Hypnotix
Well-known member
Dorian Yates has been my favorite Olympian and Bodybuilder over all since my early teens, and I just recently read an interview done in 2010. In this interview he discussed the importance of recovery. Recovery as he says in this article Dorian Yates Discusses Bodybuilding Training: Never-Before Published Insights! can be compared to that of the wearing down of our hands with a patch of sandpaper. He touches briefly on the subject, and such, a tad on the CNS, but I'd really like to dissect his philosophy for the people out there just beginning or even those spinning wheels hitting plateau after plateau with no hope left. This may help you and change your view a bit.
So to begin, I'll finish quoting his idea concerning the sandpaper and hand analogy.
He say's "I tell people if they had a piece of sandpaper and rubbed it across their palm until it was red and bloody and left it alone for a few days, it would heal up. But, it would heal thicker than before and form a callus protective layer. The reason it does that is because the skin is trying to strengthen itself, protect itself from that stress in the future." " But if you did that with the sandpaper on your hands before it fully healed and you went and rubbed it again, you are never going to get anywhere."
I love this analogy personally, and I like to dissect it in my head to really keep it simple, keeps me grounded or true to the task. The skin is our muscle tissue, the sandpaper is the weight used to break said tissue down, and the time between hand grindings is our recover period. We can even think of the motion of the sandpaper needed to grind away at the skin as repetitions. (higher grain, lower repetitions) (lower grain, higher repetitions)
This seems sort of obvious to most of us here, but there are even seasoned lifters that forget this sort of thing. Lose sight of the truth through the fitness industry's clever marketing of fancy workout programs or basement bro science.
Easy enough though right? We break the tissue down and then give it adequate time to recover. But, how do we know if we're recovered?
If we look at our tattered hand, ground to nothing, we can clearly tell it's not time to grind away at it again.. but we can't physically see our muscle tissue... though even if we could it'd be nearly impossible to see that it does or doesn't need rest yet. We can't judge our muscle recovery around soreness.. for scientific reasons, but if we keep it simple, it's because after so long we won't get sore anymore anyhow.
I recommend to track everything training related! (Diet too, see 3J
) Even physical work labor.. it all counts, some jobs will tax the muscle we want to workout that evening or next morning.. this will take away from maximal effort, it needs to be taken into account if you expect to not be disappointed. We may likely get stronger than anything our jobs can do to us.. we may not always be at that point however. Track it.
It's a good bet that if your training turns out like this
Week 1 - Chest Day - Flat Bench ( WU,WU, 225x6, 225x5 )
Week 2 - Chest Day - Flat Bench ( WU,WU, 225x4, 225x1 Assisted )
that, you likely weren't recovered by your next chest workout. Is that bad? NO! It just means you aren't familiar with your recover rate yet and didn't wait long enough. Never too late to figure it out! Track everything, make sure you know this information.. going into the gym with any sort of "I think I did 225 for 10 last weeks" or "maybe 315 for 2???" That's a bad sign that you have no idea where you are progress wise. When people ask how much do you bench, I break down everything to the person.. reps, rest periods, intrinsic time/extrinsic time, etc. Basically until they realize how insignificant a 315 1 rep max is to me!
Dorian delves a bit into the CNS as I mentioned above, but really doesn't take it TOO far into detail. He does mention that we don't generally experience a faster recovery rate of the CNS, or even faster recover rate of the muscle tissue involved. Meaning we need around the same rest, consistently, our entire lives. AAS will aid in the muscular recovery rate, and likely will aide in the CNS not being blown out after the same "relative" workload used. This will all need to be accounted for as well!! If we begin a cycle of Test, and find we can do the same or more workload but one day less of recovery, then our recovery rate will have improved and we can use that going through the cycle, but not when we go back to natty or TRT. Will be good to have pre-cycle training logs as well in that case.
This article just kinda hit me a bit in terms of taking responsibility for my results. Just another thing I can use to say to myself "Did I do everything I could to achieve that goal?" The more we nitpick, the more refined we will be. A dynamic being needs a dynamic plan to achieve greatness!
Thanks for reading!
So to begin, I'll finish quoting his idea concerning the sandpaper and hand analogy.
He say's "I tell people if they had a piece of sandpaper and rubbed it across their palm until it was red and bloody and left it alone for a few days, it would heal up. But, it would heal thicker than before and form a callus protective layer. The reason it does that is because the skin is trying to strengthen itself, protect itself from that stress in the future." " But if you did that with the sandpaper on your hands before it fully healed and you went and rubbed it again, you are never going to get anywhere."
I love this analogy personally, and I like to dissect it in my head to really keep it simple, keeps me grounded or true to the task. The skin is our muscle tissue, the sandpaper is the weight used to break said tissue down, and the time between hand grindings is our recover period. We can even think of the motion of the sandpaper needed to grind away at the skin as repetitions. (higher grain, lower repetitions) (lower grain, higher repetitions)
This seems sort of obvious to most of us here, but there are even seasoned lifters that forget this sort of thing. Lose sight of the truth through the fitness industry's clever marketing of fancy workout programs or basement bro science.
Easy enough though right? We break the tissue down and then give it adequate time to recover. But, how do we know if we're recovered?
If we look at our tattered hand, ground to nothing, we can clearly tell it's not time to grind away at it again.. but we can't physically see our muscle tissue... though even if we could it'd be nearly impossible to see that it does or doesn't need rest yet. We can't judge our muscle recovery around soreness.. for scientific reasons, but if we keep it simple, it's because after so long we won't get sore anymore anyhow.
I recommend to track everything training related! (Diet too, see 3J
) Even physical work labor.. it all counts, some jobs will tax the muscle we want to workout that evening or next morning.. this will take away from maximal effort, it needs to be taken into account if you expect to not be disappointed. We may likely get stronger than anything our jobs can do to us.. we may not always be at that point however. Track it. It's a good bet that if your training turns out like this
Week 1 - Chest Day - Flat Bench ( WU,WU, 225x6, 225x5 )
Week 2 - Chest Day - Flat Bench ( WU,WU, 225x4, 225x1 Assisted )
that, you likely weren't recovered by your next chest workout. Is that bad? NO! It just means you aren't familiar with your recover rate yet and didn't wait long enough. Never too late to figure it out! Track everything, make sure you know this information.. going into the gym with any sort of "I think I did 225 for 10 last weeks" or "maybe 315 for 2???" That's a bad sign that you have no idea where you are progress wise. When people ask how much do you bench, I break down everything to the person.. reps, rest periods, intrinsic time/extrinsic time, etc. Basically until they realize how insignificant a 315 1 rep max is to me!
Dorian delves a bit into the CNS as I mentioned above, but really doesn't take it TOO far into detail. He does mention that we don't generally experience a faster recovery rate of the CNS, or even faster recover rate of the muscle tissue involved. Meaning we need around the same rest, consistently, our entire lives. AAS will aid in the muscular recovery rate, and likely will aide in the CNS not being blown out after the same "relative" workload used. This will all need to be accounted for as well!! If we begin a cycle of Test, and find we can do the same or more workload but one day less of recovery, then our recovery rate will have improved and we can use that going through the cycle, but not when we go back to natty or TRT. Will be good to have pre-cycle training logs as well in that case.
This article just kinda hit me a bit in terms of taking responsibility for my results. Just another thing I can use to say to myself "Did I do everything I could to achieve that goal?" The more we nitpick, the more refined we will be. A dynamic being needs a dynamic plan to achieve greatness!
Thanks for reading!
