by this reasoning i could eat dounuts and cheese wiz all day gain 300 lbs of fat be 89% fat and increase my bench press.
Too general or too simple?
Yes, you would.
‘Weight’ is as useful a term as ‘hypertrophy’ is for 90% of athletes
Just adding bodyfat wouldn’t be good healthwise, but if your goal is to lift more weight, eat more. Numerous strength experts have stated this (Bill Starr, Pavel Tsatsouline to name a few). This is ABSOLUTE strength, not relative strength.
What’s wrong with adding muscle?
Tsatsouline = expert?
Nothing is wrong with adding muscle, but added weight, either fat or muscle, will help lift more weight.
I disagree.
I see no benefit for excess bodyfat.
Other than increased strength, I don’t believe there is any extra benefit. One exception would be a lineman in football who could use the bodyfat to protect against blows from opponents.
Feel free to disagree, but check other sources. Why do you believe that Pavel isn’t an expert?
There is no benefit for excess bodyfat in an athlete. Period.
The lineman argument is nonsense.
Rugby players put in very big hits with no padding.
Pavel?
an expert?
… I don’t know I’m asking.
I have read his stuff and there is nothing there that blows me away
Who has he trained (please say something else other than the Spetsnaz)
To be perfectly honest when I read his stuff its written with so much nonsensical verbage I just see a BS artist.
Fat obviously isn’t contractile tissue, but is does improve leverages for lifting. If you decrease the range of motion in a lift, you can obviously lift more weight. Thicker chest and arms improve the bench. Thicker waist improves squat stability. Look at all of the weight classes in O-lifting and powerlifting. The largest lifters have the largest lifts. Total weight moved is relative to weight of the athlete (absolute strength).
Have you been talking to Barry Ross?
What you’re saying above is not necessarily the same as what you were saying a couple of posts ago.
“Probably the easiest way to increase absolute strength is to increase bodyweight.”
I do agree that you need to recover and to do that you typically would have to be in a hypercaloric state. Eating for recovery is different that eating for the sake of eating (Macronutrients is an important aspect here often overlooked). However, just because you are bigger doesn’t mean that you’ll increase absolute strength by the sole reason of being bigger. That could perhaps fall into the idea that if I increase the number of reps at 225lbs for my bench my max has increased as well. This is certainly not the case.
It’s a given you still have to train to see gains. How am I not saying the same thing?
I reserve 10 day tapers for those few annual occasions where performance must be demonstrated. Otherwise I use variability of load and the concept of not getting so far away from performance that it can’t be called up when the time comes. If you taper too often, the training losses outweight the benefits.
Okay, so then I’d say that you would think of the 7 week cycle’s 10 day peaking/taper as a recovery period instead. Not dropping the volume too much from the training period but allowing enough for very good recovery.
Move the 3/4 days rest from after the 13 week cycle to after the 22 week cycle and the 2/3 days rest after the 7 week cycle to after the 13 week cycle. And the 7 days of AA in the 5 week cycle is now considered an extra week in training so it’s really a 4 week cycle now with a 10 day taper and 18 days of training. Now there’s only 3 times to major peaks instead of 4. Not too much difference in my opinion.
Whatdaya think?
Just in case this post gets overlooked.
Just out of curiosity, how would YOU (MR FRANCIS) set this up?
I think your plan is ok now that I understand that you’re not really tapering down so often.
That’s good to know BUT I’m not looking for “ok”. I’m looking for really good bordering on utopia. Charlie, what would your utopia be for this type of periodization idea???
Frankly, I don’t have nearly enough info to work with. that’s why there’s no magic prescription. have a look at the SPP plans in the Vanc 2004 DVD and you can see the approach to the season, but from there you need to have the list of competitions and work backwards from the key meet. If you are fast enough, you can pretty much find the meets to suit your final objective. If not, you have to make due and work around the holes in the competitions with maximal speed sessions.