Tight Hams?

PART I

Well let's hope it settles down. Some of it could just be it tightening up. When you stretch it after an injury like that it may feel uncomfortable but that's ok, go ahead and stretch as long as there is not bad pain....

You do seem to have a lot of problems with recurrent tightness. How dedicated have you been to your stretching regimen?

I'll look at the squat vid again. He said you have "excessive posterior tilt" which would mean the top of your pelvis tilts to the rear excessively but I bet he meant the front which would be "anterior" (ante meaning "before" or "in front of"). For someone to say you have this while your are squatting can be purely subjective. It's really when you are just standing normally when this counts.

I didn't notice a lot of 'butt wink' on the box squats but I will look again. You did have a lot of butt wink on your regular ATG squats. I agree in general that your probably need to stretch harder after your workouts. And you may be one of those people who would benefit from stretching (more dynamically) in between sets.

As far as having tight hamstrings and inhibited hip flexors and erectors he doesn't know what he's talking about. It would be very unusual for tight hamstrings to result in loose and weak hip flexors and spinal erectors. Most of the time if your hammies are excessively tight so are your hip flexors. Remember when you couldn't sleep on your back? (I don't know if you can now). Remember how tight your hip flexors were?

It doesn't make biomechanical sense. Likewise if you have prominent pelvic "posterior" tilt your hamstrings would likely be loose not tight. NO. Your hamstrings, hips flexors, AND erectors are tight. The only thing that is likely inhibited are the glutes which we have confirmed and is one of the things this routine was desinged to correct.

You are already doing (or are supposed to be doing) everything you can to correct any flexibility issues. Your routine is dealing with strength. If there is butt wink then the only other way to really deal with that is to not go so low that butt wink results and work on going lower slowly until you can do it without the wink.

And I explained all this before .

BTW, I know you are probably really frustrated and stressed about the back. But I know it will all work out. Go ahead and be stretching it gently at this point. I'd most like you to heat it and then stretch it. If your mom could massage it also that would be great.

PART II

I may not have explained it all thouroughly enough.

I didn't want to overwhelm you with technical info.

I'll give you a for instance and then we'll get into the stretching later.

One of the misunderstandings that the guy in the PM had was the difference between lenght and flexibiltiy or "tightness".

Assuming he meant excessive anterior tilt of the pelvis instead of posterior tilt he assumed that the psoas and spinal erectors would be "tight" and short...thus pulling the pelvis from the front and the back into an excessive anterior tilt and increasing the arch of the lumbar spine. Right?

So he further assumed that this would produce lengthened hams. But this is where his logic broke down. You can have long hams but still be "overactive and tight" in them. In a position of execessive anterior tilt the hams would be taking on more of their fair share of the load. While the gluteals would be weak and inhibited. Obviously you don't consider your hams to be very flexible right now. Well flexibility is a function of the nervous system not the "length" of the muscle belly.

We had to assume that your hams would need flexibility trianing and we were right. And of course your erectors and hip flexors would be both short and tight instead of just tight.

Between the glutes and the hams, we assume that the glutes are too weak. BUT, between the quads and the hams, we assume that the hams are too weak. We assume therefore that the hams will be less flexible than the glutes (you don't have "tight" glutes do you?) and we also assume that the quads although seemingly "overactive" are really owing more of a problem to the tight hip flexors and the quads will get a stretch when we stretch the hips flexors properly.

So you see how complicated and confusing this stuff really is.

One thing I think seems apparent is that we need to put in more dynamic stretching work before your workouts.

Fatigue on the Full Body Program

It's best to think of the fatigue interms of the fatigue "effects" of the different kinds of work. That is, how fast the fatigue comes, the relative level of it, and how long it lasts.

You're thinking of volume in terms of muscle soreness instead of these fatigue effects. You don't even really need to separate out CNS versus metabolic fatigue.

Now with the workout you are doing I know we've said certain things are "like" the texas method but that only has to do with specific details. There is actually nothing in your program that borrows from that kind of setup.

Remember that volume is relative and load is relative. So for instance, your first two workouts are not just maximal strength like the Friday of Texas. Instead they TEND toward being on the heavier side of things and have some maximal strenght followed by assistance work that tends more toward the "work" side of things, but is lower volume than the workout later in the week.

If your were to look at these workouts in terms of just "CNS" fatigue and muscle soreness it wouldn't make any sense. You are getting mixed fatigue AND fitness responses from those workouts but overall the fatigue should not be as long lasting as the later workouts. The first lower workout should be especially low volume so as to not intefere too much with the maximal strength work that comes at the beginning of the first upper workout. Then once that is pulled off there can be more volume coming after.

