[Article] Dennis Wolf's 5 Commandments for a Sick Leg Day

[Shrek]

Dennis Wolf's 5 Commandments for a Sick Leg Day

1. How you do it matters most.

“Too many people don’t think there is a difference between weightlifting and bodybuilding. The biggest mistake I see in the gym is with form. Guys go too heavy and cheat, or don’t use a good range of motion. They just want to impress the other guys and girls at the gym or to be able to say they can squat x amount or lift all the weight the leg press machine holds— and none of that matters if your legs look like a chicken’s.”



2. Divide ‘em or don’t? A personal choice.

“Whether you should train the whole leg at once or split up quads and hams depends on the person. If your hams are very bad, train them first or on another day. If your hams are pretty good, you can probably be OK training them with quads. Actually, only recently did I realize this is advice I need to take!”

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3. Fill the tanks, but don’t top them off.

“You should adjust your pre-workout meal portions depending on how large and demanding the body part is, relatively. I eat a little more carbs than usual before a leg workout, but not too much. I don’t think it’s good to have a huge meal of any kind before leg training. Then you feel sick to your stomach and that ruins the workout. I think it is also a reason you hear about so many guys throwing up from squats!”



4. Leave the maxing-out for powerlifters.

“I have never tried to see how much I could squat or leg press for just one rep. I am a bodybuilder. I think that’s stupid and a good way to get hurt for a bodybuilder. I don’t even know why so many bodybuilders talk so much about how much weight this or that guy uses— our sport is all about the physique, so how weak or strong you might happen to be doesn’t even matter.”

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5. Respect the need for recovery.

“Your muscles need time to recover from a workout, and I believe bigger muscles like the quads and hams need more time. Usually my legs stay sore for at least three days after I work them. I don’t think they would be recovered if I tried to work them at that time. Maybe every five days would be OK, but I give them a whole week between workouts

 

[Fadi]

1. How you do it matters most.

“Too many people don’t think there is a difference between weightlifting and bodybuilding. The biggest mistake I see in the gym is with form. Guys go too heavy and cheat, or don’t use a good range of motion. They just want to impress the other guys and girls at the gym or to be able to say they can squat x amount or lift all the weight the leg press machine holds— and none of that matters if your legs look like a chicken’s.”


5. Respect the need for recovery.

“Your muscles need time to recover from a workout, and I believe bigger muscles like the quads and hams need more time. Usually my legs stay sore for at least three days after I work them. I don’t think they would be recovered if I tried to work them at that time. Maybe every five days would be OK, but I give them a whole week between workouts

I'd like to thank Adrian for sharing this post with us here. I've decided to make my comment regarding some of the points (commandments) raised by Dennis Wolf, namely points #1 & 5. Before I write my words, I'd like to make it crystal clear that I'm not in the business of commenting or criticising just for the hell of it. My criticism here will be (I'm hoping) of the constructive type, where you may in turn criticise me if in your opinion my words are deserving of such. Let's go..

I could not agree more with Dennis when he makes a distinction between the training of a weightlifter and that of a bodybuilder. I'd be silly to disagree with what ought to be the very obvious. Moving on to point #5, Dennis talks of respecting the need for recovery. Again, how can anyone with a sane mind find disagreement with such an advice. So here's where I come in with my different take on this whole recover issue, especially when we're told, legs are to be trained once within a 5 to 7 days period of time.

First we're told we're not weightlifters,...I fully agree. Then we're told that our legs would need between 5 to 7 days to recover.

1. What needs to recover, and...

2. Recover from what

Let's take the 1st question: what needs to recover. Our leg muscle fibres of course a bodybuilder (including Dennis Wolf) would say.
The second point that is, to recover from what? The majority would say, recover from the training these leg muscle fibres were subjected to of course.

Time to expand and go deeper...

A weightlifter's training is not of the metabolic type, has never been, and will never be, period!
A bodybuilder's training is of the metabolic type, has never been devoid of it, and will always include it as its bread and butter.

Great, what now? Well, it's time to tell you that a weightlifter's training program is based on neural training or adaptation if you like, ...not so the bodybuilder. Mmmm, so where're you going with this and why is it so important to know these things? Because if you know what your training style is, you would know what type of recovery it requires for you to succeed in your chosen sport of either weightlifting or bodybuilding.

Ok, before I expand on the point of recovery, I think it's in order to explain what is the difference between a neural type of training, vs. a metabolic type of training.

Neural:
Rep ranges between 1 & 5, with 1 & 2 being neural dominant (above all else).
Time under tension is very short.
Time taken between sets is in the vicinity of/between 3-5 minutes (depending on the % of the lifter's 1RM used at the time)

Metabolic:
Rep ranges between 8-20 (but I would say 20 being your lowest rep, with 50 reps being ideal). Much more to say on this later on if need be.
Long time under tension.
Shorter rest period averaging 60 seconds between sets.

