Blood Flow for Recovery(High Rep w/ Low Rep)

[JustinRVA]

I'm a big guy(6'5 230lbs) and I basically lift 5x5 heavy mon/wed/fri. That's pretty much always been my routine. I'm 29 and my body is starting to remind me that I'm no spring chicken anymore, so I think I'm going to have to go down to a heavy Monday/Thursday routine. I hear a lot of arguments about high rep lifting for endurance, hypertrophy, fat loss, ect, but I've never heard anything about the recovery benefits of high volume lifting. My question is, for lack of literature, has anyone ever heard of having a routine, maybe a Monday/Thursday split where you would lift heavy on Monday and High rep on Thursday and repeat? Or perhaps a Mon/Wed/Fri Heavy/Heavy/Light split?

I had severe tendinitis in my elbow last fall and I had to stay high volume, light rep in my arms for a couple months and it cleared up and hasn't come back since. A friend of mine who's in medical school said that the increase in blood flow due to the high rep could have aided in the recovery. He could have been blowing smoke up my @$$, but who knows. That's where I got the thought from, but there's not much to back it up anywhere.

Thoughts?

 

[Jrahien]

I don't believe that high-rep exercise would aid in recovery in terms of muscle repair. If you've gone and fatigued, and thus broken down your muscles on one day, then high-rep exercise the next day, although it won't likely break down the muscle further, could deplete your still-replenishing glycogen stores, making it take longer for the muscle fiber repair.

However, if your problem is with muscle soreness from a hard workout two days later or so, further exercise has been shown to help flush that soreness out.

 

[Goldfish]

Short answer is not sure.

I know an old Olympic weightlifter who's gotten into bodybuilding and training for health later in life, who was promoting very high rep, light weight training as an aid to bodybuilding. I'm not sure what his current stance is on that and what results he (and people taking his advice) have gotten from it. He was recommending 20-50 rep sets. That's not to replace regular training, but on top of it. It's worth noting that, having a weightlifting background, he was one to consider squats today as the best form of recovery from squats yesterday.

The Texas Method is a 5x5 program which splits volume, recovery and intensity over three sessions. The 5x5 sessions are volume on Monday, then on Wednesday you'd do something like 3x3 at 80% of Monday's weight, then on Friday you'd do 1x5, targeting a PB. IIRC, back when Glenn Pendlay was developing the program, his lifters were doing 5x5 on both Monday and Friday, and they kept begging him for less work on Fridays, so he made the deal with them that if they get a new 5RM on Friday, that's the lift done -- if not, they've got 4 more sets to go. The Texas Method doesn't really do much with high reps, but it is a demonstration of how different intensities can be used productively throughout the week, varying between heavy training sessions and lighter recovery sessions.

PHAT by Layne Norton is basically 3-5x3-5x3-5 (3-5 exercises for 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps) at the start of the week, then a boat load of exercises for 2-3x8-12 at the end of the week, typically done over 4-5 sessions (eg Mon:Hvy Upper; Tue:Hvy Lower; Thur:Vol Push; Fri:Vol Pull; Sat: Vol Legs).

The vanilla version of Madcow's 5x5 is 5x5 ramping on Mondays, 2x5 ramping and 2x5 across on Wednesdays, and 4x5 ramping, 1x3, 1x8 on Fridays. I got nothing out of that when I did it that way, but adding a 6th set of 5 on Monday (at the same weight as the 5th set, making it 4x5 rampng, 2x5 across) and doing 1x20 on Fridays instead of 1x8 (incidentally, with the same weight that's recommended for 1x8 in the program) worked well for me.

In my current program, most of my training is for 5-10 reps, but isolation exercises (when I can be bothered doing them) are often in the 20-30 rep range. That's all in the one session.

If you're after active recovery, a light walk and stretching is probably a safer bet than high rep strength training. As far as injuries go, if your high rep training cleared up your tendinitis, it might be because the weight used wasn't enough to agitate the injury, thus allowing it to heal, or from strengthening the surrounding tissues, or there may be some other explanation.

 

[JustinRVA]

Good pov guys. Thanks for the feedback. I switched my routine up, starting this week, to Mon/Thurs. I thought about it and decided that I couldn't swing a heavy Monday and high rep Thursday and still go up 5lbs a week, like I do now. It's going to be hard enough taking a day a week out and still going up week to week, but if I were only lifting heavy once a week, going up consistently wouldn't happen. The 5x5 has always worked well for me, but I guess my body just needs more rest than it used to.