ok.. so i've come up with some more info regarding HST...

thought it might be useful to everyone here....

Rep Speeds

Basically, during the 15's the reps should start out slow and then speed up as you feel the burn begin to kill your strength. After all, the whole point is to flush the muscle with lactic acid.

During the 10's you should go slower when the weight is light. That way it will still be difficult to complete the set. As the weight gets heavier simply increase the tempo to ensure that you complete the set. BE careful not to get too sloppy though. It will do little good to use momentum to move the weight during the 10s.

The first week of 5's should be slow on the way down but still pretty explosive on the way up. Then as the weight nears your 5 rep max you will have no real control over how fast you move the weight. It will generally go slow simply because it is so heavy.

During negatives you should lower the weight in about 2-3 seconds. This may seem too quick to most traditionalists. Research has shown that if you go too slow during negatives you don't get the same growth stimulus. it begins to resemble the effect of isometrics if you go too slow. This is one reason why the old principle of "time under tension" isn't so simple as just time. The action of the muscle while under load is very important when trying to produce a specific effect.

Rest Between Sets

The Rest between sets is determined by the amount of time required to regain sufficient strength to successfully achieve the minimum effective Volume. There is not much to it, and you will not see any dramatic results by varying rest periods (within reason, of course)

Overall, rest periods should be around 1.5-2 minutes.

When moving from one body part to the next try to alternate between opposing or antagonistic body parts – commonly known as antagonistic pairing. E.g. 1 set of chest, rest, 1 set of back, rest, one set of chest, rest, 1 set of back, rest etc. This way your chest, shoulders, and tris can rest while you hit your back and bis. After a while you will find your aerobic capacity going up as this closely resembles sort of a power circuit.

You may shorten rest periods on 15s to attain the lactic acid effect - on the order of 30-60 seconds.

Increase rest periods as you get into the heavier, neural ranges - on 5s and negs you will most likely find it necessary to rest on the order of 2-5 minutes between sets.

Also, shorten rest periods earlier in the workout when you are fresh - then progressively increase rest periods as fatigue accumulates towards the end of the workout.

How To Warm Up

Begin with a general warmup – stationary bike, treadmill or similar for 5 mins at low-moderate intensity – just enough to break a sweat. Then do some light, dynamic stretching – arm rotations and similar.

Continue to:

Specific warmups for first exercise of major muscle groups (legs, chest, back)

15s don't really require warm-ups.

10s - 1 set 5 reps @ 70% of working weight on main exercises. Later exercises for same or auxillary muscle groups don't require warm-ups unless you feel you need it.

5s - 1 set 5 reps @ 50% of working weight

1 set 3 reps @ 70% of working weight

1 set 2-3 reps @ 80% of working weight

1 set 1 rep @ 90% of working weight (optional)

Although it looks like a lot, it is low-volume compared to those that use 20+reps on their warm-up sets. The warmup only serves to increase the core- and local temperature, thus elevating various enzymes and activating the neural system, thus making the muscles work more efficiently. Don’t make the warm-ups into a workout of its own. The above should at most require 15 minutes.

The reps should be easy, producing more of an "active stretch" than a strength challenge. You will find that when you train a body part more frequently, it requires less warm up to feel ready to perform.

Training Frequency

The reason HST calls for more frequent training is because the acute anabolic effects of training, such as increased protein synthesis, muscle-specific IGF-1 expression, and other factors involved in modulation of short term protein synthesis, only last for 36-48 hours. There is also mounting evidence of a "summation" effect by exercising while levels of these signals and responses are elevated, as should be expected.

This does not mean that the structural repairs to the tissue have been completed. Research has demonstrated that you can train a muscle before it is fully recovered structurally and not inhibit its ability to continue to recover. So, HST uses this evidence and calls for repeated loading (training) every 48 hours or so to keep the anabolic activity of the muscle high, while trying to stay slightly ahead of the structural recovery curve by constantly increasing the load each workout. Staying ahead of the structural recovery curve is really key to elicit real growth in a person who has lifted for quite a while. Of course, injuries can develop over time if care isn't taken to take time to heal, and prepare the tendons for repeated heavy bouts of lifting (SD and 15s serve this purpose in HST).

"Recovery" can refer to several different things.

1) "Recovery" can refer to the structural repair process of fixing the microtrauma. The damaged proteins can takes several days to be repaired and all evidence of damage removed. Even at the end of seven days after significant muscle damage from eccentric muscle actions, you may still see some small fibers regenerating.

2) Strength - this can be acute recovery as in the necessary time to rest between sets. Or it can mean the days that it usually takes to regain baseline strength after muscle damaging exercise.

So the trick is to have the CNS "recover" just in time to hit the muscle again as the acute anabolic effects are wearing off. That way you can stay anabolic more of the time. Training once every 7 days will still allow you to grow, it just takes longer for the gains to accumulate. Training more frequently is more efficient if your goal is just to get bigger

To understand, you have to consider the total volume over time. A week is easiest to consider, so, over the course of a week, it is the total volume that is important. So 9 total sets for chest can be done in one workout or in several workouts. Both will stimulate growth. However, you will be anabolic more of the time if you can actually create that stimulus more often. In the case of HST, 3 times as often. There is a physiological benefit (acute anabolic effects of training) in doing 9 sets as 3 sets X 3 workouts, as opposed to 9 sets all at once - and then nothing for the next 7 days.

Brian Haycock's AM/PM Program

"Here are the exercises I use:

Squat
Leg Ext
Leg Curl
Straight leg calf raise
Chins (wide and narrow)
Dips
Rows (wide and narrow)
Incline Bench
Lateral raises
rear delt work (dumbells)
Dumbell press
Tri Ext
Curls of all kinds

I'll do some crunches too. As well as stationary bike and once in a while I will jog a bit.

Sometimes I will split things up into AM and PM workouts. If I miss the PM I will simply do it the next day. I don't use a training partner so I only do negatives on Chins, Dips, curls, tri Ext, and rear delt work. I usually do 2 sets of 2 exercises for back.I don't go terribly heavy on Squats and Bench. I guess 25 years has taken a bit of a toll on this less-than-genetically-ideal body. In fact, on squats I will start with 20 reps.

Here's my AM/PM split.

AM
Squat
Incline Bench
T-bar row (supported)
Calf (straight leg)
Lateral raises
Bent over laterals
EZ curls
Tri extensions

PM
Leg curl
Leg extension
Millitary press (lowering no further than top of head)
Chins
Dips
Lateral raises
lying rear delt raises (lie on bench on your side)
DB curl
Tri extension
calf raise

I warm up on the bike for at least 6 minutes with a lot of resistance (break a sweat). I do 2 "work sets" after an adequate warmup on each exercise. On off days I do cardio for 20 minutes twice per day, while I'm dieting anyway.

BTW, I'm currently dieting very low carb during the week and carbing up on the weekends. "

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