So what we are doing is "playing" with the fatigue effects in order to get the best numbers from maximal stenght work but ALSO we are hoping to get some more longlasting fitness effects then we would from doing ONLY maximal strength work on those days. It is a mixed bag and is not just a one or the other type of thing.

Remember what I wrote in the TM thread about Friday's workouts and the fitness gained from them. This is something very important that most people just don't seem to get. So let me put it another way. Only a beginnner gains very meaningful fitness from one set. It changes a lot when you become more advanced. You need to have a certain amount of "work" in order to gain more permanent "fitness" (and when I say fitness I mean stength, dammit, since that is the type of fitness we are going for. There is no such thing as "overall fitness" only relative degress of different kinds of fitness). This is why I find it so funny that people make such a big deal out of the whole 1RM and 5RM being so "important". Funny how nobody cared about that doing Madcow's and they certainly don't worry about it while "loading" on the "DFT".

Keeping all that in mind the program you wrote COULD work but basically you have the same relative volume and intensity distributed thoughout the week. There doesn't seem to be any manipulation as far as fatigue is concerned. I.E. you could expect much the same response from all the workouts. It would be quite manageable but the question is whether there is enough to drive progress.

Most of what I said before was fairly specific to the upper/lower. To apply that theory to a fullbody you’d really need fewer exercises and much more literal uses of it.

Since it is simple to do so I’ll relate it to TM. So TM’s setup deals with fatigue in a different way and there is a very sharp delineation between maximal work and maximal strength. I don’t need to rehash the theory behind the the setup but the DRAWBACK of it is that you can’t ever guarantee that fatigue and recovery will intermesh perfectly allowing you consistent PR’s on Friday no matter what you do. Friday advances could be gained from Monday if fatigue has dissipated and enough fitness is gained but assuming that it will is one of the limitations. Friday could just as well be interfered with. Again most people should gain well by just advancing on Monday and not regressing on Friday.

But we talk about things in terms of a week. Well your body doesn’t know weeks. It only knows stimulus and response. Fitness and fatigue. So what if you looked at your body’s responses literally and applied them to something simple like TM?

You could put maximal strength on Monday. Hit your PR’s then. You would be at your freshest fatigue wise and at your utmost ability to achieve them. Any fitness response would be relatively speedy and fatigue would disapate quickly.

So one day off you shoud be ready to hit the volume. You’d do your TM 5x5 type workout then on Wednesay. Except it wouldn’t be a literal 5x5 I just mean it would be the most metabolically draining of the three workouts. You’d have a lot more exercises. So you’d hit deads at low volume. Then you would hit some kind of squats or squat assister at higher volume but relatively low….then same thing with bench and/or pressing work. Back work. Whatever. This would be a big day with a high relative volume in other words.

Then a day off and an “offload” with added assistance. You wouldn’t need as aggressive an offload since you would then have two days off before you go for PR’s again. The pr’s would be mixed and switched around.

So that would be an intensity – volume – recovery approach that corresponded more closely to fatigue responses. The reason this works is because the fitness gained from Wednesdays workout and assisted by Friday’s workout (so Friday would actually help not just provide active recovery) would be long lasting enough to be displayed on Monday but at the same time there would be very little chance of Monday’s PR being interfered with like they are on Friday of the TM.

The ‘volume’ of course would be entirely relative to your goals. There would be no need of doing, for instance 5x5 sets if less would facilitate your goals. Also I would use the same flexible progression that I use for my upper/lowers so that more volume can be introduced if and when it is needed and in a steady and systematic way. But the big problem is that to cram in the ways I like to train would make for two very big days. It would never actually work.

The reason I do upper/lowers is not because I like training 4 days a week or whatever. It is because I need to break all that volume up so as not to overwhelm myself. All this is nothing more than a theoretical exercise, like yours, designed to lead straight back to the fact that fullbodies are best left simple and the more complex training works much better with the split.

If you took out the standpoint of variety, though, my way of maximal strength, maximal work, and then a recovery/assistance day would probably work quite well. If I ever get back to that kind of thing, I’ll play with something and try it out. The thing that TM and the other 5x5’s don’t take into account is the difference between the fitness effects. You can look at it like Monday causes a PR on Friday and it makes a lot of sense. BUT you can also look at it as being fresh on Monday facilitates the PR’s which was setup anyway by Wednesday’s and to some extent Friday’s work since that fitness gained from those days is much more long lasting. You just have to realize that the body doesn’t care about a “week” it only knows to respond to the stimulus it receives.

