Ultimate Exercise - Stasis vs. Dynamism Part III

Stasis Versus Dynamism Part III:
Roadblocks at the Advanced Level and Blasphemous Experiments

Dateline 1984: High Intensity Bodybuilding by Ellington Darden PhD...on pages 117-120 Dr. Darden gives a dramatic description of Sergio Oliva's thigh training in 1971. The routine was a double pre-exhaust series involving leg press/leg extension/squat with no rest between sets. At the conclusion of this routine Sergio collapsed on the floor. Dr. Darden describes what happened 20 minutes later.... "I walked over to where Sergio was lying on his back. I knelt down and tapped him on the shoulder. There was no response. His body felt cold and clammy. 'Arthur, he looks dead to me,' I said."

Dateline 1984: The Nautilus Advanced Bodybuilding Book by Ellington Darden PhD...on page 11-12 Dr. Darden describes Ray Mentzer's Arthur Jones-supervised workout of January 5, 1983. "Suddenly Ray's face contorted in pain. A scream burst from him as he rolled from the machine and collapsed on the floor. His legs resembled two great vibrating machines twitching in unison. You could actually see blood pumping furiously to them...The men pulled Ray from the floor his face still twisted in a grimace. They measured his pulse rate at an astonishing 204 beats per minute-60 seconds after he'd finished the movement."

Both of these examples describe the training of very advanced, genetically gifted bodybuilders, probably two of the most genetically blessed men that ever lived. Some guys who followed more traditional programs always felt "If only I trained more I too could be a champion". Being a H.I.T. disciple I reasoned "If only I trained that hard, I too could make great progress". As Arthur Jones Said to Ray Mentzer... "the key to reaching your potential is figuring out ways to make your training harder, but briefer". At Ultimate Exercise we have been devoted to standardizing the workout in such a way that we can systematically make our workouts harder, briefer and less frequent. Standardization and good record keeping has caused us to re-examine the Holy Grail of H.I.T.

The Blasphemy Begins

Dateline February 1999: Our most advanced client performs the following workout: Med-X Leg Press 928lbs, SuperSlow Systems Pulldown 242.25lbs, Chest Press 414lbs. All TUL's were around 1:20-1:30. At the conclusion of the workout he became very pale, and for the first time ever, appeared to shrink before our eyes, when usually, he would appear massively pumped. Remembering the dramatic descriptions above, I immediately went to check the subject's pulse. Maybe it was above 200, maybe we had delivered a legendary workout a-la Arthur Jones! When I grabbed his wrist to feel his radial pulse, I could not find a pulse at all. Reassuringly I could feel his heart beating in his chest and he did have a weak carotid pulse. It takes a systolic blood pressure of at least 90mm Hg to produce a radial pulse. A systolic blood pressure of less than 90 is defined as cardiovascular shock. This brief workout of just 3 exercises had put this subject in shock! We were so proud. The next workout was the first time in 15 months that this subject failed to progress on every set of every exercise. This experience has been repeated in several subjects so far.

To Arthur Jones' credit, he actually wrote that such severe intensity is neither desirable or necessary. He advised that one should feel capable of repeating the workout within 20 minutes. But having read such dramatic descriptions of intensity, I assumed that more intensity is always better. What we are discovering at Ultimate Exercise is that intensity is just like volume and frequency...it should be used in the minimum amount necessary. More is NOT better.

As we discussed in the first article, we believe the relative contributions of inroad, metabolic effect and weight progression change over time. As you become more advanced, you are able to bring about a degree of inroad and metabolic effect that can inhibit weight progression. Without weight progression you will not get stronger or bigger. As previously discussed I theorize that a certain degree of intensity produces GH/IGF-1 release. Weight exposure increases IGF-1 receptors. At some point, I believe, excess intensity seems to stimulate IGF-1 production but at the same time the stress hormones released down regulate IGF-1 receptors. With too few receptors to bind to, IGF-1 cannot exert is muscle-building effect. We now believe that as you progress, you don't only need to control your volume and frequency, you also need to control your intensity.

At Ultimate Exercise we have always standardized 10 seconds of deep inroad technique (attempting continued movement after failure occurs). We chose 10 seconds at least somewhat arbitrarily; it is long enough to ensure bona-fide failure but not so long that it will drive off clients or encourage them to fake failure. We are now beginning an experiment that will involve changing our protocol. Beginning clients on the 5 set routine will continue the 10 second deep inroad technique. When the client becomes advanced enough to require a decrease to our 3 set routine, we will change to a 5 second deep inroad technique. When a client becomes advanced enough to do the 3 set routine every 10 days, we will stop the set at the point of failure. Very advanced clients will be handled very carefully. We will not use more than 1 large compound movement per exercise. We will instead use routines composed of one of the "big 3" compound movements and 2 or 3 small movements. This will decrease the mechanical workload of the workout and therefore should thus limit the metabolic workload that the subject must deal with. Most importantly, we will terminate their sets just short of failure. Most likely, we will choose some TUL that is a fraction of their customary TUL to failure (such as 90%). Hopefully, this will allow continued weight progression and strength increases. Understand, we have collected no meaningful data to substantiate this theory. The logic we have proposed seems to be supported by observational experience, so we will proceed. We will update our readers in future articles.