So why am I not in agreement on training legs once a week as a bodybuilder? Because it takes a lot longer for our nervous system to recover from a high intensity/nervous system taxing type of training, than it would applying a metabolic type of training, where the main focus of stress is placed on our muscles instead of our CNS. A muscle does not need 7 days to recover, even without steroids. So imagine how your muscle fibre metabolic recovering ability increases when you inject it with steroids!

Oh, but I feel DOMS I hear you shout! Meaning? Meaning I can't train legs until DOMS subsides! Says who?!

No one really knows the exact cause of DOMS, even though the general explanation is that it’s caused by mechanical and/or metabolic stress. https://www.painscience.com/bibliography.php?pyn..Hahaha, yes of course…, what other cause could it originate from? Financial stress!!

Overall, there’s a general agreement amongst the scientists that nothing really and decisively helps the bodybuilder with his DOMS.. https://www.painscience.com/bibliography.php?con As I’ve written on this forum back in 2009, that the best way to recover from DOMS would be to flood your trained muscles with fresh nutrient rich blood using a super high rep set of no less than 50 reps (with an extremely lightweight). This is done the day following the previous day’s workout. Not only will you reduce your DOMS significantly, but would increase the rate of your local muscle recovery and raise it to a substantial level (a level it would not have experienced until many days later had you simply “let it go”).

You would all agree with me when I say that the worst case of DOMS you’ve ever experienced was when you were least experience in the sport of bodybuilding. In other words, the untrained suffers the most. The more sedentary you are, the more likely your experience of DOMS would be severe indeed!

Why to the above? Putting two and two together, I’d say it’s got a whole lot to do with the “sleeping”,or rather, the untrained motor neurons (remember our new to the sport bodybuilder, or you when you decided to embark on a new exercise etc.?). That was your motor neurons getting one hell of a wakeup call! Okay so you want proof hu! Go and do the same thing over and over again and report back to me if you experience DOMS, or your experience of DOMS has not diminished to a level closing onto zero.

Okay, so we need time to recover (we all agree on that). So why my disputing of the 5 to7 days of leg rest as suggested by Dennis Wolf? Because since we’re in a sport where an emphasis on muscle metabolic adaptation is king, you can not force adaptation if you allow for a too long time to recover between training that muscle (legs) again. If you do, you might as well be putting your (now awakened) motor neurons back to a lazy sleep, where due to the long rest, their supposed recruitment would end up as a regression instead of a progression (into adaptation). In simple plain English, you go back to becoming a new bodybuilder all over again (experiencing severe DOMS), unnecessarily!

So much more to write and expand upon, but I'll leave it here for now. Thank you for reading.

 

[JazDSpaz]

I see he mentions nothing about calves... How appropriate.

 

[Goosey]

My opinion is, is that we are all weightlifters, it's just that most are weight throwers...

The amount of people who actually train is a small group.

To be a sub-set within that group is even rarer.

High intensity weight training is like intervals to runners It works really well for some and is a complete disaster for others.

If there is one thing I've learned in all these years is that consistency trumps intensity, but I digress.

The bottom line is; The workout that you actually do, the one where you give it your all will do much more for you than the workout you don't do.

 

[Shrek]

My opinion is, is that we are all weightlifters, it's just that most are weight throwers...

The amount of people who actually train is a small group.

To be a sub-set within that group is even rarer.

High intensity weight training is like intervals to runners It works really well for some and is a complete disaster for others.

If there is one thing I've learned in all these years is that consistency trumps intensity, but I digress.

The bottom line is; The workout that you actually do, the one where you give it your all will do much more for you than the workout you don't do.

Yeah. Consistency is not common with most. If I don't give it my all I feel like I've cheated myself.

 

[Jungnaut]

@Silverback ; do you sit there pensively and stare at the ceiling in deep contemplation between sets then jot everything down on a scribble pad to post on here??

Lol I love the riddles man, it gets my synapses firing early in the morning which is a good thing.

But yeah, consistency is where the jizz, I mean shizz is at, yo!

 

[Fadi]

Consistency provides one with the possibility to succeed, but only when coupled with comprehensiveness. You see many bodybuilders who consistently put in honest efforts in the gym, only to fail in other areas that are required to complement those efforts. That is why I place an emphasis on the need to be comprehensive when approaching the sport of bodybuilding.

Diet can be 100% on the money, just as training is 100% consistent in the gym, yet the bodybuilder may still fail due to mismanagement of stress. This would in turn lead to a rise in one's cortisol levels, which would in turn shut down the liver's manufacturing of bile. This would then lead to belly fat / beer belly due to the undigested / unabsorbed fats. This leads to deficiencies in the fat soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, E, K etc. Blocked arteries can develop here due to calcium that has no vitamin K to shuttle it into the right places. Also, from a cosmetic point of view, no amount of cream (with high vitamin E) would solve the problem of dry skin here, as the root of the problem has not been tackled.

The above was just one simple example of what I meant when I coupled the word comprehensiveness with the word consistency.