So, I've had the luck of the draw lately which has enabled me to work twice daily. Usually my work schedule prohibits this but for all of two months here I'll be able to get in two sessions a day, one on weekends. My thinking on high frequency training owes
a lot to Chad Waterbury and I suggest anyone interested in the concept read a few of his articles:
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=905832
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=960811
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=651322
I started this experiment in mid-July and spent two weeks building up to the workload and frequency I planned to handle. By August I was off and running full steam on the program. My training has been all about full-body workouts. I shoot for a 2-on-1-off and do two sessions a day on weekdays and 1 session a day on weekends. Usually this comes to 7-9 workouts per week. This may sound much, it will probably sound crazy to most of the trainees on this forum, but each bodypart session is limited to 24-36 reps and one exercise so the overall volume isn't that high and I've tried to help my recuperation as best I could (which didn't really work out as I'd hoped).
I used simple exercise pairings as per the original program but I switched here and there to keep things interesting and try to get as good an agonist/antagonist pairing as possible. So, for instance, I'd do incline presses with bent-over rows but dips with chins. I also chose to go the instinctive training route (although I think that's a misnomer) and decide upon entering the gym what I was going to do. This was mostly forced upon me since the times that I chose to (could) work out were first thing in the morning at 6:30 AM and again at 4:30 PM. This meant that although I wasn't there for the extreme rush-hour training traffic there were still plenty of people around so I had to be able to adapt.
Here are a few things I've learned along the way.
- 24 reps per session is fine for upper body but doesn't cut it for legs. Why? A lack of overlap. Simply put, any time I pulled or pressed something heavy my delts and arms took a heck of a beating. Doing lats puts some stress on midback and so on. For legs there was no such overlap and the strength increases I noticed for upper body were better than for legs.
- Arms should only be worked once a day at most and with limited reps. Why work arms at all with all the work they get from the pulling and pressing? Well, I have no really good answer for that except that my pulls always work better when I'm doing direct biceps work. And that's enough justification for me.
- Abs can be trained only once every other day. When hitting the heavy stuff hard you're using the whole midsection to stabilize your body and that's enough for abs most of the time. When I tried doing abs once a day I found myself breaking form a bit more on heavy deadlifts and front squats.
- Taking recuperative measures is vital. Unfotunately my sleep patterns are pretty crappy so I wasn't able to get as much sleep as I might have needed (I got about 7 hours a night). I also had a hard time stuffing in enough solid foods since the work schedule that allowed me to workout this way also meant I was on the run or on the road the better part of the work day. There's nothing wrong with protein shakes but they can't take the place of real protein-rich food which they had to do for me lots of times over the past month.
- Alternating hot and cold showers work. Don't ask me why, I've probably read the explanation but it's not something I feel comfortable adressing (Waterbury speaks about this and he knows more about it than most) but it really does work in aiding nervous system recuperation. Any time I felt that I didn't have the time for a 10-min shower after my morning workout and opted instead for just washing myself off quickly, my afternoon session sucked. Big time.
- Take creatine. I haven't taken any creatine for the entire year and considering the strength gains I've made recently I wish I had added it to my regimen for this experiment. I'm not super-responsive to creatine but it does give me a slight boost and I wonder what I could have done with it.
- Pyramid the big stuff. The original HFT program calls for doing heavy workouts of 8x3 and I did that for deadlifts, front squats and incline presses but my training style is such that I prefer to pyramid. So I would work up to a weight over 4 sets, usually adding 2,5 kg per set, and then hit my work weight for the remaining 4 sets. It made weight progression much easier and that extra motivation is gold for me.
- Squat first. I tried to do one squat variation and one deadlift variation per mini-cycle (2 days) and quickly learned that squats have to come first. Otherwise my lower back was toast for an afternoon session of squatting.
All in all this has been a positive experience. Training this much hasn't caused as much strain on my body as I expected but I've also haven't made any significant progress in the look of my body because I haven't been getting enough food and recuperation. I don't weigh myself, haven't for years, but I have added some fat and I look a little more "pumped" (fo lack of a better word) these days. My girlfriend asked me last Tuesday if I was going to be this muscle man from now on so I must have done something right even though the pics don't really show it (at least not to my eyes). I have added some decent strength which I didn't expect. My snatch-grip deadlift which I always did 3x8 or 4x9 went from 95 kg for 3x8 to 107,5 kg 4x9 which is the best I've ever done really. My
regular deadlift went from 140 kg for 3 to almost 155 kg for 3 (missed the third rep on my last set so it doesn't
really count).
I've added a pic that is a comparison between how I've "changed" over the past month. I say nothing at all really. Maybe a little thicker in the traps and arms but that's about it. Unfortunately the differencein light in the pictures make it hard to compare (the shadows on the starting pic make everything seem larger). I tried my best to duplicate the lighting conditions but fall is upon us and that nice sun that came in in the starting pic isn't with us anymore...
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