Progress on pressing movements

[perman]

Do you actually believe this? Why?

Because of scientific studies.

I know you like to dismiss most of it, and claim SS are the only ones talking sense, but there's tons of good science on strength and hypertrophy going on that you've refused to acknowledge these last years.

If muscle protein synthesis goes down quicker, logically you both get less of it, and spend less time of the week improving, so increased frequency is a logical programming move the more advanced you get.

I'm still waiting on the Norwegian to regurgitate the bullshit he's been taught about muscle protein synthesis, and how everybody eventually needs to train 18 hours a day to get to 450 pounds of LBM at 2% bodyfat.

Ah, straw-mans. The retorts of people who can't refute opponents' actual points...

[perman]

Can't edit here anymore, so I can't decrease the size of the pic. Either enter the URL of the pic or google "damas 2015 muscle protein synthesis" if you want to see the image properly scaled...

[Ivan Stepic]

Can't edit here anymore, so I can't decrease the size of the pic. Either enter the URL of the pic or google "damas 2015 muscle protein synthesis" if you want to see the image properly scaled...

Ah, The Muscle Protein Synthesis. The only relevant marker when it comes to getting bigger and stronger. You are going to have to do better than that. Or do you actually seem to think that you understand physiology?

[Satch12879]

Perman, do you actually believe that no one associated with this organization reads anything from the literature, particularly Rip? SS has a long history of criticisms and critiques of peer-reviewed studies on numerous issues in exercise science, that’s true; however, the critiques are thorough and documented. Sully had been presenting single papers that the SSC Science Committtee have dissected each year for many years. This is not the only document that they get into. Further, the objections are rooted in clinical experience that repeatedly tells practitioners that their on the ground experiences are often opposite to what the literature predicts or recommends.

Seems to me that this is a “straw man” on your part.

Moreover, do you really think it’s appropriate to publish two graphs from a study that you have provided no details on, particularly how it was constructed and/or run, thinking that it constituted an argument? Did you read this paper you cite or are you just copying and pasting someone else’s position? Honestly, do you really think “because the literature says so” is a valid argument? Do you have any familiarity with the reproducibility crisis going on in academia and the hard sciences right now?

[Ole]

Moreover, do you really think it’s appropriate to publish two graphs from a study that you have provided no details on, particularly how it was constructed and/or run, thinking that it constituted an argument? Did you read this paper you cite or are you just copying and pasting someone else’s position? Honestly, do you really think “because the literature says so” is a valid argument? Do you have any familiarity with the reproducibility crisis going on in academia and the hard sciences right now?

Maybe Perman should have provided more details into how the study was done, but would that have helped? He did provide the necessary information so you could look it up yourself if you were interested.

What is a valid argument? I think referring to the literature about a subject is a good starting point at least. And then one could discuss individual studies if interested.

As far as I know, there is not a large reproducibility crisis in the hard sciences, but there might be some in soft sciences. (I guess that also depends on how you define "hard" and "soft".) I would not be surprised if quite a bit of exercise sciences studies are hard to reproduce, but what is the alternative?

Do you dispute the particular answer Perman gave? That muscle protein synthesis happen relatively soon after exercise (mainly in the first 24-48 hours, and not longer) and that the respons is less in trained individuals? On what basis would you dispute it?

[Fulcrum]

Increasing upper body volume and possibly frequency per week is a very reasonable early to mid intermediate change, sure. But you're agreeing with me, really, so I'm not sure what the point of your post was, unless it was to argue that the vast majority of people asking this Q have a) made sure their form is actually good, and b) adjusted their training in line with The First Three Questions, if it wasn't already.

If that's what you're asserting, then you'd have a very hard time convincing me of that, based on my interactions with tens of thousands of people as clients, seminar and training camp attendees, and here on the forums or elsewhere online.

It's a midwit response when the question is posed with little to no background info, and then replied to as such without asking for any of that background info. The assumption is that the person is doing everything right, and has stalled anyway. That is rarely the case. Usually it's something much simpler.

In cases where the person has good form, has taken care of The First Three Questions, and has actually still run out of upper body progress on LP or early intermediate programming, then yes, it's not an unreasonable reply at all. The stress needs to go up, and that is a frequently used way to do so successfully. But to give it as a reply without being given or probing for more info that is extremely likely to show that it's something much simpler and more fundamental, is a midwit move.

I can allow for the possibility of someone being so sick and tired of answering poorly framed, insufficiently information'd questions just giving it as a pat answer sometimes. It gets tiresome having to draw out people's actual questions for them, or the info needed to answer their Qs, for free, for someone you don't know, have no reason to care about, and will likely never meet, who might very well think you owe them something for no reason other than that they're here and they're breathing. Hell, maybe if you search enough through the forums, you'll find a place where I've done this too. But that's a human failing, and we're all subject to those.

