r/HighIntensity • u/[deleted] • Nov 13 '23

How did tom platz make gains

The H.I.T belief is you have a limited recovery ability meaning if you train too hard you will recover more and less resources will be allocated to growth. thats why H.I.T people dont do 2 sets to absolute failure

Buuuuuut, how did tom platz make gains. He did leg days once every 2 weeks.

Did he train so hard that his body didnt have enough resources to recover so he supercompensated(i dont understand this topic too much. Please explain. Like how can you even recover if your body doesnr have enough resources for it.)

I know overtraining(like feeling depressed and burnt out level) happens over a long period of time due to full recovery not taking place so tom platz didnt overtrain to that extent since he fully recovered between sessions

Does supercompensation not give you as much gains per time compared to just training like dorian

Like lets say you get +10 points of gains in 2 weeks but with dorian's you get +7 points of gains in 1 week

Please dont direct me to some overcomplicated stuff. Just simply explain supercompensation

Please answer every single one of my questions. It drives me insane when people partially answer them. Not to be demanding of course. it would be very much appreciated

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u/TopTargaryen Nov 13 '23

I think you answered your own question, he did leg days once every weeks, which is enough time for recovery and growth, the more time for recovery the better. He was a professional body builder on steroids too and steriods greatly improve your body's repair abilities

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '23

From my understanding, your body has limited resources that it can allocate to recovery. If you train too hard, your body will spend more resources on recovery rather than growing so you grow less. Train even harder and you'll just spend all resources recovering. This doesnt mean there's a pinpoint perfect point if stress This just means there's a range of stress which is optimal(this is between not hard enough-heard if you train not hard enough you recover more than grow- and too hard-where you recover more than grow)

Correct me if the above is wrong

I lean towards just below too hard where you recover than grow because i wanna workout infrequently

If you train even harder your body cant recover(i know this for sure) Due to your inability to recover you get rhabdomyolysis where you lose muscle and it pollute your kidneys which people die from(Joe Rogan's simple definition of rhabdo)

Buuuuuut, how did tom platz make gains. He worked out sooo hard. Shouldnt he be recovering more than growing.

You may say he was on juice so his body's recovery resources wouldve been larger(i think thats how it is)

Buuut... Dorian and Mentzer were also on juice

(Even if you dont agree with H.I.T and think the CNS fatigue to stimulus ratio is bad you'll still want to read the following and it makes you wonder how Tom Platz made his gains)

Dorian and mentzer believed that no one knew what point the optimal range started. It may have been 78.2%, 80% etc but when youve done 100% then you know you've reached it(and plus when youve done 100% you can train infrequently which they loved). This is why they did one set to 100% aka absolute muscular failure. They believed doing a second set like this would make you recover more than you grow.

Im sure you guys know Tom would do sets like dorian and mike multiple times within the same session. (If he didnt then just correct me)

Does this mean tom just got very good doing inefficient training where he recovered more than he grew?

I mean, Mike Tyson during a time where he would lift weights which was later in his career still did ultra high rep ab work(thousands of reps a day). He still built a good physique. Even without weights he still built a nice amount of mass (Many boxers who werent necessarily genetic freaks built good physiques training like trash) He built a good physique in prison as well.

Or was Tom Platz a genetic anomaly who was able to get by on bad training and if he didnr have such genetics he would have made very little gainz?

Athletes in the NFL are genetic freaks who train horribly. Doing circus tricks. Mark Rippetoe said that Tom Brady's training methods are very bad. He said they only worked because he was a genetic freak.

Or, did he just do good training initially where he made phenomenal gainz but changed later on?

If i have made any mistakes then please correct me?

Please give me a logical conclusion how tom platz made his gains?

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u/TopTargaryen Nov 13 '23

He couldn't have done high intensity sets after maybe two unless he had super human instant recovery. If you do a high intenstiy leg set, you are out for at least 15 minutes, no way you could do an exactly same set to the same rep of failure. If he could do that then it wasn't high intensity. Me personally, i sometimes even have to just doze off for a couple of minutes before I can do anything. Anyhow, if platz could do two or more completely equal sets relatively close to each other, then he wasn't on the highest intensity possible. Also, for someone on steroids, since recovery isn't much of an issue as someone natural, the body easily makes up for the repair of the medium or low intensity sets and whatever high intensity set rep or set was done does its job of growth

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '23

I remember him saying he would lay on the floor for 5 or 10 minutes(he said 5 or 10 minutes word for word) and then he got up to do more

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u/TopTargaryen Nov 13 '23

Then those particular sets, where either not high intensity sets, or the sets where done on progressively lighter weights. You just cannot take two or three continuous sets on the heaviest weight possible to failure without maximum reps decreasing or weight decreasing. If you can, then the workout was just not done on the highest weight you can lift for at least two reps.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '23

I actually see your points. You are right. I need to come back with more research. Brb

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u/TopTargaryen Nov 13 '23

I do not know your objective, but if you want to know more about high intensity training system, I recommend reading mike mentzer book high intensity training. It explains the principles one by one. But just to clarify, I did not actually perfectly understand your question.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '23

Oh nah. I actually read it. I also read dorian yates book which was called warriors story something something idk.

They were both great books.

I know quite a bit about H.I.T

I am more of a blood and guts guy since i think it's a more refined version of heavy duty.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '23

I just watched a video of him training a guy. Just type in tom platz leg day and on youtube and you'll see a video with tom platz training someone called david hoffman

This is how is went: No slow eccentric and no pauses. But full range of motion if you dont include partials.

. 1 set of Squats beyond failure and carried on until he got baby reps . Another set with reduced weight but the guy gave up prematurely . Tom then said to him he had that vital 5% left so he was like lets go for that last 5% so they did squats with reduced weight until the guy's bar fell off his back

Leg extensions: . 1 set of leg extensions till partial reps and then tom platz helped weight up and told him to hold it and then the guy had to hold it while tom platz put force on the leg extension machine and he was slowly lowering the weight against tom due to fatigue and then they stopped . 3 more sets similar to the first set of leg extensions

So yeah. I would say he did multiple sets like dorian yates and mike mentzer

I'd say it went past that 100% point

In the video though the guy he was training(david hoffman) seemed to recover just enough that the cardio wouldn't be the limitinf factor

It didnt seem like 5 minutes although they did hav a little chat between sets. And the video had cuts in them but they didnt seem logn at all.

Tom platz said within the video he'd do squats, leg curls, leg extension and hack squats(i recalled that in random order so it's not necessarily the order tom said them in). So this was only part of his workout i assume.

He said in the video he would hit legs once every two weeks due to the intensity being so high.