You may have been selling yourself short the entire time.
Halcyon Strength and Conditioning: The Cortisol Paradox And The Death of a Boogeyman
You may have been selling yourself short the entire time.
Halcyon Strength and Conditioning: The Cortisol Paradox And The Death of a Boogeyman
M. Ed. Ex Phys
lately i've been feeling like my body looks good proportionally to the amount of time i spend working out.. more is always better it seems lol
nice, how much training is overreaching? though im sure your total pounds moved per session per unit distance is likely much higher than mine (havent counted) it seems i do perform a shit ton more reps...
i usually lift for 90-100 minutes 5 days a week.
So the take away is if you are trying to build LBM then you should train with intensity and should not be afraid to go over an hour?
I certainly agree and tend to think that cortisol as a catabolic physique destroyer is way overplayed. People won't buy cortisol control if they're not afraid of cortisol.
The West study is pretty interesting because it's big and all the dudes are on the same program; however it might not be totally applicable to all the guys who post here. The cortisol measurments for the West guys happened at week 6 of a 12 week training program right after a session of leg presses. The subjects were more-or-less untrained to begin with, and everybody was probably still taking advantage of newbie gains. I think that the cortisol measurments in this study are probably really good indicators of how hard those guys pushed on that particular workout, and that that is probably a good indicator of how hard they pushed in the gym in general.
So IMHO the takeaway from the West study seems to be: Newbie gains are best for the guys who are able to train the hardest.
Another funny little thing in the West study is its reference to another study that showed Newbie gains are better in guys who drink milk, which gives the impression that if a untrained guy wants to put on LBM quick he should train hard as hell and drink a lot of milk.
Where's Breathmetal? Somebody tell that dude he had it half right.
Sorry about going off on newbie gains. It's good to know that cortisol spikes aren't going to kill my gains.
Overreaching has more to do with an increase of overall volume and intensity and depends on your work capacity when you are starrting.
From my perspective, the body with adapt to hypertrophic volume really quickly (within a few weeks). Now, when you increase both hypertrophic volume concurrently with the top end of Prilepin's chart, then you will most likely overreach within a few weeks. The best example that I can think of is the transmutation phase of block periodization when you are training at 90% 4x/week for 2-3 weeks. This is the phase where you intentionally overreach to achieve supercompensation.
M. Ed. Ex Phys