[b said:
Quote[/b] (Joe G @ July 22 2005,6:33)]What is HST? A better question might be "What isn't HST?" This entire forum from the "newbies" to the "experts" all have completely different training routines. The suggested routines range from every single training protocol that exists to man. It seems to me that any rep scheme, frequency, volume, intensity, and exercise selection under the sun pertains to HST. The only common thread is that weights are used as resistance to contract muscles. There are HST members and great friends, ect. that train MWF, MWF am-pm, six days a week, six days a week am-pm, and any other routine that is possible. The lack of precision and vagueness that is spread throughout this forum makes it difficult to decipher the "science" behind the training. Many of the people on this forum praise Bryan Haycock and even go as far as calling him "a god", but meanwhile they're training routines that dont even resemble anything that Bryan suggested in his articles. With a name like Hypertrophy SPECIFIC Training, it does not seem specific to me at all when reading through this forum.
I would appreciate responses from Bryan himself if he is involved in this forum, or other HST Experts on this matter.
Joe
Hi Joe G,
Welcome to the forum!
I think a lot of guys have provided good answers to your question already, but I figure I'll add my two cents.
I think you asked a good question when you said, "what
isn't HST?" Let's try to address that.
This is a common question from people who stumble onto Hypertrophy-Specific Training (HST). It is a very good question and one that deserves to be answered, without simply zealously defending the premise that is being questioned. I hope you don't feel that is what has happened here.
First, let’s start with what
isn’t different about HST compared with previous training programs. The length of this list is what has raised this question in the first place, and justifiably so. Let’s begin with the “concepts” and then follow with the “methods”.
Pre-existing Scientific Concepts of Weight Training Found in HST
• Stimulus Leads to Adaptation (cause and effect)
• Specific Adaptation to Implied Demands (SAID) or simply “Specificity”
• Progressive Resistance
• Quasi-Inverse relationship between Time and Tension.
• Diminishing Returns over time
Pre-existing Methods of Weight Training Found in HST
• Traditional Weight Lifting Movements both compound and isolation (squat, bench, curls, etc).
• Training the whole body 3 times per week
• Altering weight loads used over time.
• Altering the number of repetitions used over time.
• Doing eccentric reps (negatives).
There hasn’t ever been a weight training program that did not incorporate or mention at least most of these Concepts, and at least some of these Methods. Entire books (big books) have been written to explore these concepts and teach these methods. Whenever research was required, like for a textbook, you would find “strength and conditioning” research sited to support the validity of the concepts and virtues of each particular training method. The studies used “strength” and other “performance indicators” as a measure of whether the concepts and/or methods were correct.
This has been perfectly sufficient for nearly everybody including trainers, teachers, professors, coaches and athletes, who have ever lifted a weight. For those who this wasn’t sufficient, they simply explored other methods for steadily increasing body mass, speaking specifically of hormones. This exploration began in the 40s and has continued unabated every since. Today, a competitive bodybuilder considers himself
conservative if he only uses 1 gram of Test per week. Lest I digress, we are not including the effects of androgens and other drugs in this thread. That is a different issue with concepts and methods specific to the pharmacology and endocrinology of hormones and muscle tissue.
Ok, now let’s consider the concepts and/or principles or beliefs of traditional weight training that HST
refutes. These are the concepts that the new research refutes most specifically.
Pre-existing Bodybuilding Concepts that HST Refutes:
• A muscle must be fully recovered before you should train it again.
• You should not train a muscle that is sore (DOMS, not injury).
• You must never train a muscle on consecutive days. (i.e. train the same muscle everyday)
• The concept of “Overtraining” as it applies to muscle tissue.
• You must train with maximum “intensity” to elicit significant muscle growth.
• You should not use eccentric training on a “frequent” basis.
• You must change your exercise selection regularly in order to “confuse the muscle” into continued growth.
• You must “hit a muscle at every angle” in order to adequately load it.
• Muscle Fatigue is the primary indicator of having triggered the growth signal
• You must effectively isolate a muscle in order to load it effectively.
• You can train a muscle in such as way as to change its natural shape.
Pre-existing Bodybuilding Methods and/or practices that HST Refutes:
• Training a muscle no more than once or twice per week.
• Training less frequently as your “intensity” increases.
• Adding weight only when you can complete a certain number of additional reps at that weight. (This is a fundamental difference!
• Training to failure every set and/or workout (If you don’t how would you know if you can perform additional reps at that weight yet?)
• Forced reps
• Performing several “obligatory” exercises per body part per workout
• Performing multiple exhaustive sets per exercise
• Changing exercises to “confuse” the muscle.
The above erroneously applied concepts/beliefs and the methods/practices they engender are the cause of all the confusion and different training programs out their today. Most all of it stems from bodybuilding magazines fabricating these concepts and practices to address their ongoing need for new content each month and to conceal the use of drugs required to attain the level of mass flaunted by the sponsored models. By limiting your study of muscle growth to these magazines you will be ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. But that is an issue to be addressed elsewhere.
