Three unrelated questions

[OITW]

Coach,

1. Creatine. In PP you suggest that the body will increase creatine production as part of the response to the stress stimulus. While creatine supplementation is described as ?topping off the tank,? does anything suggest that supplementation blunts that response to the stress and interferes with the adaptation, that is, causes the body to produce less creatine on its own than it otherwise would? The follow-on would be, assuming a sufficient diet, can the body adapt to produce enough creatine on its own if stressed enough?

2. Other posters have described having to leave out certain exercises because of time / equipment limitations. I do that with chins, GHRs and sit-ups, and less often with power cleans, and I know the price I pay doing that. When time is pinched, is there a value to doing (for example) squats and press one day, and power clean the next to catch up (not routinely, but maybe once every other week), or would the power cleans in this case interfere too much with the adaptation to the previous day?s stress? Using the same hypothetical exercises, would it be better to do the two more stressful lifts (squats and PCs), and save the press to the catch up day? Or is this just altogether a bad idea?

3. Ankle / calf pain: For the past month or more, seemingly aggravated by squats (but could be caused by DL/PC). On the left ankle it seems to emanate from the outside ?knob,? and come up the leg for 4-6 inches. I feel it as a burn, and the area immediately under the knob is sore to touch. On the right ankle it feels like the achilles tendon, but in an area up the calf about 6-8 inches, not down where the tendon bridges to the heel. Again, a burn. In your experience do these pains indicate something wrong with form, perhaps a twisting or imbalance in the push under load? I?m going to video from behind to check, but I figured I?d ask before sending you yet another video of some ass squatting. Being roughly as old as you, aches and pains are part of the package and not worth noting unless they are form related and hence fixable.

Thank you very much for your time and energy in responding to these questions.

[Mark Rippetoe]

1. Creatine levels remain elevated during supplementation and return slowly down to pre-supplementation levels once you stop taking it. In other words, the creatine-synthesizing ability of the body may be blunted during supplementation, but it returns to normal at roughly the same rate that the effects of supplementation wear off. But I don't answer creatine questions generally because I just don't know or care that much about it.

2. The program as written is optimal, and anything else is less-than-optimal.

3. What kind of shoes are you wearing? Sounds like stability stuff to me.

[OITW]

Copy. To quickly follow up:

2. I probably phrased it poorly--which is the worst sub-optimal, playing catch-up with some lifts during recovery days, or not doing the lift at all during that workout cycle (ex. PCs, done once a week, so not done again until the next week)? If catching up is the best of two bad options, should one prioritize certain lifts with less of a CNS stress like benches/presses for the catch-up days? Just trying to figure out the best of two bad options often faced.

3. VS Athletics, the $45 specials he had about a year ago. I'll soldier on.

Thank you very much for your answers.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

#2

I have a very good lifter on the Texas Method right now and we have his training broken up like you mentioned

Mon
squat/bench

tues
powerclean

weds
light squat
press
power snatch

fri
squat
bench
dead

He's a college kid with lots of classes and limited time and I don't have all day to spend with him on his volume days. volume days are heavy 5x5 on squats and 6x3 plus a back off set on bench. This takes a long time. We have noticed no difference in his performance on any lift when we moved the cleans to tuesday.

[Mark Rippetoe]

2. If you leave things out of the program, you don't get the training stimulus from the omitted exercises. If you arrange things so that recovery is sub-optimal, the training stimulus is not adapted to optimally. I don't know which you'll decide on, but probably the second option is marginally better.