[Scott Stevenson]

Think im going to start coaching myself. Very nervous as for the past few years i have had a coach. I know what to do but of course its still all in my hands now.. any advice on making this transition ?

Brave move and I admire you for giving it a go. One piece of advise I would offer is although you are coaching yourself have a set of eyes keep an eye on you. If your too flat you need telling, if you are behind you need telling and prep plays mind games with all of us. Sometimes you just need a yes or a no. Off season is a little easier to manage if corse. Good luck

J,

I have a lot to say on this topic, of course. (THANK YOU @Clare-Barks for the tag!)

Much of what you do in this context is rooted in the WHY of the endeavor: The why can lie along the spectrum ranging from simply wanting the best on stage or other end result to wanting the deepest, greatest insight-giving experience, with the final physique product being secondary to that.

This isn’t to say that you’d not care how you look, but recognize in coaching yourself that the first person perspective is the best for gaining insight into what works and what doesn’t. It’s also the best situation for gaining perspective on your insecurities, the things you’re unsure of, how much you value knowledge vs. results.

However, if the hurdles in coaching yourself are too paralyzing, then you’ll not glean much from it and it could even be traumatizing.

THE NICE thing is that a good “coach” relies upon all the resources that he / she can, so you can pull in another eye, poll others’ opinions (as you have here) and bring all the pieces together (with you in charge) in a way that reduces your anxiety (by getting confirmation from others) and also means you’re learning in a way that can make you even better on down the road.

In eras past, “coaching yourself” was simply being a bodybuilder: Combining a cerebral pursuit in juggling training, diet, supplementation, etc with the physical trials of bodybuilding. It CAN be done and has been done, but it’s not for everyone. However, if you find tacking challenges (especially of the interpersonal kind) to be rewarding, I’d say go for it. 🙂

-Scott

[Scott Stevenson]

Ive got a manual job as a builder and also do Pt sessions 4 nights a week with clients im struggling to find the right training volume as my output is really high like on average 25 000 steps a daily 7 days a week i currently train 2 on 1 off but feel battered and not recovering i was thinking of going 1 on 1 off but feel like a pussy as ive all ways trained 2 on 1 off but my body is just breaking numbers are stalling. would just like to know if anyone else has had similar problems and any feed back would be great.

Bradley,

How is your program laid out (split, sets / muscle group, etc.)?…

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

So just to be clear that I have got this correct (sorry if I come across as being a nuisance!) to perform the static. You complete the first 2 failure points of the rp set, on the final failure point you then lower the weight down(negative) & rest at the bottom (take a few breaths) & get the bar back up to then begin performing the static hold?

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this in depth, I just want to be sure that what I’m doing is 100% correct.

No problem. I’m actually glad we’re fleshing this out.

Actually given that you seemed to ignore the main thrust of my last post and what you’re asking about literally would not be possible, and would be dangerous, if I’m reading it correctly, I’d suggest you NOT go with DC training.

IMO, you need more time looking into how to do the program (this is all available at intense muscle.com) and probably (just guessing – I could be wrong as you look advanced in your avatar) and more importantly, more training experience.

In part, I don’t feel secure in providing info to you that might get you injured, but also want you to recognize what really makes DC training “work,” because if you don’t, you’d not benefit from the training. 🙂

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Sorry, I just re read your post & see you basically answered the question I have just asked! I’ll give the training style a try for a good few months & see what I get from it, just really hoping that being unable to do the static holds & negatives at the end of the failure points wont make me lose out on enough intensity to hinder my gains/progression with the volume already being on the very low side. I have looked on various forums for information on this style & it seems many are doing it alone with great progression & I can only assume they aren’t doing the negatives/statics.
Thanks again! Very informative!

Scott,

You only don a single static / pulsed negative after the three failure points.

You can indeed do those, just as I described. (I did so for years when training DC alone.)

From what I’m reading any loss of stimulus by not adhering to doing negatives or not doing statics after RP set is the least of your concerns, as far as progress.

ALERT: Tough love coming here!!! 🙂

DC training is about making gawd-damn sure you progress each and every time you go into the gym, until you’re sure it’s time to Cruise. The right mentality for DC is that you’re going to grow and get stronger come hell or high water, rather than be concerned about what if’s and what others might or might not be doing.

