Repost your refutation. Better yet, repost my argument.Originally Posted by rhett
Member
Just video two kids doing a 5 rep set and 25 rep set. I'm sure a 6th grade novice's technique on the 25th rep of a squat set will be very safe.
TMPHBITEU
Repost your refutation. Better yet, repost my argument.
Member
I'm a rank beginner, so take this with a grain of salt, but I have some thoughts on this.
I don't know if you've ever seen Jamie Lewis's site, Chaos and Pain. It's pretty interesting, but not at all safe for work, or even home if you're easily offended.
Jamie does a lot of heavy singles and doubles, with a fair bit of volume and short rests. He claims that this is pretty optimal for building both mass and strength, and this actually makes a lot of sense, even within the framework Mark suggests. The thing is that Jamie is an elite lifter, close to a lot of world records in raw power-lifting for his weight class- he knows his body and capacities well, his form is burned in, and he is willing to risk injury for results. I am a rank beginner (and almost 42.). I would inevitably mess myself up badly if I tried the Chaos and Pain approach at this point.
On Monday I deadlifted 295x5. It felt heavy, but my form felt good, and I was having fun. On Friday I did 300x5 and it was a mess- I thought about bailing on the set after three reps, and I probably should have. My back was rounding, I'm not sure I locked out every rep, and the whole thing felt like I was about to hurt myself. I could hardly walk afterward, and stripping the bar was painful. What went wrong? The point is that I am not sure. For some reason 300 on Friday was much harder than 295 on Monday.
Now imagine I was doing singles. I might have done 340 on Monday and found it not so bad. And I might have tried 345 or 350 on Friday and discovered halfway up that I was going to be in traction for a while.
The nice thing about sets of five is that they are heavy enough to make you stronger, but they are light enough to leave a margin for error. Beginers will err, so you'd better have that margin. Maybe four would be better some days, and six others. But that's fiddling at the margins.
Member
He saved his own, by his extensive discussion of the issue in his book, which you have obviously not read.
Member
+1
The appeal to "common sense" in this space is not ultimately that persuasive to me. I think common sense suggests that if you want to get better at something you should do it a lot and you'll get better at it and that practicing more is better than practicing less.
Also, Rip, rhett isn't trying to refute your statement, but suggesting that in the specific argument you make here 5 is an arbitrary place to stop.
If the argument is generally true then sets of 3 are better than sets of 5 and sets of 1 are better than 3s the same way that sets of 5 are better than sets of 15.
Do we need a paper to prove this ? i think experiments on this stuff would be great.
OP: you asked a pretty similar question in the Coaches Q&A back in May.
http://startingstrength.com/resource...ad.php?t=39940
Did you use the arguments and articles suggested there? Did the owner read them? What was the response?
Member
Good idea. It would have to be accompanied by a study.
TMPHBITEU
Yes. By all means. A study.
Member
This is why we don't appeal to common sense, but to logic and experience. The real answer though is, "try it and see."
Some coaching experience shows why this is not so. Again, we need enough reps to stimulate change without their being so many that fatigue makes form break down. A total of 10-25 reps is where most programmes have ended up, historically. Only question is how we get that total, whether with 2s, 5s, 10s or whatever.If the argument is generally true then sets of 3 are better than sets of 5 and sets of 1 are better than 3s the same way that sets of 5 are better than sets of 15.
If you have someone do a lot of reps, they get fatigued. When they get fatigued, form gets shitty. When form gets shitty, they are practicing doing it wrong. In the context of starting strength, having someone who has never done a thing before practice doing it wrong is not going to help them. Thus we find that 10+ reps are not much good. It just goes shitty.
As for going really low rep, you have to remember that we need a number where when the person goes up in weight, even if the reps drop we've still got something to work with.
Now, you can have someone do say sets of 3. But what you find is that at some point as you keep putting weight on the bar, they lose a couple of reps. If they go from (say) pressing 40kg for 3,3,3,3,3, then when they go to 42.5kg they may only get a few singles. They're not going to get 10 or 20 singles, more like 5 at most. So next time you come in, will they do 2s? Probably not. Those 5 singles just weren't enough to stimulate change, to get their body to adapt. And they probably can't do 6 singles, either. You get stronger because you ask your body to do more than it did before. But with weights you can only do for singles, you can't do more than you did before. So they're stuck at 42.5kg.
Whereas if you have them do 40kg 5,5,5, then when you hit 42.5kg, even if they lose a couple of reps, at worst they'll do 3,3,3. So you have them do another 3,3, and voila, they've done 15 total reps. Next time they'll manage 4s, and after that 5s, and then they can try 45kg, and so on.
Thus, if they do 5 or so reps, when they go up in weight, even if the reps they can do drops a bit, we've still got some good reps to work with, a base to build on. If they just did 1s, 2s, or 3s, when they go up and lose some, there's very little to work with.
Lastly, consider the context of coaching. I'm teaching someone to squat. She does one rep, and I think I see an issue. She does a second rep, I've spotted the issue, and bark out a cue, "knees out!" or whatever. Now she does a third rep and sort of gets it right... if she has another two reps to go, I can make sure she got it right, so she's had 3 good reps out of 5, next time 4/5, then 5/5, great. But if that 3rd was her last rep, that's not really enough to make the lesson sink in.
And if she has 10 reps to go, well again fatigue is going to fuck things up. You're barking out cues and the poor bastard can't follow them because they're just too tired. If you've ever had someone do a 20 rep squat, you'll have learned that you can do form corrections in the first 5 reps, but after that you need to just leave the poor fucker alone. They've gone deaf, and they're so focused on getting the weight up that anything else is just an annoying distraction and "SHUT THE FUCK UP LEAVE ME ALONE I'M DYING HERE".
So for coaching, 3 reps is not enough, 10 reps is too much, 5 is about right.
These arguments are, in one form or another, in the books.
If you think something else might work better, then come up with your own sets and reps scheme, find 100 newbies to train, and try it and see how it goes. I've found it works pretty well for newbies. Whether it works well for advanced lifters I don't pretend to know, I confine my comments to my experience, an approach which if more generally applied would make the forums a lot saner even though a lot quieter and duller.
Member
You could always show her stuff by Marty Gallagher, Bill Starr, Jim Wendler.. heck dinosaur training, ryan lochte, crossfit.. everyone knows 5's are magical.
✓ Member
Rip has done a study--his life has been a study. He has observed for 30+ years what works and what does not work. Before you dismiss observation, (or experience, if you prefer), as "study" consider this. I once went to Penske racing to consult on body manufacturing. They were having manufacturing problems (consistency) with their body shape. My brother and I were shocked at how little "expertise" they had in manufacturing and engineering "theory." Yet, NASCAR teams regularly race over 200 mph--with restrictor plates! I've never gone 200--and we have much larger engines--(that produce far less power). Their results are nothing short of astonishing.
NASCAR teams' long experience teaches them what works and, just as importantly, what doesn't. Their observations and experience produce unbelievable results--not papers.
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