To give it as the actual answer that you think is correct, without addressing the other issues and info, is what I'm calling a midwit move.

Yeah we agree to agree then, especially about responding to a question without all the facts about the OP.
That happens a lot here I guess: responses to posts without all the facts.
yeah, I've seen some people here respond with "just eat more", to OPs that were recovering-morbid-obesity-type-2-diabetic folks...
...but nobody checked their post history, or bothered to ask.

Your first sentence of your post turned, "benching 3x/ week" into "complexity".

I guess the purpose of my post was...
It seems there is some vitriol displayed here when someone says, "hey, maybe you should bench more (often and/or volume)".
The response by Rip (et al and now) is becoming a typical over emotional, "omg you RPE high volume high frequency idiots won't just go away".

Now that we have OP's info on how he is implementing the program.
Perman's response would seem wrong of course.

What you should probably do is, put it up in the sticky that if you don't include training and diet history with your initial post, or at least "pre-answer" the first three questions, your post will be just thrown out (if its in regards to stalling on the NLP).

[Ivan Stepic]

Do you dispute the particular answer Perman gave? That muscle protein synthesis happen relatively soon after exercise (mainly in the first 24-48 hours, and not longer) and that the respons is less in trained individuals? On what basis would you dispute it?

Let me try... There is nothing to dispute here until perman delivers the evidence on:
1. In what contexts MPS rates are relevant to muscular hypertrophy and strength
2. To what extent are MPS rates relevant to muscular hypertrophy and strength

If you guys are talking about MPS rates as an end goal, I apologize.

[Satch12879]

The reproducibility crisis is very real. It began in the soft, i.e., social sciences, and is creeping into the hard sciences. Psychology, medicine, economics, and ::gasp:: exercise science have been effected.

Replication crisis - Wikipedia

Yes, it would have helped. Simply stating "this article proves what I have said" is not an argument, it is an assertion. An assertion is not an argument. Moreover, taking this finding, which I don't think is too controversial, i.e., for a given dose of stress, the adaptation response of trained individuals is less than for those who are less trained, and then extrapolating the conclusion that the SRA cycle as described and used as a basis for programming in PPST3 is wrong, is, at best a stretch. It actually seems to indicate the opposite.

But, we know this. As you get more advanced, you need to do more to see results. Increased frequency is one variable that coaches manipulate in order to increase stress and drive an adaptation. Reynolds and Hambrick were just talking about this on the Barbell Logic podcast.

[Devyn Stewart]

I thought it was fairly well-accepted among the Starting Strength community that the SRA cycle is a flawed model that gets worse at describing training the more advanced a lifter gets. I thought it is mostly used as an introduction for novices and early intermediates when it does a pretty good job. Am I missing something?

[Adam Gottstein]

I only read the abstract, but thought this was interesting:

Exercise-induced increases in MPS are shorter lived and peak earlier in the trained state than in the untrained state, resulting in a smaller overall muscle protein synthetic response in the trained state. Thus, RT induces a dampening of the MPS response, potentially limiting protein accretion, but when this occurs remains unknown.

It seems the study is indicating that the growth window and response is smaller in trained athletes than untrained, though the study does not identify when this transition takes place. Given the same RT (we'll assume relative to the trainee's skill level), the untrained individual has a greater response opportunity (a greater window for MPS) than a trained individual.

So, if I apply this to the SRA principle, it indicates that an untrained individual will have the capacity for greater recovery in the same amount of time, and in turn, greater adaptation (which, arguably, is recovery beyond the initial state). That would correspond to being able to increase the weight every single workout (48-72 hours). The decreased recovery capacity of a trained individual would then result in a lesser adaptation, requiring more stress to be applied to be able to add more weight to the lift.

This seems to support the SRA principle, not contradict it. Specifically, as you progress in your training, it will take you longer to be able to add more weight to the lift. This seems to correlate well with the fact that advanced trainees are not adding weight to the bar each workout, relative to their previous maximums.

Back to the original post, applying this to the press and/or bench press. The question was how to increase bench press when it feels like the OP is nearing his limits. perman's response was "more volume." The response was that it depends, and it is potentially dangerous to provide it as a blanket statement. Not because SRA is wrong, but because it is right. In cases where it is correct, it is because the trainee is not getting enough stress to adapt following recovery. By adding additional volume, you increase stress, and recovery becomes sufficient to drive adaptation.

There was also a specific attack on Texas Method being inadequate volume, which if I read correctly was specifically pointed to press/bench. Looking at PPST 3rd edition, I counted at least 10 different program variants within the Texas Method framework. This includes one that prioritizes bench, one that prioritizes press, one that prioritizes olympic lifts, a couple of 4-day breakdowns vs. 3 day, etc.... From my perspective, the biggest take away from all of this is that there are many ways you can program within the texas method framework, and this is something that someone who knows they need additional bench or press volume should be able to do.