Methods for gaining muscle and losing fat

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Some would argue that high repetition work with deadlifts is more prone to give you an injury than lower repetition work, since it is hard to sustain proper form for the entire set.

Go heavy (4-5 repetions) on your deadlifts, but keep one or two repetitions "in the tank". That is all you need to gain, your CNS will appreciate it and you will not compromise form since you are not pushing it to failure. Form does need to be excellent and you need to avoid jerking movements.

Cycling your training is absolutely crucial, especially if you train hard with compound movements. I always have a light week every 3-4 weeks.
 
Quote from Laissez Faire:

...Cycling your training is absolutely crucial, especially if you train hard with compound movements. I always have a light week every 3-4 weeks.
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What do you mean by "light week?" Lighter weights, I'm sure, but presumably higher reps? Fewer sets maybe? And do you still go fairly all out on the last of the higher reps, or do you "leave more in the tank?" Is there an approximate percentage by which you reduce your weights for each exercise? Just curious. I've never really cycled in this way, although I read that it should be done and was told as much by people at the gym over the years. Just one more item on my list of oversights and mistakes.
 
Quote from Brass:

What do you mean by "light week?" Lighter weights, I'm sure, but presumably higher reps? Fewer sets maybe? And do you still go fairly all out on the last of the higher reps, or do you "leave more in the tank?" Is there an approximate percentage by which you reduce your weights for each exercise? Just curious. I've never really cycled in this way, although I read that it should be done and was told as much by people at the gym over the years. Just one more item on my list of oversights and mistakes.
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Google periodization and deload. It is the missing ingredient for many aspiring lifters.

Many programs implement this mechanically, using a set percentage and number of repetitions derived from your normal weights, but it should never be done to failure and you should always keep a few in the tank. Consider this a week of active recovery. Some even take a week completely off, but I only recommend that if you actually are overtrained and it`s been 12 weeks of hard training without any active recovery. It also depends on what type of training you do. If you do high repetitions and high volume, you can probably go longer. If you train heavy and with low repetitions on compound movements, you need more frequent breaks.

For me, less is more, but it took me a long while to figure that out.

I implement an intuitive approach for my deload phases. What I do now is that I train progressively heavier for 3-6 weeks. When I find that I`m stalling, reached a new peak and have overloaded my body, I take a week "off". During this week, I train 1-2 times with weights, but often a little more cardio. I maintain the same repetition range, but go lower on the weights such that I`m far from failure.

On the first normal week after deload week, I drop the weights a little back from my prior peak and then attempt to train progressively heavier in the subsequent weeks.
 
Quote from Laissez Faire:

Google periodization and deload. It is the missing ingredient for many aspiring lifters.

Many programs implement this mechanically, using a set percentage and number of repetitions derived from your normal weights, but it should never be done to failure and you should always keep a few in the tank. Consider this a week of active recovery. Some even take a week completely off, but I only recommend that if you actually are overtrained and it`s been 12 weeks of hard training without any active recovery. It also depends on what type of training you do. If you do high repetitions and high volume, you can probably go longer. If you train heavy and with low repetitions on compound movements, you need more frequent breaks.

For me, less is more, but it took me a long while to figure that out.

I implement an intuitive approach for my deload phases. What I do now is that I train progressively heavier for 3-6 weeks. When I find that I`m stalling, reached a new peak and have overloaded my body, I take a week "off". During this week, I train 1-2 times with weights, but often a little more cardio. I maintain the same repetition range, but go lower on the weights such that I`m far from failure.

On the first normal week after deload week, I drop the weights a little back from my prior peak and then attempt to train progressively heavier in the subsequent weeks.
More...
Thanks for your response. Regarding Google, you will likely get as many opinions as sites, sometimes even more if you link to a forum. That's why I prefer to ask what people here do, so that there can be a bit of back and forth. (I'm far too lazy to join other forums.) In the past I've asked a couple of people who carried notebooks around the gym and whom I've seen doing varying weights for the same exercises. If memory serves, in each case, I got aswers of cycles within cycles along with some overlap. My eyes just glazed over and I thanked them for their time.

