Not trying to troll in HVT group. Rather I’m coming off a biceps tendon tear that has my ortho-surgeon telling me not lift upper body for weeks and not to train it hard for months. What a perfect time to try 6x a week squatting. Except the A&P I took first as an emt then as a nurse always left me with the impression that (sarcoplasmic pump aside) damage to the myofibrils was, effectively self-imposed injuries or wounds and while diet and sleep can aid recovery you don’t bounce back from a gunshot wound to the pec by…shooting it again. This passage has always been my general impression: [quote]
Muscles need time between weight-training workouts to recuperate strength and restore damaged tissue. If muscles donâ??t have time to rebuild between sessions, all their resources will be funneled into repairing new tissue damage rather than building extra muscle mass. Without enough time to recover, muscles become weaker with each session rather than stronger. Listen to your body to know when youâ??re ready to train again.
Cellular Damage
A weightlifting workout causes tiny tears in the muscle fibers, depletes a muscleâ??s carbohydrate stores and interferes with the calcium balance within the cells, causing muscle soreness and weakness. After a workout, immune cells rush in to repair the damage and the muscle begins to swell. Even when the swelling goes down, carbohydrate stocks are replenished and the cellular chemical balance is restored, it takes four to seven days for muscles to fully recover their strength after an intense workout. It takes another two to three days for muscles to reach maximum strength gains beyond their original level.[/quote]
That’s about a 6-10 day between training sessions suggestion. Obviously HVT systems scoff at that. 6-7xweek squatting would really pick my mood up as training is a passion. However I’ve never been able to find any medical article suggesting our body’s ability to heal can be improved (different than increasing stamina or endurance).
Where am I going wrong and has anyone (as suggested in the quote by the doctor) trained doing a whole body workout only 3-4x per month.
Again, I’d love to squat everyday after reading some of the anecdotal testimonials on T-Nation–but there’s a disconnect I seem to be missing despite reading Christian’s articles.
That would be very interesting if the muscle damage model was actually true when it comes to causing muscle growth, but I stopped believing in it years ago. See, we don’t yet know EXACTLY how muscle grows but recent evidence points more toward cell chemical signaling than muscle damage.
YES some small amount of muscle damage can occur from time to time when training hard, but not always and it is not the principal growth stimulus IMHO. A good example are the occlusion training studies which found that if you cut off blood (so oxygen) flow to the muscles (with something similar to a blood pressure cuff), then lifting loads as light as 20% and not even close to failure elicit the same hypertrophy response than lifting 80% weights to failure… heck, even walking on a treadmill with said cuff elicited a significant growth response.
This is obviously not due to muscle damage or even carbs depletion but rather to growth factor release (IGF-1 and MGF to name two), making a muscle more responsive to anabolic hormones (e.g. increasing sensitivity to IGF-1, insulin and testosterone) as well as cell chemical signaling.
I could also point to sprint cyclists or speed skaters who have huge legs, sometimes without even much weight lifting training, because of the nature of their sport. BUT their legs do a lot of work, but work that is devoid of eccentric actions. Most of the muscle damage occurs during the eccentric portion of the contraction, yet these guys have huge legs… without muscle damage.
If muscle damage was the stimulus for growth, hitting your legs with a baseball bat or stabbing them with a knife would make them grow…
And if carbs depletion was a growth stimulus then running a marathon or using a low carbs diet (which depletes all of your muscles of their glycogen stores) would instantly make you huge.
And as you mention real-life examples show that you can absolutely grow big muscles training them almost every day. Look at gymnast’s back & arms from daily pull-ups and dips work or olympic lifter legs from daily squatting.
A theory that doesn’t pan out in real life, cannot be anything more than mental masturbation.
Okay, thank you. I think the disconnect was on my part in the reading of the HVT articles. I was thinking the system for hypertrophy was caused by traumatized microfibrils coming back over compensated–but that by exposing daily or 2 or 3 times daily stimulus you were somehow affecting and increasing the body’s ability to heal a wound–which I had serious questions about.
I see much more clearly now that you are operating under a completely different philosophy of muscle growth triggers. I’m guilty of speed reading I think and skimming past the foundation you built your practice on. Mia culpa.
Chemical signals (and the frequency thereof) is a vast, huge, gulf of difference than a “healing” model. Which explains why some people are aghast at what you’re talking about and some are very comfortable with it.
It could be one of the biggest divisions in the training from which all other differences (low reps vs high reps, low volume vs high volume, intensity vs frequency etc, etc) emerge.
Okay. I’ve got about 3 months to do nothing but legs. I intend to swap squat and front squat back and forth and not train to failure or high mental arousal. I’ll throw in Hise Shrugs and call it a day in 30 minutes.
How come people keep saying cyclist dont do any eccentric?
Eccentric is lengthening of an active muscle.
Doing so much concentric makes the muscle active and pumped and contracts harder, shortening the muscle fibers
So in reality cyclists are doing more eccentric actions than anyone
Do a leg exercise and then sit in the hole of a squat and after 30 odd seconds (provided your muscles are active enough) the stretch on your quads will become almost unbearable and the pain increases with the duration.
The whole over training thing has got out of hand. Muscles have been proven to repair and grow from eccentric action even when more eccentric action has been undertaken in subsequent days