STS not ideal for hypertrophy?

[aveggiegirl]

Cathe,

STS has been my all time favorite since it came out! I especially love meso 2. However, after reading
"How Does Training Frequency Affect Muscle Growth" I became confused. Are you saying STS is not ideal for muscle growth since we are only training each muscle group once each week? If this is the case, are you willing to put out a new rotation for the STS program?

I hope you will consider answering my question.

Thank you,
Aveggiegirl

 

[TurquoiseEyes]

Cathe,

STS has been my all time favorite since it came out! I especially love meso 2. However, after reading
"How Does Training Frequency Affect Muscle Growth" I became confused. Are you saying STS is not ideal for muscle growth since we are only training each muscle group once each week? If this is the case, are you willing to put out a new rotation for the STS program?

I hope you will consider answering my question.

Thank you,
Aveggiegirl

I know I'm not Cathe, but wanted to chime in if it will help answer your question. Sorry if I am answering when you only wanted to hear from her. It's just something I've been researching for a college research project lately myself, so I thought I'd share the scientific and (sometimes) anecdotal evidence I found about training each body part only once a week. As far as STS goes, I haven't gone through the Cathe forums and read about results at length. I haven't done the program myself, so I don't know what results would be for me. I'm just not a "stick with one rotation" person, so I can't make the kind of commitment STS requires. (Not that it matters to you one way or the other, I'm just giving full disclosure!) I did peruse VideoFitness' forums, and heard a wide range of opinions and results from STS. I am not taking sides either way, because that would be crazy on my part. I'm sure some people will see STS as the best thing since sliced bread, while others will say it detrained them, no matter how well it was designed. Playing devil's advocate here: Did everyone who claimed to get poor results from STS eat ideally? (Getting enough overall calories and protein, especially. Not eating much junk food, if any. Drinking plenty of water. Not smoking cigarettes or drinking a lot of alcohol, etc.) Did they get enough sleep? Did they do too much cardio or other training that could have cost them muscle gains?

Here is what I compiled if you are interested in looking over what I located for my own research. I tried to only look at articles with at least SOME true evidence backing up their argument, not just bro science or anecdotal stuff. Again, apologies if I am responding out of turn in any way. Have a good evening.

1. http://www.trainingscience.net/?page_id=537
2. http://bretcontreras.com/category/strength-conditioning-research-questions/
3. http://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/hypertrophy/#5
4. http://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/hypertrophy/#3

 

[KC5689]

I would really like to hear what Cathe has to say as well. There's always new research and findings published. I personally achieved great results when I followed the STS rotation.

 

[Mariposa1973]

I think like everyone said food is 80% in you body change, but for me is more hard the food part because sometimes is not only wath you eat is the amount , to much or to little.

 

[forum_admin]

Cathe,

STS has been my all time favorite since it came out! I especially love meso 2. However, after reading
"How Does Training Frequency Affect Muscle Growth" I became confused. Are you saying STS is not ideal for muscle growth since we are only training each muscle group once each week? If this is the case, are you willing to put out a new rotation for the STS program?

I hope you will consider answering my question.

Thank you,
Aveggiegirl

To answer your questions you have to first understand that our Blog articles don't necessarily reflect our opinions. Instead, the articles we publish offer a wide variety of information on research papers that are published in many of the leading fitness and health journals. We summarize and do our best to accurately state what these research studies show in a more easy to understand style. There is no consensus on what any ideal workout is, whether it be for hypertrophy, strength or endurance. You can find just as many research papers that show 1 set done at maximum intensity is best for muscle growth and others that say 2,3,4,5 or more sets is best. You can then argue how much rest between sets is ideal, what's the best number of reps, most effective exercises and on and on.

We've been in the Gym business for over 30 years and we have up to 1000 people train at our facility on any given day. During all of these years we have never seen any workout that is vastly superior to all of the others. Different people use different training methods to get the same results. STS was designed based on years of research and what we have learned over 30+ years by observing others in our Gym and through our own experience. STS was never designed or promoted as a program for people who only want to improve muscle size. Instead, STS strikes a balance between endurance, hypertrophy and strength training. It's not designed to be used by someone who only wants to compete in a body building contest.

In the article you are referring to it says that " What conclusions can you draw from these studies? Frequency of training doesn’t have a huge impact on muscle growth in trained individuals, although excluding the short-duration study, the trend was towards greater muscle growth with higher frequency training." This simply means that there really isn't a very big difference in results whether you train once or three times a week. If your're trying to win a world championship body building contest then perhaps this small difference is important, but for 99.9% of people working out the difference probably isn't worth the time spent. And remember, if you train hypertrophy three times each week you probably don't have the time for cardio, flexibility, strength, power and endurance. You will also likely tire of this demanding fitness routine and your results will be short lived.

Lastly, always remember that research studies on humans working out are very difficult to conduct as you can't control factors like motivation, intensity of the workout, diet, stress, health and medical issues and participation. Thus, exercise studies are often skewed by factors that are not clear in the final report. You can always double up on the frequency of your STS workouts if you like, but I think you will find that benefits to time spent are not worth it and your chances for sticking with the STS program will lessen in the long term.

 

[aveggiegirl]

Thank you for answering.

 

[nckfitheart2009]

STS was never designed or promoted as a program for people who only want to improve muscle size. Instead, STS strikes a balance between endurance, hypertrophy and strength training. It's not designed to be used by someone who only wants to compete in a body building contest.

Thanks for setting the record straight with regard to STS.

 

[dixiedog6]

Interesting topic! Thanks for your response.

 

[Repo]

Interesting topic! Thanks for your response.

 

[Repo]

really enjoyed this thread