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Comment by lachyg | Hacker News Reader

I did some research and looked into the Colorado Experiment, and as of late, Tim Ferriss' Occam's protocol. From there I mix and matched what I thought would be right after doing some research on the muscle groups I was looking to hit.

The basic concept is 1 set til failure, 5/5 cadence (5 seconds lifting / 5s lowering).

I've seen amazing gains within the past month I've been on the program. Have increased some of my weights by up to 120%, whilst the minimum increase has been 40%.

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When you lower and raise the weight slowly, you require less force to overcome inertia. This means you can lift more for the same amount of muscle fibre recruitment.

The downside is that you will eventually detrain for power production (that is, force over distance over time).

This difference in time -- and therefore power -- is why superheavy Olympic weightlifters can squat 400kg and only snatch 210kg.

Interesting. Though Rippetoe recommends not training to failure, because you'll also train to fail. He recommends also having proper form. I have to think and research about what should prevail.

Anyway, I've also seen some extremely big relative improvements in my squats on the first month I started.

When I can't maintain proper form, I consider that failure.

Yes. And Rippetoe wants you to always maintain proper form on all reps, or at least he doesn't want you to plan to fail one rep out of your set.

Though I don't know which is regime better, yet. By default I follow Rippetoe when in doubt, because he's generally a sane guy and knows more than me.

increased some of my weights by up to 120%

Just to be sure, do you mean that if you were lifting 50 lbs before in some exercise, you're now lifting 110 lbs?

Yes, that's right. It was on my triceps and leg curls. (When you start in lower weights, the increase doesn't seem as drastic.)

I see someone has also down voted my original post, I guess that's because I mention Tim Ferriss. sigh

And is that with just two workouts every week ?

Yes, each workout is just 10m each too. Incredibly intense, though. I've spent maybe 100 minutes total time in the gym, and have seen incredible results.

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