Progressive Gradual Overload vs. Conjugate Method

[Tosa]

Thanks for the recommendation.

I believe Louie has said, though, that the DE days should be as stressful as the ME days, and if they aren't, "you're doing it wrong." I get what you're saying in the general sense, though, regarding intensity and volume.

If speed work stressed the same things, to the same degree as a max effort lift, you'd just do another max effort day. That doesn't mean you don't put as much effort as possible into moving the weight quickly, or that a light day should be an "easy day".

Like Oblivian, I have no particular interest in program bashing, or bashing individuals. I'm just interested in what fits someone's needs. That said, I think you should keep in mind that Louie Simmons isn't always great at communicating things, in writing, especially if you're looking to westside for knowledge on how to train without a more general background of knowledge on strength training.

 

[Tosa]

that powerliftingtowin novice program is crap...

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

.autoregulation is possible without RPEs or fatigue percents or load drop or repeats etc.

Yes. It's just one method of many of autoregulation.

if you are doing everything right with your nutrition and recovery methods than you shouldn't need to auto regulate the volume at all. You should be able to go in and hit the percentages prescribed by the program that you are using without fail. At the end of the day auto regulated programs are an unnecessary tool that you have to think about a lot and that in turn causes stress which would be better appropriated by using your energies to doing a program where you simply go in and hit the load for the day

Really, you believe you can predict the most appropriates loads, reps and sets, weeks or months in advance? And that at no point how the lifter feels during the lift should cause any amount of adjustment? That nothing about how the lifter feels during a workout should cause any adjustment?

A little, tiny, bit of thinking shouldn't cause any appreciable stress.

....how the hell do you determine if the reps where a 9.5 RPE or no wait where they a 9.7? it doesnt make any sense to have to analyze that much data during a workout

So don't use decimal points.

 

[OUJA KHAN]

If speed work stressed the same things, to the same degree as a max effort lift, you'd just do another max effort day. That doesn't mean you don't put as much effort as possible into moving the weight quickly, or that a light day should be an "easy day".

Like Oblivian, I have no particular interest in program bashing, or bashing individuals. I'm just interested in what fits someone's needs. That said, I think you should keep in mind that Louie Simmons isn't always great at communicating things, in writing, especially if you're looking to westside for knowledge on how to train without a more general background of knowledge on strength training.

Program bashing wasn't the intent of this thread and I hope nothing I said indicates as such.

Reading some of Louie's earlier articles sparked my question and hope for discussion. I wanted to be educated and I have gotten some direction for which I'm thankful.

 

[Tosa]

WTF? RPE as laid out by Tom Narvaez and the oh o holy god of programming Mike T uses decimal points such as if you have a half a rep left basically. How in the hell is anybody going to know if you could have lifted 2.5 pounds more or less? was it a .4 or .3 RPE? Get it?

I've never seen decimal points other and a .5 used. If someone didn't want to ever use a .5 decimal point, they don't have to. All RPE is putting a number on how hard a set felt, hardly different from talking about how many reps might be left in the tank, or whether a set was a grind, or the reps were fast.

 

[ROcknrollracing]

I've never seen decimal points other and a .5 used. If someone didn't want to ever use a .5 decimal point, they don't have to. All RPE is putting a number on how hard a set felt, hardly different from talking about how many reps might be left in the tank, or whether a set was a grind, or the reps were fast.

I disagree whole heartedly. If you can lift more weight on your intitial set(on a load drop method) then say a 9 RPE(but is really a 9.7 RPE) then that means your other sets will have a greater amount of weight which means a greater training stimulus. If you just follow a percentage based program you leave much less to chance in your programming both psychologically and in real time. If you use RPE you could be leaving weight on the bar or even not working hard enough because you know that "oh if i hit this RPE than the rest of my workout will just default to lower weights no matter what". This couldnt be further from the truth because sometimes you warm up to an initial weight and the warmups feel like shit and then you end up fucking up the whole program because even though it felt like shit you actually were capable of lifting more weight than you thought you could that day. It doesn't make sense to use when you can use exact percentages and adjust from there.. That is what I think and know...done

 

[Tosa]

You're conflating the use of RPE to measure relative intensity with it's use in RTS.

And alternatively, using RTS you could end up using loads that are more appropriate for that particular session than if you blindly follow exact numbers given by a program. With any method of autoregulation, it's important that it's appropriate for the individual.


Anyway, I wasn't interested in debating various programs or autoregulation. I was simply responding to a question about how people at my gym trained if they weren't following westside, which includes people using RPE to help autoregulate, with or without other RTS methodology. And it works.

 

[ROcknrollracing]

Also, Westside's competitive record with Raw lifters is not the super-hottest. In Oly lifting and raw lifting, the more advanced a lifter is, the more specific their training tends to be. Melanchiev, for example ONLY does the competitive lifts. No variations. Ever.

So i'm not sure I buy that every PL program other than Westside is only suitable for novice and intermediate lifters. At the very least, Sheiko and Cube both seem to use principles that Louie describes as "chasing their tail" with a great deal of competitive success.

lol but it is the super hottest if you want to do high squats in ohio in the neighborhood of 700 pounds while deadlifting about 505.