HighIntensity.net View Mike Mentzer Bodybuilding Topic

I know we have briefly touched upon this issue in numerous threads before but I think it is absolutely important enough for a seperate thread here.

Very simple question: I have been training for a while, naturally. If I take a weight -for whatever exercise- that I can complete 10 reps with, how many reps do I have to perform in order to force hypertrophy (even if it is a very minimal amount of hypertrophy)?

Please feel free to post studies and talk from experience….

Sub7

For me personally, I can only stop just shy of failure. That is, I′d do 9 reps, and that last rep would be very hard. Comparing that, the 10th rep would be one where I had to grit my teeth, move the weight at a snails pace, and just BARELY, I mean BARELY get that 10th rep (maybe not EVEN get it). If I stop at rep 8 (or that short), I don′t progress at ALL (with a single set that is). That′s my experience.

So I guess for me, I have to go to around 90% of my failure limit.

Darrell

I think what Darrell said, about ′him personally′ is the best way to describe this. It seems people somehow have different areas of perception, or something with intensity. I have trained several reps short of failure. Like maybe 7 out or 10 and made good gains. So for me, approx. 70% intensity is good enough. In fact, 80% is about my best, 90% is a bit much and 100% I regress. 🙂

Az

Az,

I don′t think perception is the major factor differentiating different individuals. I think some people really do have a much much lower growth treshold. You know how they always say "steroid users can just touch the weights and they grow". I think it is entirely true. I have seen steroid users use such low intensity and grow like hell and think that some of us are a bit like that naturally (not to the same extent of course).

This being said, it is still very very interesting how low your growth treshold is. With such extensive knowledge, have you ever seen or read about anyone with yet a lower intensity treshold than yourself? Have you seen anyone who could grow at, let′s say, 60% or 50% intensity?

And, just as importantly, when you do 7 reps with 10RM, in an exercise like bench presses (so not a total isolation exercise that is super easy to recover from, but not a killer like squats either), how many days to recover and do the same again?

Sub7

Az you shouldn′t regress if you take enough time between workouts. For example I found that after ONE maximum single on CURL I need at least 10 days to be able to do it again (or a little bit heavier). Maybe you would need 15 days. But you should recover strength before atrophy.

Sub7 I personaly wouldn′t reason with intensity of effort but percentage of 1RM. I believe 60-70% of 1RM will be enough to trigger hypertrophy but not optimal whatever the volume and frequency are.

Steve Justa (a strongmen) propose to train at 70% of your max for 3-15 singles per day (in fact 3 singles the first day then 5, 7 etc and when you are at 15 singles, add 5-10 pounds and restart at 3 singles and so on). The frequency is everyday !

As you know I did something like that (with more volume and heavier weight) and it works it will even probably works with singles at 70% maybe…60% but if you train lighter than that…….

It′s very hard to know what′s the ideal 2x5x10RM 2x per week or 1x10x10RM once a week ? 10x1x10RM every day ? As we know volume above 6-10 reps (1 set of 6-10 or 6-10 singles) doesn′t seem to make a big difference the same is true for frequency. Studies seem to indicate that 2x per week provide as much gains as 3x and over… but maybe 1x is enough or even better. It depends of the stress of your workout (weight x volume).

The MOST important thing is to be sure you have recovered before you train again if not you′ll get weaker weaker and always weaker ! STRESS can also be accumulated over time and lead to overtraining (rest can also be accumulated).

Let′s say you do 1×10 to failure 1x per week and make progress for 4 weeks then eventualy it′ll be too much because you accumulated stress and you′ll have to lower frequency (and you might be able to increase frequency some weeks/month later).