Since you leave your rep range essentially unchanged, can you give me a rough idea of what percentage of the normal weight you would lift during your light week, assuming that the percentage decrease is roughly similar for all of the exercises? And if you make any distinctions between compound and isolation movements in relation to percentage weight decreases, I'm more interested in the compound.

Perhaps a few others here would like to share how they cycle/periodize as well. Good topic.
 
Quote from Brass:

Thanks for your response. Regarding Google, you will likely get as many opinions as sites, sometimes even more if you link to a forum. That's why I prefer to ask what people here do, so that there can be a bit of back and forth. (I'm far too lazy to join other forums.) In the past I've asked a couple of people who carried notebooks around the gym and whom I've seen doing varying weights for the same exercises. If memory serves, in each case, I got aswers of cycles within cycles along with some overlap. My eyes just glazed over and I thanked them for their time.

Since you leave your rep range essentially unchanged, can you give me a rough idea of what percentage of the normal weight you would lift during your light week, assuming that the percentage decrease is roughly similar for all of the exercises? And if you make any distinctions between compound and isolation movements in relation to percentage weight decreases, I'm more interested in the compound.

Perhaps a few others here would like to share how they cycle/periodize as well. Good topic.
More...

I typically train with a low rep range consistently since I`m only interested in strength gains, but depending on what you`re interested in, you could be cycling with high repetition work which is said to be better for muscle gains and endurance, although that is a controversial topic. I do go high on the repetitions occasionally just for variation, but not as a deload scheme, although the times when I start really high on the repetitions, I can go longer without a deload (since high repetition work is less taxing on the CNS).

As for the actual deload week, I dug up an old training program which states the following for bench press on deload week: 50% of 1RM X 5, 60% of 1RM X 6. This program have deload on every 5th week, using progressively higher weigts. Same percentages for squats and dead lifts.

Personally, I go a little higher, maybe 70-75% (because it is very hard for me to be in the gym and not exert myself, but it`s stupid of me). Then again, I may decide to do only one full body workout for deload, instead of 3 workouts, so it probably makes up for that.

I often drop isolation altogether during deload, it depends on what I feel up to. Not only is deload needed for your body, but it is very psychologically rewarding as well.

Just ask if you`re interested in more. I`m not a guru or anything, but I`ve found something that works for my body. It took me a long time, lack of periodization and a severe burn out to get there.
 
bodyweight vs free weights


hmm i wonder whether you guys have the same:
i feel much better results after just 20min of bodyweight training (mostly pushups and their variations) than after 1.5 hr of lifting heavy dumbells.
 
Quote from DT-waw:

bodyweight vs free weights


hmm i wonder whether you guys have the same:
i feel much better results after just 20min of bodyweight training (mostly pushups and their variations) than after 1.5 hr of lifting heavy dumbells.
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You should never train with weights for longer than 60 minutes, preferrably less. There`s your answer.
 
Quote from Laissez Faire:

...Personally, I go a little higher, maybe 70-75% (because it is very hard for me to be in the gym and not exert myself, but it`s stupid of me)...

...Just ask if you`re interested in more. I`m not a guru or anything, but I`ve found something that works for my body. It took me a long time, lack of periodization and a severe burn out to get there.
More...
Before you posted, I was thinking more along the lines of about 85% of what I would normally do for 8 to 10 reps, my usual rep range. I may have to revisit that number.

I know what you mean by burnout. I've occasionally had to take a week (or very occasionally two) off in the past because of what you very well describe as burn out. Also, the nagging little aches that just seem to linger. In fact, this is why I had recently decided to reduce the overall number of sets per week per muscle group. Smaller pills being easier to swallow. Admittedly, this easing seems to be more important to me now than some years ago, as I understand recovery takes longer as we age.
 
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