But let’s not take theory too far. Most of what I do comes from experiencing different things. I take theory and add it to experience, not the other way around. The best way of knowing if your setup would work is for you to do it and learn from it. It would be much harder than you think though from what I can tell.

Deadlift and Fatigue

Deadlift, to me, at 1x5, needs to go on the first lower day. It's maximal work. Matter of fact your first lower should be you first workout of the week and especially if you're doing deadlift. Different people may have differnet opinions depending on what aspect of recovery they focus on.

Look, you want strength, you want functionality, and you want health. But in the way you arrange the workouts you are still thinking like a bodybuilder. You want to "prioritize" muscles.

To some extent you can do that but there is an order of importance to look at in the way you arrange things.

I'll list out those things in order but first a little explanation.

Just about everything centers around recovery. Most people are stuck in a rut of thinking about recovery in terms of local muscular recovery. They worry about whether their chest is recovered, or their legs, or their arms. You hear it all the time...my legs were too tired to squat. That statement there is a dead giveaway that a person doesn't know shit about programming.

The recovery we really need to worry about is systemic in nature. It involves the entire system and the CNS is one of the biggest parts of it. There are only so many resources to go around and those include the resources of your nervous system not just your muscles themselves. Fatigue plays into all this. Keeping this in mind helps us decide what to do first and the general order things should happen in.

So the first thing we think of is nervous resources. The more complex and heavy a movement the more resources it demands from the CNS. You don't even need to worry about the relative nature of the fatigue they cause because just that fact will tell you that the more complex and heavy movements should come first...when the CNS is freshest. This would obviously mean a time when residual fatigue from the entire routine is at it's lowest so you put the more complex movements where your body has the most resources to pull them off.

Deadlifts, in your routine, would be the most complex, demanding movement. When I say complex I don't necessarily mean how much skill it takes, I mean how much minute muscular control you body has to call on to do the movement. Obviously, the nature of it changes as we get stronger and the CNS matures, but there comes a time where the deadlift needs to be at the top of the list if you expect to do it right.

Deads of course cause a lot of metabolic fatigue so that may lead some people to want to push it further into the weak. But if the volume is not too high the fatige will not be as long lasting at the "volume" fatigue. And in any case the need to be at your freshest to prevent injury and any number of other problems (such as the problem you got from Doggshit training) outweighs any other consideration. This is why I had said a 5x5 is not a good routine to bring up your deadlifts if you are having problems because in order to do that squats would have to give ground.

So this all tells us where in the weak heavy deads should go and it also tells us the exercise order. Remember, most complex first. So that means you would never do squats before deads if you really know what you are doing. You would most certainly never do high volume squats. Deads is just NOT a movement that is going to be understanding if you care more about squats or bench press. It's just not.

But you're probably thinking I can still do upper day first, right? Wrong. Because it's not about muscular recovery. It's about systemic resources. I notice everbody puts the upper first in upper/lowers. Because they think that they'll be too tired to do their precious bench press if they do the lower first in the week. So they actually understand intuitively about systemic resources, but they don't take this logic to it's conclusion.

They simply care more about their pecs. That ain't strength triaining. There is no logical reason to put upper first when lower is the most complex. The upper day movements are less complex therefore they require fewer resources. That means your bench won't suffer as much from your deadlift (and squat) as your deadlift will suffer from you bench. The best thing to do is to also arrange the day's off in a way that gives more recovery from the draining nature of deads.

That is why I do upper lowers like this: Lower, day off, upper, lower, day off, upper. Then two days off for an eight day week.

So here are the things to consider when arranging the routine in order of importance.

1. Most complex and heavy movements first
2. Lighter and higher volume second.
3. Priorities based on weaknesses, injuries, postural problems, etc.

Putting in deadlifts changes everything. It really becomes a different routine becasue everything must shift around the exercise. If it were a matter of your deadlift not having problems it would be different but if you want to improve on it you have to be willing to give it it's due.

You could keep doing the kind of thing you are doing and then you might actually find some improved capacity for bringing it up in your next routine. But if you want to put it in now, which is good as far as I'm concerned, you need to be willing to change priorities.

Let me know what you think and I will help.

Fatigue

Before I get into it let’s talk about fatigue. We know that fatigue is something we need to regulate if we won’t to perform out best. Also, if we want to be safe.

There are two different types of fatigue. One is neural in nature. The other is metabolic in nature. This is the systemic fatigue I speak of.

