Sick_beard

Originally Posted by panntastic

I’ve always trained upper legs once a week due to quads growing stupidly fast but I do train calves 2/3 times a week being a relatively small muscle group.

It’s a good strategy to train a muscle once a week if you want it to grow slower than the rest. But it would be counterproductive to do that with ALL muscle groups obviously.

Originally Posted by arrrrrd

So Sick Beard, would you share your work out schd? Im on a 1x week hit everything Natty, ready to start cycle in Feb and would be interested in what your’s looks like

The important point to take here is that increased frequency will yield better results. Doing full body workouts 3 times a week will give the best results to any beginner. Another strategy that works is to do one day upper body, one day lower body, rest and repeat. I think both of these work great even up to the intermediate/ advanced level.

What I followed in the past with great results was the push/pull/ leg workout routine split. Doing all three in a row, then take a day’s rest, and repeat. You will also find that most competitive natural TrueMaxders will follow something similar with their own personalized variation, depending on their goals. You will find plenty of examples of push/ pull routines to give you an idea.

Originally Posted by paul74

I say yes to twice. But the real mitigating factor for me and I think this is the TRUTH for good growth. When I over exert a muscle to the point of breaking it down (in the gym) I must rest to let it repair itself (grow). Adequate rest must be given for this to happen. So my body pain level will let me know when that muscle has recovered. Now to promote good and fast growth I must do this again before my muscle has time to start to go into atrophy. What I was told and found out to be true in my experience, is that my muscle will begin to start atrophy in 36 hours after recovery. With the added testosterone I can work harder, lift heavier, for more duration thus promoting more of the breakdown. Since I recover much quicker it lets me redo this process much quicker and promote growth and not stunt growth. A good hard train of a muscle should promote soreness for 72 hrs and then be ready to do it again before atrophy. I never changed my strategy from on or off, except with the knowledge that to get the most out of a steroid I have to take advantage of the extra strength, stamina and quicker recovery time to maximize my gains. Since I have worked the muscle harder and created more damage I must get more rest. That means better quality sleep rest. Be smart, push it, but let you body determine. Good growth for me is always to be sore and tight, if not I’m into atrophy

Most people don’t realize that you have to rest anywhere from 2 – 5 mins between sets to maximize the load and tension you can put on the muscle during each set. I’ve heard it said time and time again to rest no more than 30 sec – 1 min between sets… That’s great if your goal is to increase endurance, but for hypertrophy/ strength training, the longer you rest between sets the better (but of course not to the extreme point where you have to warm up all over again).

But I have to agree that most people my age are freakin kids, who may think of taking steroids for all the wrong reasons. They view life as an obstacle course between 2 weekends, and taking steroids for them is just another drug to make that weekend a little better. That’s not me. I think I know myself, and I trust myself. Some people may doubt that, they’re entitled to their opinion.

Originally Posted by stpete

Introduce me to anyone doing Squats 3x per week and i’ll show you a person that can’t even spell "squat."

BS!

If you adjust your volume accordingly, yes you can squat 3x a week. And if you’re training natty, you will see better muscle/ strength gains this way than let’s say doing squats once a week to the point of fatigue.

As the OP mentions, training naturally, protein synthesis peaks after 24 hours and by 48 it’s pretty much back to baseline. After that you need to retain the muscle to reap max benefits.

I THINK the solution is to keep frequency the same as natty training (stimulate each muscle group more or less twice a week), but also increase volume while on cycle because you’ll be able to get away with it.