hst questions

[Chip Bronson]

well, just finishing up my first round of hst this week. great workout. have made improvements in strength and size. and i love the 3x week workouts. can't beat that. i feel pretty beat up but that's only becaue i haven't had a break in about 5 months. i can't wait for my time off... i'll be posting some before and after pics over next couple of weeks as well.

here's my problem. all was going great until the second week of 5's. the weight was going up easily, too easily, and by the second week the weighted pullups, weighted dips, curls and tri extensions took their toll on my hurt forearm. i started feeling a little tweak in the injured area. so i finished off my 2nd week of 5's anyway. for the last 2 weeks, however, i've had to make some changes. they are as follows. i dropped the weighted pullups and dips and went for high reps with no weight. i dropped the weight on curls and extensions back to my max weight used for the 10's. i kept the deads, incline presses and shoulder presses heavy at 5 reps. for squats i kept the max weight of 5's and just increased by 1 rep each workout. the legs are going great. and the other changes really helped out my arm. it's feeling much better.

after my break next week, i would like to resume hst but i'm not sure if the changes i made to the last 2 weeks of the program are optimal. also i'm not sure i even want to go through the 5's (except the first week of 5's which was easy and gave my body a good break) again since the second week of 5's is where my problem started.

i was thinking i would to the 2 weeks of 15's and the 2 weeks of 10's. after that i thought i'd repeat the process, 2 weeks of 15's and 2 weeks of 10's again, but up the weight a little bit. you guys have any ideas? your help is appreciated.

[Bob Smith]

15s are mainly for recuperation/recovery, so if youre looking for maximal gains, then I would either skip them or only do 1 week of them.

You could always use 15, 12 and 8 as your rep ranges and still make good progress. The other idea is simply to go down to one set of movements before/when your forearm starts to bother you.

[Chip Bronson]

thanks bob. great idea. i didn't even think of that rep range. that's why i run this stuff by you guys. but i'll do the 15's as i really need the recuperation even after the 9-day layoff i'll be taking. and then i'll stick with the 15-12-8. many thanks again for all your help.

[Neodavid]

I'm glad you guys brought this up, it's encouraging. I have 7.5 inch wrists, smaller than my wife's... (and she ain't big). They constantly get injured, last time by skull crushers at 145 lbs... heard that horrible popping sound, and haven't been able to bend them much for two weeks.

How sad, but my mindset is so much in the 6 rep to 8 rep area, I never considered moving up to 15 reps... I have no experience with that range, except being convinced (prejudiced) it would never make me grow.

Even if it just helps me maintain, I'll be happy. Thanks for idea.

Originally Posted by Chip Bronson

thanks bob. great idea. i didn't even think of that rep range. that's why i run this stuff by you guys. but i'll do the 15's as i really need the recuperation even after the 9-day layoff i'll be taking. and then i'll stick with the 15-12-8. many thanks again for all your help.

[thick]

Chip, definitely do the 15's. My cousin has f'd up wrists from falling a couple of stories. He cant use heavy weights. He is on his last week of 8's and is loving it. I had him do 15,12, and 8's. You could also do 15,12,10 or 15,12,10,8 or whatever. I set my cousin up so his 9 days off would coincide with finals. He is in engineering and it worked out perfect. Think about your schedule ahead of time and that will help you also.

To the guy above, from your short post i would think 10-12 rep range would be fine if your wrists can handle it. You arent doing an HST program r u?

Originally Posted by Chip Bronson

thanks bob. great idea. i didn't even think of that rep range. that's why i run this stuff by you guys. but i'll do the 15's as i really need the recuperation even after the 9-day layoff i'll be taking. and then i'll stick with the 15-12-8. many thanks again for all your help.

[Chip Bronson]

yeah, i like that idea even better. 2 weeks each of 15,12,10,8. sounds good. with the 9 days off and the month of 15's and 10's, i'll get plenty of time for my arm to get better. plus, that way i'll only get 2 weeks of very heavy weight so it'll be easier on the forearm. thanks a lot to both bs and thick. you guys are great and come through as usual.

[thick]

no problem bro, the 5's wear on me also. Towards the end i get some joint pain etc. i think my next one I will only do the 8's also



i'll get plenty of time for my arm to get better. plus, that way i'll only get 2 weeks of very heavy weight so it'll be easier on the forearm. thanks a lot to both bs and thick. you guys are great and come through as usual. [/quote]

[Chip Bronson]

oh yeah, one more thing. on weeks 5+6 and 7+8 i replace the barbell rows with deads as the the weight i would have to use to get 5 reps in the rows would kill my lower back and i also love to do heavy deads. i plan on doing this again and will use 5's for deads only. this way i can really pull some weight.

[Bob Smith]

I have tiny wrists, measuring out at right around 7 inches. But I have no problems with them on any movements.

Thick mentioned doing 15, 12, 10, 8 as opposed to the typical HST progression. The only problem I see with that is that peoples RM differences between 12, 10 and 8 will be very small, which will mean a ton of overlapping weights. As an example

12s - 100 110 120 130 140 150
10s - 110 120 130 140 150 160
8s - 120 130 140 150 160 170

IMO, there is simply too much overlap and not enough progress with load to make it very effective.

[Chip Bronson]

i see your point about the overlapping bob. and it definitely makes sense. 15,12,8 it is then. and on weeks 7 and 8 i'll keep the same weight and just try to add one more rep per workout, or at least every other workout, to each exercise. that sound about right? thanks once more.

[Bob Smith]

Sounds just like my plan, only I will be using 10s and 5s (skipping the 15s since Im doing those in my current plan and dont have any injuries).

[Chip Bronson]

bob, i hate to beat a dead horse but what you said about overlapping got me thinking. since 15,12,8 is good, would 15,11,7 be even better given the same logic? the 11's would be pretty close to the 10's and the seven would still be fairly heavy but not as bad for my arm as the 5's. also the spread between these rep ranges is bigger so as to eliminate some overlapping.

i know we're really playing around with this system but if it helps with my arm, and i believe it will, it's worth it.

[Bob Smith]

15, 11, 7 would be fine, though I doubt it would really be any different than 15, 12, 8.

[Chip Bronson]

cool bob. i'll use those then 'cause i really hate higher reps (12-15) anyway...

[Bryan Haycock]

Originally Posted by Chip Bronson

...i know we're really playing around with this system but if it helps with my arm, and i believe it will, it's worth it.

So what exactly is the nature of your injury? I didn't catch it in the posts above.