Muscle memory, and best recovery?

What do you body builders think of THIS?

Is this true for you? Are your gains better taking long(er) periods of time off than consistent training?

I do know rest is important, but I'm reading this as saying it may be even longer time in between that is most beneficial for muscle gain.

What do you think?

Lots of training routines ideas use this concept. Like train 3 weeks than take a week off. Or 6 weeks and week or two off, etc. I couldn't but notice that Ryan and Sensless who've done the best of the vegan bunch both have this habit of always getting sick and having to take a week or two off.

Personally I've never ever done it. Looks like I will be the next month though.

I did a set of pullups til failure every day for a month. Then I took a week off and didn't do any pulling exercises for a full week. In my first attampt after my week of rest my max reps dropped

Instinctive training is the only way to fly

Instinctive training is the only way to fly

I agree. Although I think you have to experiment around with some different routines first before you get a feel for instinctive training

Yeah definitely

i made GREAT gains doing 3 weeks on 1 week off using a basic 5x5 program. now i train on a team using westide training and go 4 x week every week. we max out on a bench or squat/deadlift exercise every week, but we rotate exercises each week so we only do one exercise every 4 or 6 weeks. its been shown that your CNS will shut down after training above 90% on an exercise for 3 consecutive weeks. this is why the 3 weeks on 1 week off is very effective for someone who wants to do the same exercises each week with heavy weight.

I completly agree with this article, I will go 5-6 months without a break, then something comes up where I may miss anywhere from a week to 2 months. Everytime I come back I get bigger than my last plateau, and stronger. It's also usually really fast too, I gain like crazy also. For me it's usually a 1 for 1 amount of time, take one week off and I am in a gaining frenzy for 1 week, take a month off and gain for a month. I'll post some pics later, that I have taken this month chronicling my return from a month off.

Hey, Omen, this is good for you because you want bulk,right? For someone wanting to gain muscle *but* get cut, this amount of time off would work against them; is that correct?

I need to figure out how much time to take off between lifting days. I'm just beginning, though, after many failed times. I started a journal to help hold me to the committment. I'm just trying to soak up all the knowledge from the various brains around here

well, the funny thing in my experience is that the time off also helped me return my leptin levels to a normal range and my bulk is a funky bulk as I'm dropping BF% also, in the past 3 weeks I've gained 8lbs, but also dropped 3% in my bf, measured with calipers and bod pod. I'm doing a hour of cardio 4 times a week, and 3 days of HST. I also ingest protein before and during my HST routine, as a recent study suggests that protien pre workout is more impotant to hypertrophy than post (however, I do a post workout shake also). I'm incorporating the idea of G-flux into my workouts, hence the large work load. I've basically just been throwing all I can at my body to see where my breaking point is, but haven't found it yet. I track everything I do, everything I eat, my bf%, weight, and take weekly pictures in the same lighting, during the same time of the day, in the same room, so that I can see the changes.

I can't say everyone would lose bf and gain lbm with what I'm doing, but so far it is working, I see noticable changes every week.