Where there is a will, there is a way: You’re going to war with DC, heading full on into a battle with gravity where *you’re* the mutha-f’in force of nature here. If you want to do a static, then you take the time, find a way and be sure to re-set the bar as needed. Or, you take an extra few breaths until you’re sure you can lift the load to the starting position, or you grab a spot. (You’ll only be doing a few of those every workout…)

Success with DC is about grinding out strength and size gains over the years. Those eccentrics are topping on the cake, but it’s the cake that needed to be eaten. 🙂

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Amazing response thank you very much for clearing that up, i was just worried that I might not get good progression from dc with me being unable to finish on a negative with some exercises due to not having a spotter to help me get the weight back up & rack it. So glad that’s not the case as I am very intrigued with this style of training after doing a lot of reading up. Been experimenting by throwing the odd rp set into my usual split over the last few weeks (keeping recovery in mind of course) & I’m really looking forward to getting at it properly in the next few weeks. Thanks again guys!

Scott – no problem!

Frankly, and you may have not even picked up on this, but ideally you’d have a spotter there to allow you to start every rep on an eccentric, too,, which is the really PITA. This would include the static / pulsed holds at the end of the RP set.

On a Hammer Press, for instance, you’d ideally have a spotter give you a lift to the fully extend position so that you start each segment of the RP sete with an eccentric and then (per the above) finish each part with an eccentric. When it comes to the final static (after three failure points), when NOT having a spotter, the effort to lift the load just for a single concentric action so you can do the static / pulsed negative can dramatically cut down on how long the static is. (OTOH, Dante has said that the static is the least of his worries as far as the stimulus. I actually find that those can dramatically add to the stimulus, but also substantially tax the CNS if one really fights the load like it’s a life or death situation.

So, with a barbell press – this is a PITA, but I’ve done it – you’d want to use collars such that after finishing on a negative, you can put the load back up to the normal staring position so you can start the lift on an eccentric.

Doing the above is sometimes just not really feasible (or possible with a hammer press, for instance, sans partner), so I’d not sweat it. If you do do so, then I personally would do it like this. (This is ME, as someone who Dante considered his official DC trainer for several year, but not something I’m certain Dante said, although I doubt he’d disagree…)

Example: Low incline smith chest press
Segment 1: Start with bar up top, finish set on negative with safety hooks in place
—Get up, and lift the bar up to the starting position. (CAN BE A PITA if your deadlift / row sucks compare to presses – BE SAFE ABOVE ALL ELSE! You may need to have a box or sometime in place to make this as easy as possible)
— Start breath counting after seated and resting after the above. <– This accounts for the effort / time spent in lifting the bar back to the starting position
Segment 2: Per the above, finishing on negative.
Repeat rigamarole with bringing bar back to top position.
ETC.
ETC.
ETC.

Again, with finishing on the negative, starting on the negative won’t make or break you at all. As Clare noted: Just be consistent with whatever you do wrt starting and finishing with eccentric action and PROGRESS.

THE KEY IS PROGRESSION, driving by appropriate recovery. [The above are details that add quality to the stimulus, but may be moot, or even excessive if you train like a maniac and tend to recovery poorly relative to that, and are secondary to the basics (food, sleep, hard training generally, etc) that determine how well you progress.]

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Scott,

You’d use a rack with safety bars in place for BB presses and the safety hooks when using the smith machine.

You’ll progress just fine not doing that, but it’s in place simply b/c that final effort during the controlled eccentric after concentric failure (or essentially what is certain to be the last full rep), will create tremendous tension in the activated muscle (as less muscle is used / needed to lower a load d/t the fact that sk. muscle produced more force eccentrically vs. concentrically for any given speed of movement).

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Was wondering what would be the best rest time between your load and back off sets as sometimes spend too much time getting myself ready before each set so can perform at my best and end up loosing pump and spending too much time on workouts due to prolonged rest, was wondering peoples thought on how long to rest between the sets thanks

Here’s a black n’ white kind of approach to this: It sounds like you have all the knowledge needed to determine the right rest interval for you, but know AFTER the fact that you’ve been resting too much. Given that you could:

• You know you’re spending too much time when your pump is lost, so you will have to shorten it from there. You might use a watch / timer as an objective placeholder for this that you can use to see when you’re resting too long. (I.e., if you wait 4 min – training has you have been – and can tell during / after the set that was too long, then start forcing yourself to use a 3:30 rest interval… Continue adjusting like this until you’ve got the right interval.)

(BTW, I’m not saying that having or not having a pump is the right way to guage rest interval, but if it matter to YOU that’s what matters. 🙂

• You’re concerned about overall time of your sessions. So, how long over what you think would be right / optimal are you? If it’s say, 20min and you can attribute that entirely to rest intervals, and you’re doing, say 16 sets (about 15 intervals) then this means you’re over by about 90s on each rest interval…. This is being a bit anal about figuring out what’s right for you, but it gives you another piece of info to use to fine tune…

Shit, you could combine the above and it suggests you need to rest about 30 – 90 seconds LESS than you are. So, you might start with a middle of the road reduction (60s) and after you know what your rest interval is (just look at the watch just before your next set, doing things just as you have been), then you’d drop a min. off of that and make that your rest interval.