What does neural fatigue mean? It means down-regulation of alpha- and beta-receptors or decreasing the release of catecholamines. This means decreased nervous system fuction. You lift a heavy weight and you cause some nervous system fatigue. It doesn’t matter what exercise. Just more complex movements mean more fatigue. Bench one day can effect your deads or squats the next. We established that before.

Rip says in the book about the speed work being light since it is only half the load and therefore it’s no big deal. Like it has no effect on you. As if everything has to do with total load. Bullshit. How do you lift a light load as quickly as possible? By calling on as many motor units as possible as quickly as possible. How do you lift a very heavy load at any speed? By calling on as many motor units as possible as quickly as possible. They sound very similar in that way don’t they?

Also, what Rip says about the light loads meaning no injury just because they are light? Well, in fact, when you compare traditional slow strength work with ANY TYPE of work that involvles acceleration you get more injuries with the latter. He really should know better than to make a statement like that (it’s one of the things that really disappoints me about the book). Stress on joints is not just related to total load on the joints. In some cases total load can paly a heightened role due to body positioning and mechanics. But the actual load on the joints themselves is a function of acceleration. If you lift 50 pounds super super fast the load on the affected joints is MUCH more than 50 pounds. The more you accelerate the more the load. Not to mention the potential herky-jerky nature of it. But I digress.

I’ve discussed the similarities between maximal loads and maximal speed training. In fact they are two example of the THREE primary types of strength training. Maximal strength, maximal instensity, and maximal work. So maximal strength is using near-maximal loads for low reps for every how many sets. Maximal intensity uses sub-maximal loads for maximal acceleration. The only on left that I haven’t discussed yet is maximal work. Maximal work is sub-maximal loads with a high volume of training. Now I know this is old stuff to you except that I doubt you have ever put it together in the way that I’m doing now.

How do maximal strength and maximal intensity (heavy work and speed work) affect fatigue? The answer is IN VERY SIMILAR WAYS. They both result in very high fatigue that dissipates after a brief period. Maximal intensity won’t cause as much fatigue at first but it will catch up very quickly.

At first maximal strength should follow after speed work, since you will get more fatigue from maximal strength work so it you did the heavy work first you wouldn’t be able to improve your speed work very quickly. But as you progress I would in the end always put maximal strength work first. When that time is we cannot be sure and technically you can do either when you are very advanced. But I would do maximal strength work first simply because it works better and there is less potential for injury.

Maximal work causes lower levels of fatigue than either of the others, but the fatigue lasts longer. Since the recovery and thus the fitness after-affect with maxmal strength and maximal intensity kicks in faster it shunts aside the fatigue somewhat. Whereas the fatigue from maximal work is pretty much immediate. This tells us that maximal strength and maximal intensity should always come before maximal work in a single training week. Or a single training day, for that matter.

Logically, heavy work and speed work can even come on the same day at the appropriate volume.

So you have at first

• Maximal intensity (speed work)
• Maximal strength (heavy work)
• Maximal work

It’s the same whether it’s a single training week or everything done in a single training day. Later on the first and second will be reversed.

The good thing about putting speed work earlier than maximal strength work is because of what I said before, also. At first, the fatigue after-affect will be both of lesser magnitude and it will have larger and quicker fitness gains which actually have the capacity to help the maximal strength work. Maximal strength work can actually have this effect on maximal work work but here the relationship is even stronger because of the similar nature. Remember what I told you about my own training, where I would gain strength so fast from my maximal work earlier in the week that I would be using similar weights for the volume work later (the routine format helped). Well, this kind of thing should be stronger for speed work to maximal strength work.

So that's enough, I think, for now.

Tapering

I'll answer your question about my "taper" (or deload or whatever) real quick but then I have to split .

I do nothing on tapers but reduce the volume and maintain the intensity (mostly 3x3 stuff) because a taper is NOT a routine. It is NOT a program. This is a very important concept that so many people don't get and it makes they're so-called tapers be a waste of time.

There is no new strenght or fitness to be gained during a taper. If there was it wouldn't be a taper. It is rest and recovery allowing fatigue to fully dissapate so that the strenght gained from the previous long period of intense work can be fully manifested before you begin something else. I only do it when it seems I need it. But the strenght I display during a taper is the strengyh that is there all along but fatigue has covered up.

If you do anything past that it is not longer a taper. Tradition has a taper as simply reduced volume and with the same or a little greater intensity. Strenght studies have shown this method to be the most effective as well. There is no need to do anything that different or complex. I usually of course don't do any beach work but some isolations won't hurt since they won't interfere with it as long as the volume is kept to a minimum.

And theres your answer .