortisol are). Are we all clinically depressed or have screwed up hormonal axis? Doubt it.

#6 -

Your body will tap into muscle before it will start burning fat, why do you think so many bodybuilders loose muscle when on a fat burning cycle?

In order to preserve as much muscle as possible they have to manipulate caloric intake combined with an effective form of cardio and weight training to preserve as much muscle as possible and burn fat, if it was that easy to burn just fat when on a cutting phase then getting ripped would be easy.

What do you think fat is for? To make us jiggly or something? It's stored energy. If you have a lot of fat, you will survive for longer period than someone who doesn't have as much fat during a complete starvation, provided there's water. Saying that many bodybuilders lose muscle when on a cutting diet, doesn't mean muscle is being used for energy before fat. Again, I'm NOT saying that the body WILL NOT USE muscle for energy during a calorie restricted diet. Muscle breakdown will occur on any low calorie diet. I'm saying there will be more emphasis on the break down of fat, than skeletal muscle, per se. How much skeletal muscle will you lose compared to fat? Well, that would depend on a host of factors: training (type, exercise type, intensity, volume, frequency, ect), nutrition (protein/carbohydrate/fat/overall calorie intake), your lifestyle, physiology/genetics, ect ect. It's true that if you just use calorie restriction without resistance exercise, there will be more protein loss. But even with a screwed up diet (still low calorie, with moderate amount of protein) and somewhat silly resistance program, you will still lose more fat compared to skeletal muscle (this will depends on how much muscle/fat you're carrying to begin with, the fatter you are, the more fat you will lose) Most people will not undergo complete starvation to get low bodyfat levels, they sure as hell won't train during complete starvation.

Your fat stores are your bodies natural defense mechanism against starvation, it is more desirable for your body to break down muscle than it is to breakdown fat because for survival reasons its preferred form of energy is muscle if there are no excess amounts of glucose present.

NO. Show me where you got this information from. Or is it just subjective? Pick any physiology book, and it'll tell you otherwise.

Muscle is metabolically active tissue, requiring a great deal of caloric energy just to maintain it. That's why your body will shed muscle if it thinks you are starving, not fat.

It will use both for energy. The emphasis will depend on the factors outlined above.

And EU ,as for your post on 1 rep max and intensity ?

Intensity is just that, you can use intensity using 1 rep and you can use intensity performing 4-8reps, any higher than that and your intensity levels will begin to drop because of the energy expended on the first 8 reps.

So you can construct an amazingly brutal training session that centers around 4-8 reps.

You compared Intensity (%1RM) to a feeling, which it isn't. Easy, hard, warm, cold, hot, is a feeling. Intensity is a number that represents the percentage of your 1RM max. 100kg for 1RM has higher intensity than 5 reps with 70kg, these are qualitative terms (numbers) not quantitative (feelings). I can do a deadlift for 4-8 reps on 50kg. That's very light if my deadlift is 200kg (1RM).

If your goal is to stack on as much muscle as soon as humanly possible then progressive overload should be applied with every workout session, at least ½

kg or 1 rep more more depending on what you are training that day....

...It is possible to gain strength and muscle with every training session, we all seem to settle for less thinking that lifting the same weight every week will induce growth but your body has no reason to grow if the overload is not progressive so it will remain at its current mass level....

If you are not adding a least 1 more rep or at least ½ kg more each training session

then you are either undereating, overtraining or both, the only trainees who wont see progress on a regular basis are those who are either hovering at or have reached their true genetic potential.

I don't and I'm still growing. Again, there's more to training with respect to progressive overload than just adding weight every session. Have you heard of cyclical approach to training, aka, periodization? You can still grow, without adding weight each training session, you cycle percentages of intensity with respect to your overall training load. Sure you will have overload at some stage, but not every session. With low frequency training, it's doable, but only upto a certain point. With high frequency approach you will find it difficult to progress that way.

And who’s the guy who said the gains in my arms are all fat, if you knew anything about the male anatomy you would realize that large deposits of fat are not stored in the arms (unless grossly overweight) yes my arms have added fat but not 4.5 cms worth.

Without a bodyfat test, what you say is subjective.

#7 - Posting a picture of arms doesn't really tell us anything. How about posting a full picture, then come back 6 months later and post another full picture. Then we'll compare the two.

[Pseudonym]

I think they blocked my username splinter so I couldn’t post anything under that name, hence the new name, and I was in a shopping mall (on holiday)so I couldn’t write to them to ask why it had been blocked.

...

And EU your original post was “way more abusive” but I guess the administrator had you edit it

Just for the record... While the debate has been pretty heated, it hasn't overstepped any boundaries yet, and neither I nor my moderators have edited anything or blocked anyone. Splinter, you probably haven't been here long enough to see it (we don't have to do much moderating at all) but we have a policy of "visible" moderation, which makes it very clear when we do edit something. I'm very proud of our moderating system - we have lengthy criteria helping us determine whether to edit or not, and any moderating gets comprehensively logged. Bottom line: you can be confident that if something is edited by a moderator, you'll know.

I don't know why you couldn't log in though - PM me if you want, and we'll try to resolve it.

Anyway, there are some good arguments coming out here - just remember, keep it clean. 8)

[big MAC]

My current squat is 120kg I believe my potential squat is around 220-250kg

This just proves how pathetic that whole long winded post is.

Everyone here would prefer you would post a week or 2 weeks workouts.

[ExpensiveUrine]

Oh yeah, from 120kg to 220-250kg back squat with HIT? I wish I had your courage!

[big MAC]

Oh yeah, from 120kg to 220-250kg back squat with HIT? I wish I had your courage!

The only thing that came to my mind was......

I believvvvvvvvvveeeee I can Fllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.........

[ohjoshua]

-EU.Feelings are qualative and numbers can be qualative (bf%)or quantative (weight).

-Splinter approximately 60% of the fuel used when resistance training is adipose tissue (fat). This is converted into glucose when you rest between sets and your heart rate drops.

Your lack of rest between sets may be the partial cause of your high bf% and lack of fuel to preform longer duration training sessions.

debate is fun, I like it when people get excited.

[Andrew]

why do you think so many bodybuilders loose muscle when on a fat burning cycle?

Because so many body builders put on to much fat off season and have to diet hard to get it off, if you keep with in 5kg’s of your competition weight you can easily lose body fat with out losing muscle..Infact you can still build muscle while losing body fat

if it was that easy to burn just fat when on a cutting phase then getting ripped would be easy.

IT IS!!!

[ExpensiveUrine]

Joshua,

Sorry, yes you're right! I mixed qualitative/quantitative up.

Regarding your comment about fat use for energy during resistance exercise, it would depend on intensity of the exercise, type, duration, ect. Primarily muscle glycogen is used for fuel during resistance training (intensity >60% or so).

[ohjoshua]

-EU

I was just quoting a chart which compared various exercise types with the fuels used.

There are many variables that I didnt take into consideration.