Ultimate Newb Questions Thread

[chess315]

pulldowns are not an isolation excerise you use several joints reverse grip pulldowns are one of the most underated exercises imho but I generaly hate cable but done right using heavy weights it works back and bis and abs and even upper chest mike menzter loves it and staurt mcroberts

[BRaWNy]

I have something to say about all this.

To get results (basicly hypertrophy results) from exercises, and especially from isolation movements, I believe that someone has to be neural efficient at first and have developed some decent strength, general and exercise specific too.

To get there, the exercise selection must be proper, so it must be basic exercises, exercises strength and CNS related, multijoint etc.
Training must also have the same direction, and after a point of accommodation to the weight world, if it's newbie concerned.

Beginners don't have this efficiency, and they would not overtrain because of that, so they can train more frequent (I mean frequency of an exercise and musclegroup) and also do more sets to become familiar and learn the movements, if you know what I mean, and then train to develop neural efficiency, so they can get results (strength, power and hypertrophy) from what they do, otherwise they waste time, especially if they do isolation movements and isolation style of training because they are not capable to use the CNS for hitting the high threshold motor units etc.

All the gains we see in a beginner at starting point could be a mix of things, and not all are the same gains.
1.Coming from the adaption of the body to the new stress and all the related things we allready know, and the bodys ability to hold more water and glycogen in the muscles, hence sarcplasmic hypertrophy and more mass appearance, if they do high reps and use also isolation movements and methods.
2.Coming from the body to became slowly more neural efficient and capable, if they do use the relative parameters and basic exercises etc

and many many other things not coming to my mind at this point, and based also to bodytype and genes.

The gains could be one of them or all of them and mixed.
Many of them, are not "real" gains and tend to be lost or stop at some point.

The best thing to do for a beginner, is to choose the right things to do and expect the right gains, and take the path to make them consecutive and permanent etc.
In this right things, in my opinion, are not the isolation exercises for a beginner, and sometimes also for more advanced.

When a beginner is not starting right, sometimes they get depressed and stop the training or stop meaking gains, if they had until this point any "real" gains.
And sometimes they get overexhausted and fatigued (not exactly overtrained) and make the things more difficult, for example to become more neural efficient etc, so that all that they do will bring results any further.

Isolation exercises and more particularly, isolation style of training at the beginning (and sometimes using extreme methods), from someone who is not ready for that and neural efficient, like newbies (sometimes more advanced also), can only bring pumps at training, the not real gains I ment before and more such things, and only give the illusion that they are on track, until a point where they see that there is nothing more than this, hit a wall or lose all they got etc, and then sometimes they get more confused, starting to do more mistakes, like one of them to follow the route of steroids seeking for more gains etc, and it can be pointless and harmfull to beginners, especially if they are also young in age, less than 30, ore more specifficaly less than 20, where it can be more damaging etc.

These are my opinions and what I believe.

[BendtheBar]

Excellent post Brawny!

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by chess315

pulldowns are not an isolation excerise

Thanks Chess. I don't think anyone was stating that lat pulldowns are isolations. But it's a good point to mention for lurkers.

[strkout35]

let's get this thread going again..
Q6: my chest workout is 3 sets of bench 8 reps of 135 i do it every single week now for 2 months why don't I look any bigger?

A: the key is progressions, you need to progressively lift heavier and heavier weights every workout whether it be more weight or more reps always strive to do more than you did last time you stepped in the gym

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by strkout35

let's get this thread going again..
Q6: my chest workout is 3 sets of bench 8 reps of 135 i do it every single week now for 2 months why don't I look any bigger?

A: the key is progressions, you need to progressively lift heavier and heavier weights every workout whether it be more weight or more reps always strive to do more than you did last time you stepped in the gym

That's exactly right. Good answer.

To get big chest, do moar.

Moar is moar!

[BendtheBar]

[Fcat611]

my dad use to say if you don't climb the mountain how do you expect to get to the top???

[glwanabe]

Originally Posted by Fcat611

my dad use to say if you don't climb the mountain how do you expect to get to the top???

Thats what the guy in the wedding cake picture is going to do after while.

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by glwanabe

Thats what the guy in the wedding cake picture is going to do after while.

ROFL!

I hope they don't have a water bed. The oscillation frequencies could induce some plate tectonic incidents.