budgiefan
10-23-2008, 11:46 AM
I've never had a ton of success with GTG, primarily because it's hard for me to find the time to throw down and do sets multiple times per day.
I've recently tried something that seems to provide some of the benefits of GTG, in that you perform multiple submaximal sets. The primary difference is rather than spread it out over the course of the day, you do them in a pre-determinned time frame.
I call them, for lack of a better term, Condensed GTG Cycles, and they go like this. You choose 4 exercises which work the whole body (for instance, Atlas pushups, chins, Atlas squats and Atlas sit ups) and a time frame (say 20 minutes) and set out to do as many cycles of all 4 exercises in that time frame as possible.
I admit, I've only done this once, but it worked pretty well. I performed 50% of max reps for the exercises and was able to perform 7 cycles in 20 minutes. This allowed me to do more reps than I would have been able to do had I been going upt to failure.
Let's use Atlas push ups as an example. Let's say, to make the math easy, a person can do 20 reps of APUs before bumping up against failure. If someone were doing 3 sets, it might look something like set 1, 20 reps, set 2, 17 reps, set 3 14 reps for a total of 51 reps.
If someone were doing GTG at 75% of max, they'd do about 8 sets of 15reps over the course of the day for a total of 140 reps.
If they did cycles as I outlined, and pefformed say 9 sets of the 4 exercises in 30 minutes at 50% of max, they'd perform 90 APUs. PLUS, they'd have gotten a full-body workout from the other 3 exercises PLUS they'd have gained some aeobic and anarobic elements from little rest between exercises and cycles.
So the 90 reps is considerably more than they would have done just doing straight sets to near failure, but, admittadly, considerably less than they would have done doing GTG, IF they were able to srick with the GTG prorcol for all 8 sets at 75%.
I've recently tried something that seems to provide some of the benefits of GTG, in that you perform multiple submaximal sets. The primary difference is rather than spread it out over the course of the day, you do them in a pre-determinned time frame.
I call them, for lack of a better term, Condensed GTG Cycles, and they go like this. You choose 4 exercises which work the whole body (for instance, Atlas pushups, chins, Atlas squats and Atlas sit ups) and a time frame (say 20 minutes) and set out to do as many cycles of all 4 exercises in that time frame as possible.
I admit, I've only done this once, but it worked pretty well. I performed 50% of max reps for the exercises and was able to perform 7 cycles in 20 minutes. This allowed me to do more reps than I would have been able to do had I been going upt to failure.
Let's use Atlas push ups as an example. Let's say, to make the math easy, a person can do 20 reps of APUs before bumping up against failure. If someone were doing 3 sets, it might look something like set 1, 20 reps, set 2, 17 reps, set 3 14 reps for a total of 51 reps.
If someone were doing GTG at 75% of max, they'd do about 8 sets of 15reps over the course of the day for a total of 140 reps.
If they did cycles as I outlined, and pefformed say 9 sets of the 4 exercises in 30 minutes at 50% of max, they'd perform 90 APUs. PLUS, they'd have gotten a full-body workout from the other 3 exercises PLUS they'd have gained some aeobic and anarobic elements from little rest between exercises and cycles.
So the 90 reps is considerably more than they would have done just doing straight sets to near failure, but, admittadly, considerably less than they would have done doing GTG, IF they were able to srick with the GTG prorcol for all 8 sets at 75%.