Another Wendler Book

[manveer]

Really interesting discussion.

Question for Jordan: since you can only add muscle mass when gaining weight, is there a reason to do hypertrophy work while not in a caloric surplus?

[Tim K]

Question for Jordan: since you can only add muscle mass when gaining weight, is there a reason to do hypertrophy work while not in a caloric surplus?

I don't know what Jordan's response will be but I have recently been listening to some stuff with Mike Israetel where he says to basically keep doing high-volume BB type stuff while cutting. The principle seems to be that the stimulus needed to produce hypertrophy when in a surplus is the same stimulus needed to conserve muscle mass in a deficit and that doing only high intensity low volume stuff while in a deficit will lead to poorer ratios of fat to muscle lost because you're not telling your body to hang on to that muscle mass as much as possible.

He seems to really know his shit from what I can tell but on the other hand a lot of what he talks about seems specific to competitive bodybuilders and in this case bodybuilders who are dieting for a show I'm not sure how much carryover that has to people primarily concerned with strength who might want to cut some fat but not necessarily get to single digit BF%.

Also, maybe you meant just eating at maintenance vs a deficit which is an even more interesting question especially for powerlifters wanting to get stronger while staying in the same weight class.

[manveer]

I don't know what Jordan's response will be but I have recently been listening to some stuff with Mike Israetel where he says to basically keep doing high-volume BB type stuff while cutting. The principle seems to be that the stimulus needed to produce hypertrophy when in a surplus is the same stimulus needed to conserve muscle mass in a deficit and that doing only high intensity low volume stuff while in a deficit will lead to poorer ratios of fat to muscle lost because you're not telling your body to hang on to that muscle mass as much as possible.

He seems to really know his shit from what I can tell but on the other hand a lot of what he talks about seems specific to competitive bodybuilders and in this case bodybuilders who are dieting for a show I'm not sure how much carryover that has to people primarily concerned with strength who might want to cut some fat but not necessarily get to single digit BF%.

Also, maybe you meant just eating at maintenance vs a deficit which is an even more interesting question especially for powerlifters wanting to get stronger while staying in the same weight class.

That makes sense. But yeah, I phrased my question the way I did because I was asking about maintenance as well as being in a deficit.

[ithryn]

I don't know what Jordan's response will be but I have recently been listening to some stuff with Mike Israetel where he says to basically keep doing high-volume BB type stuff while cutting. The principle seems to be that the stimulus needed to produce hypertrophy when in a surplus is the same stimulus needed to conserve muscle mass in a deficit and that doing only high intensity low volume stuff while in a deficit will lead to poorer ratios of fat to muscle lost because you're not telling your body to hang on to that muscle mass as much as possible.

I'm totally not qualified to have an opinion here, lol, but when I did a cut session or two with Santana he had me doing this for the big lifts. Basically HLM making sure to get at least one good 5x5 or seven sets of three or some other high volume workload in, and then more volume in different variations for the L and M days. Which flew in the face of what I've dug up from the distant past on these boards, i.e. if you're on a cut you should dispense with all volume and just do high intensity singles and triples to maintain absolute strength. In fact Santana was dead set against peaking up to heavy 1-3 rep maxes if we were on a caloric deficit.

I got the sense you're just working the muscles repeatedly very hard. I mean if your body is trying to choose which tissues to catabolize into energy to keep you alive, and you're consistently doing lots and lots of work with a muscle tissue, say your arms, or your posterior chain, or your whole musculature, it's probably not going to choose that muscle tissue. Your baseline activity level is signaling that you need those structures.

Obviously on a massive caloric deficit it would eat those up anyway just to maintain normal functions of life, but at a maintenance level or a slight cut it's going to trade away other structures before it starts consuming those. That's my armchair physiologist guess.

[omaniphil]

I'm totally not qualified to have an opinion here, lol, but when I did a cut session or two with Santana he had me doing this for the big lifts. Basically HLM making sure to get at least one good 5x5 or seven sets of three or some other high volume workload in, and then more volume in different variations for the L and M days. Which flew in the face of what I've dug up from the distant past on these boards, i.e. if you're on a cut you should dispense with all volume and just do high intensity singles and triples to maintain absolute strength. In fact Santana was dead set against peaking up to heavy 1-3 rep maxes if we were on a caloric deficit.

I got the sense you're just working the muscles repeatedly very hard. I mean if your body is trying to choose which tissues to catabolize into energy to keep you alive, and you're consistently doing lots and lots of work with a muscle tissue, say your arms, or your posterior chain, or your whole musculature, it's probably not going to choose that muscle tissue. Your baseline activity level is signaling that you need those structures.

Obviously on a massive caloric deficit it would eat those up anyway just to maintain normal functions of life, but at a maintenance level or a slight cut it's going to trade away other structures before it starts consuming those. That's my armchair physiologist guess.

Santana works with the Renaissance Periodization guys, so its natural that his view lines up with Israetel's on that. I also have done a couple of cuts with Santana, and while I don't think I made any total strength gains other than improved neuromuscular efficiency, but I definitely didn't lose any, and dropped +10lbs over the course of 3 months, so I can attest to these methods working.

My question for Jordan: Is there any difference between the upper body lifts and lower body lifts when it comes to working within the 70%-80% of 1RM range? Doing sets of heavy OHP don't seem to lead to the same fatigue that Squats do for instance. Would that difference in fatigue mean that you can successfully train sets in the 80-90% range, or does it just mean that the SRA cycle is shorter, meaning you can do 70%-80% sets with increased frequency?

[omaniphil]

What was your starting and end weight? Height? Lifts?

5'11" 240lbs -->>227lbs

Squats 315 for 3 sets of 5 -->> 330lbs to 7 sets of 3. Similar results in other lifts. As I said, I don't think I got any stronger over all, but for losing 13lbs in a 3 month period, I thought it was pretty good.

[manveer]

5'8.5", 238-240 to 204.

Yeah, but how tall were you at the end?

[John Hanley]

Side note: funny to see people in the other thread present a No True Scotsman argument to Jordan, for not comparing all of the individualized options people make to 531 and TM, while everyone here knows what YNDTP means.

Jordan short-circuited the paradigm.

'Round here, there are two standards for evaluating exercise science claims.

If claim is made inhouse, the defualt assumption is that the claim's truth value = true, justified by "experience" and "wisdom".

If claim is made from outside, truth value of claim is undetermined, pending rigorous statistical analysis.

If you make an "inhouse" claim that undermines another another "inhouse" claim. Holy Fuck. Short-circuit.

[marcf]

I think my lifts would have made slight gains, if I had been more honest up front with how much time I had to lift, without forcing 5hr sleep.

Do you think you could've made slight gains if you would've prolonged your cut to 8-9 months? I might cut later this year.

[John Hanley]

You came inside.

Fuck you.

The next sentence is true.

The previous sentence is false.