What do you guys think of this leg routine?

[Mr. Pelham]

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/hungarian_oak_leg_blast

[Zoofus]

Largely the success people have with super light weight/super high volume combination (a la German volume training or this) comes from it being a one-off type thing and vastly different in metabolic requirement and extreme emphasis on sacroplasmic hypertrophy. If that kind of training routinely produced massive muscle, we'd have little need to use much weight on anything and gyms would be far fewer. Actually the reality is that we'd be an incredibly inefficient species and would have died out in famine number one. Muscle is too caloricly expensive (read risky to survival) to put on unless there's a routinely stressful need and you don't need extra muscle to do more with a 30% minimal lift, all it does is stimulate a different adaptation to existing built tissue. Even when this is a good stimulus for adding muscle the body limits it often requiring ample fat stores in reserve to hold a substantial amount (hence exogenous testosterone use is so effective in getting big and lean as you basically overwhelm the body's natural mechanism to fight this).

In short, no real wow. Great genetics for legs a la Platz. Likely didn't get that way doing anything resembling that kind of training. Obviously chemically enhanced as most people would shed muscle on such a routine pretty quickly. Simply no reason for the body to maintain it.

[BiggT]

Largely the success people have with super light weight/super high volume combination (a la German volume training or this) comes from it being a one-off type thing and vastly different in metabolic requirement and extreme emphasis on sacroplasmic hypertrophy. If that kind of training routinely produced massive muscle, we'd have little need to use much weight on anything and gyms would be far fewer. Actually the reality is that we'd be an incredibly inefficient species and would have died out in famine number one. Muscle is too caloricly expensive (read risky to survival) to put on unless there's a routinely stressful need and you don't need extra muscle to do more with a 30% minimal lift, all it does is stimulate a different adaptation to existing built tissue. Even when this is a good stimulus for adding muscle the body limits it often requiring ample fat stores in reserve to hold a substantial amount (hence exogenous testosterone use is so effective in getting big and lean as you basically overwhelm the body's natural mechanism to fight this).

In short, no real wow. Great genetics for legs a la Platz. Likely didn't get that way doing anything resembling that kind of training. Obviously chemically enhanced as most people would shed muscle on such a routine pretty quickly. Simply no reason for the body to maintain it.

I can't say it better, so I won't. I'll just add that my point of view is geared toward someone asking about building muscle.

[dirty~d~]

I lift for strength. That being said, I think it's lame and I'd never consider using it.

[bigleemurali]

It has KISS principle int it.. (KEEP it simple stupid).

seems to be one hell of a workout for frying the muscle and blast it with pump.....

[Bradford]

I respectfully disagree... Eat enough, sleep enough, work hard. You will adapt.

Genetics/no genetics, chemical.... Whatever... It takes heart and willpower to suffer through that... That's the difference.

And I think you might be a tad off on the platz part.

From the Archives:
http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2010/05/tom-platz-leg-routine-don-ross.html



http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/history/topic/53679-1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ouQbZSheg
http://www.fatmanunleashed.com/tom-platz-the-lumberjack-of-quadriceps/

Note the put everything you have into each set.

[Zoofus]

The question is not so much whether the body will adapt and whether hard work matters but in the case of a workout "what adaptation is the work requesting from the body?" The stimulus applied here (very high vol/very low intensity or%1RM, and I guess high density) is far removed from anything designed to build new muscle; it is all about endurance. Give this program to 100 people, let them work their ass off to improve their total volume using 30% RM over 5 months, give me another 100 with the goal of putting up their best set of 6-8 reps over 5 months. You will find 1) both programs/goals are very hard and 2) one of the goals has failed miserably in comparison of building muscle. Something like this program looks like good training for cyclists sprint/climb though.

[Mr. Pelham]

The program will build muscle to a degree, the question isn't whether or not it would put on the same amount as if you were to use maximum load for 6-8 reps over the same course of time. I think this is a good routine to break out of the normalcy of training, to add a different challenge to the mind and body and to possibly overcome any plateau's you may have.

[silver_shadow]

^ hence the term periodization - it's not going to work for most lifters here except WHEN coupled with training blocks where the lifter turns up the intensity (= weights closer to 1RM). on it's own, it's really not going to do much more than walking 20 miles a day would.