Bodybuilding.net - Bodybuilding Forum - View Single Post

EricT · 10-15-2007, 12:58 PM

Tops, I've been thinking a lot about this issue of "quality" that is always coming up in SS. I know we've had exstensive discussions about this.

People recognize fairly easily the issue of quality over quantity when they consider banging out reps to failure. You tell them training is not about just inducing fatigue and they can grasp that fairly easily. But when you have a "system" like this or general 5x5 routines you start to get into a grey area. The question is whether it is just about getting the volume in or is it about getting quality volume in? I know this has come up for you plenty of times.

Well for me, keeping extensive written notes and having done MANY 5x5's I have begun to believe that when you start losing quality for the sake of quantiy it becomes much harder to regain that quality. Even forgetting about the obvious breakdown of technique as people load the bar just the simple slowing down of the bar for me has usually spelled a very up and down ineffecient progress when it comes to long term. Although I recognize that I myself might have been served to take some planeed recovery whether I felt I needed it or not (but that's another discussion).

The way I do my training now, quality is built in as a primary objective. It's not planning it just falls in with the way I do things. But that wasn't always the case. A lot of the 5x5 I did was decidedly sucky quality!

You said that on the squat you got the reps but you had a few that weren't quite perfect. But you are going to go ahead and add 5 lbs. Could be no problem if you were very tired or whatever but chances are you'll find some of the reps being bad....

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a radical suggestion. It won't hurt you to try this I believe it could make all the difference. It involves a leap of faith and a change in philosophy.

Instead of banging away as the bar slows down and technique goes to shit, then "deloading" hoping to regain progress and quality, try to maintain quality in the first place. See I actually believe that those last few crappy reps we all tend to do aren't always helping as much as we believe.

Let me insert a caveat before I go into it. I do think that getting that last impossilbe rep sometimes can be helpful. I could be wrong about this but let's just say I don't believe in extremes so I'm not talking about making "quality" a very dogmatic thing. Like in other words if bar speed isn't always maintained it doesn't count. I would never insert absolute limits on things like that so lets just call this a "tool" that may be helpful for everyone if they use it judiciously.

My thinking is this: The next time you come to that point where you judge the bar is going to move extra slow and form is going to break down....BEFORE that happens instead of just muddling through and banging out those last reps with poor form or simply failing altogther, STOP. Rerack, rest and try to get ALL the rest of the prescribed reps even if you only do triples or doubles. Especially is you would have otherwise had the last reps being bad ones and still not even have gotten all the reps. I am talking about getting ALL your reps but having them all be as fast and perfect as possible. Then see what happens the next time you are under the bar with the same weight.

Of course I'm not just making all this up out of my own twisted head. Many very succesful coaches actually take this "quality" thing a lot further than I am taking it here. I think Stahley was the first one who really got me thinking about this a while ago but since then guys like Plisk and many others have reinforced some of it for me. Sorry for the long post and of course I understand if you are not interested in trying any of this but I put it here for you and everone else doing this.