Bodybuilding Forums

Hey, just curious what the average POP is for guys on here...reason being is that i find i have the most strength every 5 days or so and was wondering if that is a bit excessive. Keep in mind i'm still doing 3.0 full body workout. 5 days just seems to be the ticket for me and i just wish it was sooner.

POP is different for everybody, my POP is 3 days always, but my friend's pop is 48 hours. It varies.

Mine is 3 days i'm pretty sure, I'm always stronger the next time after 3 days.

It does seem excessive. What's your age? Maybe you're not fully pushing yourself beyond failure.

48 hours for me so every other day in the gym.

I'm 26. i'm actually stronger after about 3 days but i get even more strength up to a week after. i found this out after i was forced to take 7 days off due to busy schedule, then when i found i was stronger, i played around more with the schedule and found that 5 days it really peaks out. after that it stays the same then of course eventually i atrophy and lose strength.

Peak growth for me seems to be around the 4th day and I tend to only gauge my POP based on bodypart measurements. The workouts go well and I always add either reps or weight. I tend to agree with Harley, I've noticed in the past that like after a weeks holiday I come back a lot stronger but that's just down to the lay off effect I suppose. It's good to have a rest once in a while.

You come back whenever you're stronger. Not when you feel over 200% rested. You said 3 days, go to the gym every 3 days then.

Don't just focus on strength, do the bodypart measurements too. Most of my 25 years training has been geared towards gymnastics and strength training where the goal was to only gain strength and not muscle. I know from past experience that I am stronger on a workout pretty much day to day. I think (for me anyway), for a bodybuilding routine the bodypart measurement is a better guide for when to train again. For POP you find the sweet spot when you are strongest and biggest with biggest being the key factor if size gains are the desired effect.

paulcorfield wrote:Don't just focus on strength, do the bodypart measurements too. Most of my 25 years training has been geared towards gymnastics and strength training where the goal was to only gain strength and not muscle. I know from past experience that I am stronger on a workout pretty much day to day. I think (for me anyway), for a bodybuilding routine the bodypart measurement is a better guide for when to train again. For POP you find the sweet spot when you are strongest and biggest with biggest being the key factor if size gains are the desired effect.

How do you do your bodypart measurements? I've tried, but there's so many variables - hydration, that pump that sticks with a muscle for a day or two after a good workout, creatine and glutamine amounts, and just faulty measuring (did I have the tape this tight yesterday?) that I haven't had much success in micro-measuring (more often than say, two months).

Zero wrote:You come back whenever you're stronger. Not when you feel over 200% rested. You said 3 days, go to the gym every 3 days then.

So how do you know if you're at POP, or just more rested/more glycogen/more hydrated whatever during a workout, and not just heading back to the gym while only 70% to POP there? It wouldn't make a big difference in each workout, but could add up significantly over a few months, especially if overtraining happens.

I guess that's the biggest problem I have with Mark's diet and 3.0: there's a lot of loose variables floating around, and there's a lot of assumptions being made that these will be consistent every day.

For example, two chicken drumsticks could easily vary from each other by 100 calories or so depending on how they were cooked, how large they are, etc; and with Mark's recommendation to eat 100-200 more calories a day for growth and no more (based on a formula that will vary quite a bit from person to person and may not be accurate for many people), it's hard to figure out what to take with a grain of salt and what to be precise about.

I guess it's all about taking the recommendations of the program, and carefully tracking and experimenting to yourself to see how your body responds and how you should adjust it.