Ask Charles Staley #17

Youth and Muscle Don’t always Mix!

(I will answer both of the following questions in a single response)

Dear Charles,

I have hit a hard wall in training and need some advise: I have been training for 18 months with little muscle development despite varying routines, exercises, repetitions, set structure, etc. Currently, I am zigzagging, protein supplementing, and working each body part one time per week with 6-8 sets per body part and 2-4 different exercises. I am almost six feet tall and weight 135. What am I doing wrong? Should I just be patient (after 18 months my patience is running low)? I zigzag to maintain weight. The only body part that looks great are my abs which I work three to four times per week! Plus my protein intake is well above adequate. Help! Thanks in advance!!

Dear Charles,

I am 18 years old and have been working out for two years. I am very cut, but lack mass. I’m 5’11” and am about 165 pounds. I have tried creatine but had very weak results. I’m wondering what I can do to bulk up.

I would be grateful for any advice you can give me.

Tom Quinn

Although the first reader does not stage his age, I will make an educated guess that he is a teenager, or slightly beyond.

My best advice for both of you is to be patient, and learn as much as possible along the way. Using myself as an example, although I would never be mistaken as a bodybuilder, through most of my 20’s I weighed between 145-155 at a height of 6’1″. Currently, at age 39, I weigh between 205-215, and I carry about the same bodyfat percentage as when I was younger, if not a little less.

I found that as I got older, two things happened: my metabolism slowed down dramatically, and I gradually learned how to train. And I’m still learning, which is exciting for me after studying the subject intensively (some would say psychotically!) for over 20 years.

Regarding metabolism, I can vividly remember my mother’s distress when, as a child of 8, I would routinely go through a box of cereal plus eggs, toast, etc., etc., for breakfast, only to be hungry again an hour later. Today it takes about 3000 calories a day to maintain my bodyweight. Of course, as your metabolism slows down, you have to learn how to eat right, or you’ll just get fat. Lyle McDonald’s column and articles are required reading on the subject.

Finally, let me urge you to do things for the joy of doing them, not just for the external reward you hope to gain at some later date. Believe me, if I had my hopes pinned on becoming Mr. Olympia, it would have been over years ago. But along the way, I found training to be an irresistible exercise in problem-solving, and that’s what’s fueled my career in this field. You may have other reasons, but the point is, try to mould yourself into a process-oriented, rather than purely a results-oriented person. That way, you’ll learn more, you’ll be more consistent, you’ll work harder, all of which will translate into reaching a greater proportion of your ultimate potential.

Low Reps Versus High Reps

OK: Everyone always says “High reps for mass, low reps for strength.” The thing is, why? I’ve never heard anyone explain this logically or in a way that I can understand. Is it a nervous system thing, or just that you’re working at a higher intensity, or what?

Thanks for the great articles!

Ben Opal

In reality, it has more to do with the amount of tension that each rep puts on the muscle. As tension on the muscle increases, so does recruitment of greater and greater numbers of motor units. And motor units must be recruited before they can be trained of course.

Let me give you a scenario that I often present in seminars:

John performs 3 sets of 10 reps with 135 pounds on the bar

Bill performs 6 sets of 5 reps, also with 135 pounds. In both cases, the total volume (weight x reps) is the same.

Question: Who derives the best training effect for hypertrophy, and who ends up becoming stronger?

The answer, as you may have surmised, is that John gets bigger, and Bill gets stronger. (Actually, they both get bigger and stronger, but Bill becomes stronger than John, and John becomes bigger than Bill).

But why?

Ok, let’s dissect the question for a moment. Let’s take a look at the force on John’s bar, rep by rep. These values may not be absolutely correct, but the concept is accurate:

Now, if John was working as hard as he could, the 11th rep might have yielded about 134 pounds of force, which means he would have failed.

If you add the above numbers together and divide by 10, you get an average set force of 150.5 pounds. Now let’s look at what Bill did, and we’ll assume that his strength levels are exactly the same as John:

If you add John’s numbers together for each set and divide by 5, you get an average set force of 158 pounds for set 1 and 155.8 for set 2. The average force per rep for both sets combined is 156.9.

So as you can see, because breaking the set of 10 into 2 sets of 5 results in less fatigue per set, the lifter can produce more force, which recruits greater numbers of motor units, which results in greater strength levels due to enhanced neural drive. Also keep in mind that neither set was a maximal effort for Bill- in other words, he had at least 3-4 reps in reserve on both sets. That reserve is what allowed him to accelerate the bar, which is what puts tension on muscles.