Now, there is one strength training concept with its associated methods and practices that can make HST appear to be like previous programs. That is the concept of “periodization”.
We will only briefly discuss the topic of periodization, as only a brief treatise will be sufficient to show the differences between periodization and HST. For more detailed discussions of periodization you are advised to read "Super Training: Special Strength Training for Sporting Excellence" by Siff & Verkhoshansky, "Special Strength Training" by Verkhoshansky, "Fundamentals of Sport Training" by Matveyev and "Science and Practice of Strength Training" by Zatsiorski.
First some terminology, the term “periodization” refers to the undulating intensity and volume of advanced strength training methods. Periodization is designed to manage fatigue and at the same time create a crescendo of sorts for strength development called “peaking”. The idea behind the planning of periodization is to have your strength peak at precisely the right time corresponding to a strength event or competition.
Periodized training is broken up into "cycles". A cycle is simply a period of time where specific training characteristics (i.e. sets, reps, weight loads) are controlled and maintained in order to bring about a desired result. You have macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles.
Macrocycles, which usually last from 5-12 months, are the longest and consist of multiple mesocycles, which usually last from 4-6 weeks. Mesocycles are then made up of multiple, 5 - 10 day microcycles. I do not want to dwell very long on these points as I am sure that most of you are already familiar with this terminology. Not only that, but HST is not about periodization or strength training.
Various periodization strategies are used in sport settings. The most common form used here in the western hemisphere was popularized by Matveyev [Matveyev L. Fundamentals of Sport Training Progress Publ, Moscow, 1964 (English)]. It consists of decreasing training volume while increasing training intensity over the course of the pre-competitive season. The aim of this type of periodization was to have an athlete training at maximum intensity just prior to competition. The trick is to avoid overtraining the athlete while increasing intensity. Here are some of the more common variations in strength training periodization.
1. Smooth undulating wave-like variations of the load over definite phases. As mentioned earlier, this is the most common strategy used here in the West.
2. Abrupt step-like alterations of loads of different intensity (light, medium, heavy) over microcycles and mesocycles. During both day-to-day training and during monthly cycles, training load is abruptly and somewhat randomly altered from light to heavy, from heavy to light, light to medium, and so on and so forth. [Vorobyev A. A Textbook on Weightlifting International Weightlifting Federation, Budapest, 1978]
When utilizing these and other periodization techniques, there are some definite guidelines that should be followed for best results. However, there is plenty of room for variation within these guidelines. Siff and Verkhoshansky give these simple rules to follow:
Aerobic training (4-6 weeks) may be used after Power training (4-6 weeks)
Aerobic training (4-6 weeks) may be used after Glycolytic training (4-6 weeks)
Glycolytic training (4-6 weeks) may be used after Power training (4-6 weeks)
Continuous training should last no more than 5 months before rest is provided.
These guidelines are based on observations showing that the neurological effects of the previous training methodology remain throughout the following training period only when performed in specific sequences. The last guideline refers to overtraining and the body’s ability to adapt positively to the demands of training.
Now the point of summarizing periodization was simply to show that HST does not incorporate periodization in the sense that it is used in previous training methods. As mentioned earlier, HST incorporates escalating poundages and incrementally decreasing reps per set over time. Granted, this resembles periodization. Then why isn’t it periodization? Because in HST, it has nothing to do with strength. In other words, the manipulation of load and repetitions has nothing to do with performance, and performance cannot be used to determine how to make those changes.
HST is founded on the knowledge that muscle tissue will hypertrophy when a load is applied. Live or dead, innervated or not, if there are nutrients around, it will grow. This is because it is “mechanosensitive”. In other words, muscle cells are sensitive to being physically distorted. However, this sensitivity is greatly reduced after the distortion is chronically induced or applied. This is called the Repeated Bout Effect.
The only way to overcome the repeated bout effect (without hormones) is to increase the severity of distortion (strain, stretch, etc) of the muscle cells. We accomplish this by increasing the load. However, the adaptive capacity of the muscle tissue easily keeps pace with the progression of voluntary strength. The result? Plateau. Once you have reached the limit of your voluntary strength, and the muscle tissue has adapted to the physical distortion caused by the load, you will no longer grow at a significant rate.
The solution to this dilemma is to “resensitize” the muscle to the anabolic effects of physical distortion or strain. This is called Strategic Deconditioning and must be applied when the tissue is no longer responding to the loading stimulus. It has nothing to do with managing fatigue or peaking for a contest, or any other performance variable.
So, we have now painted a picture of both periodization, as utilized in strength training methods, as well as the progressive loading and Strategic Deconditioning utilized in HST.
Of course this is only a small treatise of HST as compared to traditional routines. It was not my intention to cover everything about HST or everything about strength training methods. My only intent was to point out that they are different for the very simple reason that the mechanism of muscle growth, and that of voluntary strength are different. And any routine designed “specifically” to increase one or the other will naturally be different, though on the surface, or to the uninitiated, they may appear the same.