And adjust from there… 🙂

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

For sure!

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

You’re welcome, Simon!

One last thing to be sure: Blast duration is determined by you, not set out in stone. 6 weeks is a typical max duration, but don’t hold your self to that in any way. Blast duration is also auto regulated.

Note that the duration of the Intense Cruise is relative to the previous Blast, so cruising more often doesn’t equate to set backs. For example, two 3 week blasts with a 1 week cruise means 6 out of 8 weeks spent Blasting, just as a 6 week blast would. If you, lets say, are bound and determined to go 6 weeks but you’re not progressing b/c a Cruise is needed, then the shorter blasts would lend themselves to great progress over time…

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Thanks Scott . I think I get it now loading sets example …
squats to failure ..rest 2 min
Rdl to failure .. rest 2 min
Leg extension to failure .. rest 2 min
Calf raise to failure .

Thanks for your reply and help , much appreciated .

Sure!

You’re getting closer (but I can tell you’ve not looked at the book or the overview sheets…).

[Are calves part of the thigh?… How many sets of calves do you do with Tier I?…]

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey Simon – you’re welcome!

Warm up however you like, man. Totally up to you, well, except….. Loading sets for a given muscle group(s) are done a set time interval, regardless if there is not a 2nd set of a given Loading set exercise, so you do the work sets (Loading sets) without any warm-up in between, as you’d have warmed up before had (for all exercises of the Loading Sets).

You just did straight sets as you describe them above. Using the rest interval standardizes your recovery between sets, so, for example, you can track progress with more precision. For example, you’re not getting more reps in part b/c you’re just resting longer week after week b/c you want to beat the log book.

If you’re adding “warm-up” sets to add stimulus, then those are working sets, not warm-ups, in my book (sorry for the pun!).

Yeah, I think re-reading and simply pay closer attention to overview sheets would help out.

I think you’ll get on quite well… 🙂 If your joints are getting battered by an exercise, just don’t do it, put it later in the workout (later among zig-zagged sets or as last of your MR’s or pump set), to force yourself to use a lower load and be kinder to the joints and be ensure you’re warmed up.

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey Simon,

Folks are free to do as they will, of course, but here are my thoughts:

You didn’t zig-zag the Loading sets. The reasons for that are in the book of course and pan out over the long and short haul: This lets you pre-fatigue and change exercise order to keep fav. exercise in the rotation if / when you plateau.

—–

You were 1 set shy of the Tier I loading set total for Calves: calls for 2 sets on Tier I.

—–

There shouldn’t be a need to do two warm-ups for a pump set in most cases, but better safe than sorry.

—–

Delts and abs would be supersetted and then bi’s and tri’s done together. I know you train abs on another day, but training abs here gives you the opportunity to have a total rest day (see below) and also some folks like to use this to practice a front relaxed pose – even with a vacuum – where the delts would be taxed (as when holding this pose on stage) and the respiratory rate high, making it a challenge to keep the midsection flat. This can be a great time in training – simply right after that super set – to do a 30s front relaxed and get damn good at that when it comes time to get on stage for the real deal.

If you’re training adductors on a separate day, you could be hitting them 4x / week directly and indirectly (or more with the Turbo version). Might work for you but I can foresee some overuse niggles coming into play.

——

I’m not a fan of cardio, you might have heard – rather see folks do active fun things, even if just a stroll in the neighborhood vs. “cardio.” Many folks just WANT / NEED to be in the gym more often than 4x / week. Maybe fore just a Blast or two, I’d encourage you to ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY bury yourself in the gym on the 3 regular Training days (auto regulating Volume Tier, exercise selection, etc of course) and see if you really feel like you need to go in for light cardio, etc.

—–

You don’t mention any stretches. 🙂

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

Cool . I downloaded fortitude training a month back, read through it all and I like the concept . Think it’s probably time I gave it a go

Oh, cool!

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

You might like this article: https://www.elitefts.com/education/training/bodybuilding/rustproofing-the-iron-warrior/

Also, I devised Fortitude Training in part for myself, being in the same situation you are. I hear many, many older guys tell me their aches n’ pains dissipate and their training is rejuvenated when the start doing FT.

-S

[Scott Stevenson]

FWIW, I’ve posted up solutions, time and time again, now, on how to zig zag in busy gyms (just as jdh mentioned).

Training with a partner makes it much easier of course (as two people can hold down two machines).

If you guys would like solutions, let me know what you’re having trouble finding a way to zig-zag and I’ll toss out some ideas. 🙂

-S