svt?

[Chip Bronson]

hey bros, i was hoping some of the more knowledgable of you would comment on this. i read about this in musclemag. it's called staggered volume training. the gist is to use high volume but to stagger the sets. here's an example.

you would work opposing muscle groups such as chest/back. you would pick 2 exercises and do between 8-12 total sets, depending on your training level, split between them.

incline press 4-6 sets of 12 reps
barbell rows 4-6 sets of 12 reps
dips 4-6 sets of 12 reps
pullups 4-6 sets of 12 reps

so you would be using high volume but only doing a few sets per muscle group, then moving to the other muscle group, doing those sets and back and forth...

i can understand that while you're training one muscle, the other will be recuperating and, presumably, will be able to handle more weight when its turn comes around. i can see how this would help your strenght but my question is, how will you be able to sustain the pump for the chest when you're doing back and vice versa? this is hailed as being a hypertrohpy program as opposed to a power program. what do you think? thanks in advance for your responses.

 

[thick]

are you going back and forth without any rest? or do you do chest rest a minute for example, back rest a minute and so on? edit: now that i think of it there were some good posts about a program like this on another board i will see if i can find it for you. Seems like it was similar but this was a few months ago that i read. I will check to see if guys were getting good results or what the thread was about

 

[Chip Bronson]

you would do a set of chest, rest 60-90 seconds, do another set of chest until you've completed the 4-6 sets of that particular chest movement. then you would do the same for the back. then back to the chest, the second exercise, etc...

i've done it this way in the past and it has worked well for mass:

a set of dips, rest 2 minutes, a set of rows, rest 2 minutes, back to a set of chest, then a set of back till you've completed 4 sets of each move. this gave you a sizeable break between your sets of dips or your sets of back, perhaps a 5-minute break and that allowed me to lift very heavy up to the final set without my reps going down. but with svt you get over a 10-minute break, so i kinda wonder if it will be as effective?

 

[thick]

I see. It really is no different than like how I do HST besides the difference in volume. Hst I do my 2 sets chest, than 2 sets back, than 2 sets of a different chest movement, than back. SO I don't see anything hindering about it. I am anxious to see if the others agree

 

[Chip Bronson]

well if you're doing 2 sets and i'm doing 4-6 sets (i'd probably do 6) then the time between hitting a muscle group would be a lot longer in my case. you would be hitting chest again in 6 minutes while i would be hitting it again in 15-20 minutes. the pump would go down considerably, that's obvious, but i wonder what else, potentially negative, would happen?

 

[thick]

I realize that but I just don't see anything negative about it. How often will u be training chest/ back etc??

 

[Chip Bronson]

right now i use 3 on/1 off splitting the body 3 ways with low to moderate volume. i vary the volume to prevent overtraining which could easily happen t me given my heavy hours at work and the fact that i have epstein barr disease. if i did svt, because of the extra volume, i would do 3 on/1 off/2 on/1 off, still splitting the body 3 ways, throwing in an extra day off here there as needed.

so, besides losing your pump, you don't see anything wrong with taking so much time between bodyparts, eh thick? maybe i'll give this a try in a few weeks as my arms gets closer to 100%. thanks bro.

 

[thick]

no, i don't c anything wrong with it. Sometimes I have to do Hst or other workouts part in the morning and part at night or when i have a chance. So i may get 4 exercises done than have to pick up my son or have a pt. than finish and hour later or so. I have not noticed anything negative about this. In fact, I feel like I get a more productive w/o b/c I am able to use heavier weights with both bench and incl db's for example rather than one of the two being lifted at less than maximal weights due to fatigue