More Blasphemy: The Frequency Question

In UE-1 I hypothesized that better progress might be made with less and less frequent exercise. At that time we were experimenting with a small group of subjects training every 14th day or less. We still have several clients training at this frequency. They are making progress at this frequency, although it is less pronounced than what we produce on a frequency of every 7-10 days. This fact, combined with less frequent application of the stimulus, results in a slower rate of progress. We do not know, however, if this more gradual acquisition of improvements will prevent future sticking points. This will take time to know, but maybe in the long run gradual progress will in fact be better.

One disturbing aspect of the every 14th day experiment was the problem of metabolic deconditioning. I have always maintained that metabolic conditioning will always track muscular capability, and will not decondition unless the muscular condition decreases. At this level of frequency we have found that metabolic condition seems to be the limiting consideration. The cardiorespriatory effect seems more severe and the workout seems much more miserable. It is possible that new muscle is difficult and expensive to sythesize and is therefore very well preserved. Enzymes of metabolism are fairly easy to up/downregulate and therefore, metabolic adaptations may be somewhat less well preserved. However, everything seems to track along nicely at a 7-10 day interval. Is it possible, that at very advanced levels, strength and metabolic conditioning will need to be separated? I have poked fun at those who perform interval aerobics such as the Tabata protocol. I feel that such conditioning is easily provided in the context of a proper workout. Maybe a very advanced subject will require a very infrequent strength regimen with such an interval protocol interspersed to preserve metabolic condition. While such thinking is certainly blasphemy to me, I can't ignore such questions in my own mind unless I want to eat crow in the future.

The Ultimate Blasphemy, The Anamnestic Response

Several months ago I was discussing the Dose-Response relationship with Lance Reese, M.D. Lance is a friend that I met while in my emergency medicine residency who is probably one of the most brilliant people I have ever known. Lance is not a H.I.T. aficionado, he knows very little about the field. The combination of his brilliance and not having been indroctinated makes him perfect to bounce ideas off of. Lance noted that the time course of the dose-response relationship suggested that the response was similar in behavior to immunologic responses. Further, recovery ability also seemed to be very much an immune phenomenon. Lance then suggested that there may be an anamnestic response to training that could be invoked with great potential benefit. I quickly dismissed this idea because it threatened my notion of the dose-response relationship and flew in the face of the H.I.T. philosophy I had incorporated into my very identity.

An anamnestic response is a type of stimulus-response relationship that produces an exaggerated response from the organism. The anamnestic response is the basis for what are popularly called "booster shots". To bring about an anamnestic response you first introduce the stimulus to the organism. Next, when the organism begins to respond to the stimulus you reintroduce the stimulus at the point of the peak inflammatory response. What happens is the response (in the case of the booster shot) is increased dramatically. Lance suggested that reintroducing the same workout at the point of peak soreness (roughly 24-48 hours after the first workout) might increase the body's response. With immunizations there is a quick spike of antibody that abruptly trails off to a sustained baseline. If you provide a booster stimulus during the antibody spike, an additional spike occurs on top of the first and then trails off to a much higher baseline. Having heard this argument, I promptly rejected it as a preposterous notion. The idea nagged at my subconscious for months.

At Ultimate Exercise we routinely tell our clients that if a workout makes them unbearably sore that they can come back the following day and repeat a submaximal workout in order to extinguish their soreness. We do not know why this works, but it certainly seems to. Recently I was working a long string of very busy shifts in the ER. In the midst of this, I found my self horrendously sore from the previous day's workout. On the way home from work I stopped by the facility and repeated my workout. I was astonished to find that the weights I had used the day previously felt ridiculously light. I decided to push close to the point of failure and managed to add 5-20 seconds on the previous day's TUL. Lance's discussion of the anamnestic response came rushing back to me. The following workout 9 days later proved to be a major blow-out. I broke out of my usual TUL range with heavier weights. I have repeated the anamnestic workout 4 times now, but now I use significantly more weight (usually about 40-60lbs more) and stop just short of failure. My "regular workouts" are progressing nicely with 2-6lb jumps and stable TUL's. The "anamnestic" workouts are spectacular, with 10-20lb jumps on upper body and 20-40lb jumps on leg press. I am keeping about 9-10 days between the anamenestic workout and the next regular workout. We will begin trying this on other subjects. This is wildly experimental and I do not know if my results are atypical. We DO NOT advocate this as a protocol that works and we don't even recommend experimenting with it. If you do, however, please let us know how it is working. If anyone has other theories that might explain this phenomenon, we would love to hear them.

So there you have it...our attempts to break from stasist thinking at Ultimate Exercise. While we don't know if any of this will be fruitful, we at least hope to encourage the kind of experimentation that will result in the advancement of our field. It should certainly get the internet chat rooms devoted to H.I.T. buzzing.