John, on the other hand, gets more hypertrophy out of the deal because of the fatigue that accumulated during his all-out set of 10. Although hypertrophy is a mysterious process, many scientists suggest that fatigue is a necessary precondition for protein turnover in trained muscles.

Of course, the above example was not idealized by any means- performing say, 10 sets of 2 reps results in even greater strength gains, for reasons that should now be obvious.

Hope you followed that admittedly long-winded explanation, and I hope it helps your understanding of how to achieve specific goals through intelligent program design.

Mr. Spine Doesn’t Like This One…

Charles, my martial arts instructor always has us do these “leg push-downs” where you are on your back with legs straight up at the ceiling, and then a partner will push your legs down to the floor as you try to resist. I’ve never considered this exercise very safe, but want your opinion on it.

Thanks,

Cory Regent

First, since this is primarily an eccentric drill, one problem is that it may have better application for hypertrophy than for absolute or speed strength. But my real problem with this exercise is that few people are strong enough to do it correctly. By correctly, I mean that you need to be able to keep your low back flat against the floor at all times. Since it’s rare to see a person who can do this while simply lowering his legs to the floor under control, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it’d be even more rare to find someone who can maintain this posture while his or her legs are being thrown to the floor by a partner!

So, if you are in this minority, go ahead and enjoy the exercise. Otherwise, stick with ball crunches, high cable crunches, and so forth.

Bizarre Exercise of the Month

Mr. Staley,

Last week at my gym I saw a woman doing an exercise I have never seen before: it was like a dumbbell front raise, where she would raise both arms out to the front, with her palms toward the floor, and then once her arms were horizontal to the floor, she would rotate her wrists so that her thumbs faced the ceiling. Then she would reverse the turn, and lower her arms again. have you ever heard of or seen this exercise? If so, is it worthwhile?

Thanks for your time and expertise!

Sarah Richmond

Well, this is a new one on me. If you raise your arms with the palms facing downward as you describe, then it would be relatively effective as a middle deltoid exercise. But the wrist twist at the top makes absolutely no sense at all, if I’m understanding you correctly. What would happen is as you point your thumbs upward, the tension would shift from the middle delt to the front delt. But this would only be a brief, isometric contraction for the front delt, and I would thing this maneuver would have potential to grind up the shoulder joint as well. I wouldn’t recommend it.

What Are “Straight Sets?”

Q: Charles, I was just at one of your seminars, and I think you said that you never use “straight sets,” but I never got a chance to ask you about it- what do you mean by “straight” sets, and what do you use instead of them? Great seminar by the way- when are you doing another one?

Janice Escher

What I meant by a straight set is a set of 8, or 10, or whatever, with the same weight. And what I do instead is drop sets. So, in other words, instead of doing a set of 10 with 225, I’ll do a set of 5 with 255 immediately followed by another 5 reps with maybe 225, or whatever I can manage. I just can’t find a reason not to do it this way, because the increased neural drive provided by the first stage of the drop is too valuable to waste. About the only time I don’t utilize this strategy is on exercises where it is impractical- barbell squats for example.

As for seminars, I’ll be in San Antonio, Texas on October 23-24, and in Phoenix, Arizona on November 13-14 of this year. I don’t have next year’s schedule fully hammered out yet, but it will be on my website when I do.

How Far to Lean on Squats?

Mr. Staley,

I know I lean forward a lot when I squat. I’ve never hurt myself, but I just wonder how much it’s OK to lean- assuming that it can’t be helped.
– Thanks!

Anthony

In terms of safety, you can probably lean as much as you want, as long as you maintain normal spinal curvatures. It’s funny, but I know some people who are insistent on super-upright posture during squats, but at the same time they’re OK with doing good mornings, which, when you think about it, is just a bad squat taken to the extreme!

However, if you’re trying to develop your quads, it’s a different story- in this case, you DO want to maintain as upright a position as possible, to avoid the glutes and hamstrings taking over most of the load. If you’re having difficulty with this, work on stretching your soleus muscles (not your gastrocs, which are on a slack when the knee is bent). I am not of the camp that believes all people can perform a good “quadricep” squat, by the way- some people just have proportions that rule it out. But more often than not, tight calves and bad form are to blame for excessive forward lean.