I went to the gym today, and lucky enough, I convinced my rehab specialist to come, since he does atend to the same gym, only on a different hour…lucky for me, it was saturday. You wouldn’t believe what happened…
First of all, I want to say that i started lifting slower, a powerful but controlled contraction as somebody said, not going as fast as possible or attempting to…well, I did feel the fibers work hard, but oddly, the stress was focalized, it was located in a small portion of the muscle.
My specialist spotted me and he asked me what i felt. I told him and he said:
"When you lift slow, you make the fibers you recruit work more intensely, becuase the load is too heavy for them alone, but you are not lifting fast and therefore, your neuromuscular system is not sending the signals to all the fibers, you make a percetage of them work harder, while the other percentage doesn’t.
That’s why you only lift smoothly in exercises that affect an specific zone, not an exercise designed to spread its effect throughout the entire muscle, where you don’t need to focus on an area but to recruit all of its fibers.
This is why you lift smoothly on the flyes and pullovers and also on some cable or pec dec exercises (if you don’t deviate towards heavy loads and instead look for concentrating tension on an zone of the muscle and extending its duration under stress) and that’s why you lift hard and fast on dips, and bench presses…"
I proceeded to timed sets, lifting a light weight, something like Thibadeau prescibes, a set of 25-35 seconds with about 1 second per rep. He also said:
" You will get functional hypertrophy, it’s just like the reason why mechanics get big forearms from their continuous wrench-turning jobs, the body will adapt to time under tension more than tension, you are piling up T.U.T…"
He then told me to do my third set in a very interesting manner: To just lift as hard as possible, lower under control, but without putting much of my energy on it, and continue at whatever pace I found sustained a pump for as much reps as I could, without reaching true failure, then reduce the load and continue, a normal drop set.
I must say, it felt great. We also tried pre-exhaustion, but it felt tiresome, not as a pumping set, a hypertrophy set but more like an endurance set, perhaps becuase I don’t know how to do them right, and he said it was ok, I should go by feeling, play it by ear as you say.
I asked him why they didn’t work, and why should I move at my own cadence and not try to do as somebody here said “Go down as slow as you can, making the muscle get as much tension and sress, keeping it as hard as when you were lifting the load, and make that last as much as possible”…
He said " You would probably do well in lifting fast, or trying to do so, rather than just keep the contraction powerful and a litle slow on purpose…you shouldn’t not pull your punches in a fight, and the same goes for bodybuilding and lifting.
Now, as for the lowering, you can lower yourself in two ways: you let the movement and resistance put the tension on it alone, or you can help them and squeeze your muscles yourself, like a bodybuilder does when he flexes and poses, and both would work to some degree, but I wouldn’t advise tot ry to reduce your whole workout to a single set by making it so intense. That will lead to injury and overtraining"
He said that pretty much, people should do their lifting like they do their pushups: try to get as many pushups per set as you can without pistoning yourself up and down, that is performing the push-up in your best form, lifting hard and fast and lowring udner control, achieveing a constant level of tension, but contrary to what I read here, it doesn’t have to be maximum tension, the idea is to find a way to dosify the srength you put into each pushup so as to get the maximum number of pushups, without looking like a race, not trying to really go as fast as possible, but to hold a pace and try to get as many as possible.
Now the strangest thing happened to me: I didn’t have a shirt to wear that I would consider confortable, since it’s a hot season here and well, my laundry service didn’t deliver on time, so I rolled from home to here on my jeans and a shirt with the company logo.
Well…this cute girl is using the rowing station, looking quite fit, almost as good as to try and get into T-Nation’s t-vixed squad, and she saw my shirt and asked me if I knew her cousin, in another section, which lucky enough, I did, and we started talking.
Boy, I was happy as hell, the hottest girl in the gym talking to the guy on wheels and every male in the gym was looking at us, green with envy. She gave me her number, we spotted each other on some exercises, when my specialist was so cool and I will always thank him for getting intense and lift heavy poundages on anothe rmachine so as to give me some time alone with this girl…who’s also an engineer, not chemical, but electronics and robotics, so wow, she’s got body and a brain. I guess it paid off to be catholic, the Lord answered my prayers at last, LOL.
I guess I got one of the things I was looking for, and due to my specialist’s advise, I am on the road for the other. I am also thankful to another group of people, in the gym.
There are 3 Colombian guys, one of which has his left leg deformed, after minefield blast in Colombia. They encouraged me last time I was there, they congratulated me when the girl left today and also helped me with my routine, and they really boosted my drive to get big.
Plus, one of them also told me that if I grew more than 7 pounds of lean muscle pounds by the end february, he would invite me to a party of the Colombian community to meet his friends, and well, latino girls are a huge turn-on for me, and the pics he showed me on his blackberry tell me that Colombian guys really should get on their knees and thank the Lord for the women they have.
I am motivated gys, and I know you were right. I shouldn’t whine, I should shut up and lift, and go heavy or go home, give it my 100 and never look back, always trying to be my best.
I guess that T-Nation saved the rest of me from a life of spctacular mediocricy hiding behind the excuse of losing half of my legs. That shit won’t fly anymore. I am gonna be like the white version of Ronnie Coleman or Vin Diesel, so I am gona try what one smart person here said: I would get big and sign up on a handicapped bodybuilding contest.
The worst I can be is the same as all the jacked-up ripped and huge guys on stage, right?