Random Undulating Thoughts...

[Darkhorse]

Personally, I'm not a fan of sticking to a set rep range for every exercise in a day's work. An example would be HST, having two weeks of 15's, 10's, and 5's. The biggest reason:

Knowing the fact that my muscles respond differently to different rep ranges (ie. My lats grow thick with 8-10 reps, chest grows best with 3-5 reps, and my legs like both 3-5 reps OR a single all out 20 rep set).

The reason I assume why some people respond on the opposite end of that spectrum than I is due to muscle fiber composition. Some people grow better with 10-15 reps vs. 3-8 reps (slow vs. fast twitch dominant). So everyone's different... No shit!

My question is why should we bother living confined in a rep range that doesn't do you any good?? Well, the good news is that there's PLENTY of ways to optimize your full body routines to make it right FOR YOU. My preference is obviously undulation. What is undulation? Undulating workouts is essentially doing many different sets/reps/ect in a single given workout. You may start with a 3 x 5 squatting, and end up with 1 x 20 pullups (or as many as possible). The key is to do as much volume as you can recover from while picking what works best for YOU.

Here's a sample layout from ironaddicts.com

Workout A:

Bench or Dip
Incline Bench
Chin
Barbell Curl
Deadlift

Rest as many days as needed

Workout B:

Bench
Incline DB Press
Barbell Row
Decline Skull Crushers
Squat [ex. 1 x 20 (using normal 12 RM, rest paused)]

Rest as many days as needed

Then keep rotating A,B,A... B,A,B

What I like about it is that it's not overboard, and doesn't have a set schedule. If you feel good, go in and smash it. If you're feeling run down, take another day. In the end, you'll still benefit from hitting your muscles 2-3 times a week. Typically for me, doing an all out 20 repper for squatting puts me in a wheelchair for at least 2 days LOL. If you read "Beyond Brawn", McRobert raves about doing the all out 20 rep squat.. Same as Dante from DC Training, who is one of the greatest trainers out there lol. If you prefer doing some heavy weight, there's a lot of options there as well. And again, if you don't feel like doing a 20 rep squat, noone's stopping you from doing some heavy sets either.

Doesn't look like a lot, but if you start fucking around with TUT, rest between sets, sets/reps, and the way the exercises are performed, it can absolutely murder you inside of an hour.

[TALO]

I personally agree with this, but it does take a lot of time to know how your body react to different sets and reps... And the only way your going to find out how your body reacts is to play around with sets and reps for quit sometime.

Like you said earlier, consistancy is the key. So if a guy is doin bench presss or squats for 5 sets of 5 or 4 sets of 10 (whatever the case may be) and is growing, then he/she is unlikely to change it around to find what else will or will not work , untill time has passed.