bozodos

If you ate enough meat, milk and eggs, you wouldn't need protein shakes either tbh. Most of us have them for the convenience factor (apart from idiots who actually think that they have some kind of magical effect). I've noticed among my skinny friends, mass gainers are all the rage, especially the Dymatize one that claims to have 1900 calories in a shake :S

That was with 100kg - I think that up until changing over to the PTC beginner program a couple of weeks ago, I had been training with imbalances due to always doing random isolation exercises without any actual routine or rhythm. I could do 90-95 fine, it was just that bit more weight that seemed to make it fall apart!

ah yeah in the context of Starting Strength etc, then I get what you mean now! I thought it was a general comment about that rep range! Yeah I have seen the cult like following that SS and SL have - at the same time they have a lot of detractors as well. Have never tried them for myself, but I doubt that I'd go back to doing that little amount!

I had to force myself to not train last night ,as I had a sore supraspinatus from benching like an idiot the other day and flaring my elbows out / having the bar too far up.

Birds I know about the relation of effort vs results, but particular sets and reps are done to achieve particular results. I did some reading that suggested that 5x5 is a poor compromise over singles or 3 reps for strength, and 8-12 reps for hypertrophy. Irrelevant for a beginner / intermediate lifter? More than likely. I was curious about the type of training that rev does and what Markos uses on his advanced lifters that has very low reps and long rest periods, as I've never heard of it before. on another note, have a read of this, interesting article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/dont-take-your-vitamins.html

I thought 5x5 was 5 sets, 5 reps and done by intermediate lifters to gain strength :S

why's that rev?

yeah i was meaning cardio as in high intensity weight or bodyweight excercises to really give the heart a good workout over just walking or running.

not on the bench or DL, and it's been a while since I did a squat 1RM. Finding it hard to do cardio based excercises due to there being less room @ the gym now, and a lack of equipment (proper weights based cardio not running on a treadmill like a hamster), so the thought entered my head of just doing more volume of what I'm already doing. Don't know if that would be 'overtraining' though. This is the version that has 2x20 squat, 15x3 SLDL, and 3x10 of OHP, dips, bench, bent over row, barbell curl

Hey Markos, I'm still doing your beginner program (and really liking the strength improvements over what I was doing, I think being more focused has helped a lot), would it be overkill to do it say 5 days a week instead of the 3 that I'm currently doing? I ended up deciding that for now I want to concentrate on fat loss / body recomp. Otherwise I'm going to devise some more cardio type exercises to do on the 'off days'.

to put this in perspective, I only was going to do a 95kg bench press the other day, until my buddies said nah you can smash out 2 plates no problems! Sure enough, I smashed out the whole set of 100 just as easily.

yep HCG diet, google it, I tried to inform the poor guy on what the risks are of eating that little and that its been widely discredited, but he was utterly convinced and refused to listen so I'm now curious to see how it affects him over the month or so he's on this stupid calorie restriction for. Interesting take Markos, and you're right, I don't think most of us really have the knowledge to do that kind of thing effectively in our commercial 'pleasure spa' gyms. I usually take an inability to actually move the weight any further as a failure myself. That and trying to balance being able to complete the entire workout!

I agree that it helps, i I have one Blackmores triple concentrated capsule a day to help with joints and generally wellbeing (which it does). I'm not sold on it burning calories via excessive consumption though. Just found it as laughable as a colleague going on a HCG diet of 500 calories a day (+homeopathic drops LOL) and boasting about losing 4.4kg in a week.

I've had several friends spruiking the benefits of having large amounts of fish oil for calorie burning recently, I'm not convinced (and the science is fairly inconclusive too.)

you just wouldn't get it unless you trained at PTC

yeah I was watching one of Ripptoe's videos on deadlift form which supports the scraped shins theory. They are some impressive looking quads btw, I assume Marty isn't into calf isolation excercises?

so what is the benefit of doing that sort of pyramid set then, or is it just a means to an end for making up volume?

it might help get my numbers up I noticed my gym has removed some of the free weights area to make room for "true grit" classes, I suppose at least they are using barbells and doing compounds... really wish they would get a second power cage / squat rack though.

What had you been doing in the mean time?

I'd been looking at various things in addition to GABA just out of curiosity, but most of them contain warnings about being toxic if taken for too long or in too great an amount.

aren't you worried about having potentially too much of a given supplement?

there would be some very embarassed big guys in my gym if I were to manage that

ah yeah I get you. I think doing the SLDL and a more focused approach to training is helping it - not having the grip issues now either.

what just into the middle of a regular set?