Progress on pressing movements

[Les Hahn]

Hey Ivan. You probably can't use an individualized approach at first, but the few people I work with I do have them try and log an RPE and send me a video. At this point the RPE doesn't really do anything, but tracking it in conjunction with bar speed will start to help teach them what is hard. When they become more advanced lifters, it's nice to know when you should shut it down if things are getting too hard during a particular session. Grinding a lot really isn't an option in advanced programming. But again, context really matters. If I'm squatting 1x per week, then you can really push it. If you have two more squat sessions coming later in the week, then you can't lift the same way.

I still start new lifters on SS or something very similar to SS (still LP). It works. But I think starting to learn the skills right away that will help you later in your lifting career is a good thing. It won't be perfect, hell it will be way off at first, but practice makes perfect.

[perman]

Any comprehensive book on training of any kind more or less mentions individual differences.

That's like saying any book on physics mentions gravity. Doesn't make them the same.

Are you suggesting we should approach a untrained lifter or early intermediate with an individualized approach? Based on what data? E1RM trends?

This started with me quoting Rip making a categorical statement about the success of the SSLP that I believed was wrong. What those novices that have an exceedingly poor response to SSLP should do, I don't know. I'm not sure whether they would be non-responders to strength training in general or SS as a program specifically.

RTS is targeting a different demographic. I still do not understand what's your actual point here.

My point was that proving the success of a style of programming from a single lifter like you tried to do with Chase would be more convincing if it was a champion. Most half-decent programs can produce fantastic results under someone talented who works hards. That doesn't prove the program is generally good.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Perman, are you on salary with a competing system?

[Ivan Stepic]

This has become pointless. Sorry perman.

[Mark Rippetoe]

He's tenacious. That's why I asked about the money.

[Devyn Stewart]

My point was that proving the success of a style of programming from a single lifter like you tried to do with Chase would be more convincing if it was a champion. Most half-decent programs can produce fantastic results under someone talented who works hard. That doesn't prove the program is generally good.

This is a contradiction. You can't say that you aren't impressed with Chase's results (kind of rude btw) because any program will allow some people to reach his level, an appeal to genetics as the sole distinguishing factor, and then say that it would be more convincing if he were a champion. If programs from all systems are so similar as you say, then production of champions would be based only on which systems train genetically gifted people.

Also, what proves the program, or rather the system of programming, is generally good is that it works very well for many, nearly all people, not that it makes a few people particularly great. If that's what you want, that's the specific goal the SS system has set out to prove. If you can't find info on this, you haven't dug deep enough or you're willfully ignorant of it.

[bracemaker]

Mark Chaillet was a champion (and strong mofo) and he worked out twice a week, only doing the 3 lifts. Obviously, according to science, this proves RPE and other modern programming techniques are silly waste's of time, and we should all jump on the 2 day split bandwagon.

It's oddly weird how Chaillet was able to get so big and strong with such a low training frequency and volume. Obviously he should have needed more stress and volume at lower weights than the 1 day a week provided. With his Muscle Protein Synthesis dropping so much only 10 hours after his training, his results seem to be absolutely, unequivocally, unpossible.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Clearly he was using a lot of drugs (just saving perman the typing).

[Keith]

Rip has even said stuff like "The program works every time when applied correctly", thus categorically denying the possibility that outliers who the program won't work for. Which like, how could he even know? Answer is, he couldn't, it's PR-speak coming out of his ass.

If you don't understanding that the program works every time then you don't understand the program or human physiology.

The program must work every time it is applied correctly because the program is based on the scientific law that all living things adapt to stress.

Applying the program correctly means, in part, accounting for the differences between, say, a healthy 18 year old male and a frail 90 year old female. They will both "do the program" because they will both recover and adapt to the stress of training. They will train the same movement patterns although they will probably look different. And as their respective training ages advance they will need larger doses of stress to elicit further adaptations. And as the dose of stress required to elicit further adaptions increases the SRA (which is to say the period of time between PRs) will lengthen because the stress that will cause further adaptations takes longer to apply in an effective way.

Regardless of training age, optimum programming is defined as the acquisition of new strength adaptations as quickly as possible. Strength adaptations are measured by PRs. The SRA cycle is the length of time between PRs because the PR is the only evidence of an adaptation. The PR measures an increase in the ability to produce force.

The SRA model is correct and can account for plenty of nuances. The idea that there is some recovery from the stress even as more stress is still required to provoke further adaptation does not negate the model nor is it a novel idea. We recover between sets in order to apply more stress in order to elicit a strength adaptation and as training advances we recover between workouts even as we continue to accumulate the stress over multiple workouts that will eventually provoke a new adaptation.

[perman]

Perman, are you on salary with a competing system?

Nah, I'm just too argumentative, it's a character flaw. I'll stop now.