Fundamental concept to training/rest recovery

[coolcolj]

I was thinking about the basis of how the human body repsonds to training volume/intensity vs recovery ratio this morning, and I have found the perfect analogy -

Think of the organism as a piece of rubber band, you can pull it it in many different ways and stretch it it in any direction, you can stretch it quite a lot, but sooner or later your gonna have to release the tension or else the rubber band will break.

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That leads to my next thought - rough at that but I hope you get the general idea

I like to think of training as a way of organisation and utilisation of an existing inventory of materials to build. This stock of materials gets replentished in a certain rate. The materials are used to feed the building machine (your body)

This inventory can be replaced at a faster rate with better recovery enhancement.

The machine consumes differnet materials at different rates. And the machine's local storage can only hold 10 units of each material type at any one time

Materials consist of CNS, Muscular energy. CNS get replentished at a rate of one unit per an hour, Muscular Energy two units per an hour. Both are restocked at 10 units per an hour.
Now if the machine ever runs out of CNS then it breaks down and takes 2 hours to fix. You can see that machine will always run out of CNS before Muscular Energy.

So would you rather go push the machine hard by running it till it empties its local storage of CNS and in the process break down after an hour, taking another 2 hours to fix it - total 3 hours for every part built.

Or Run it for half an hour, wait till the CNS is replentished (30mins) and then run it for another half an hour, so that in one
1.5 hours you can build one part.

So you can run it hard every 3 hours to be build one part, or run it easier every half an hour and build one part after 1.5 hours.

3 hours vs 1.5hours. Your choice

well that simplifies the training concpt a lot, but I think it puts the point across.

 

[skaman607]

Can you really train 30 mins out of every hour of the day?

sorry I really don't get it

 

[zackdarnell]

Can you really train 30 mins out of every hour of the day?

sorry I really don't get it

Its just an analogy. he isnt saying train for 30 minutes, rest for 30, train for 30, etc.
At least I dont think he is.

 

[Fatty4You]

I think i know exactly what you are talking about. I am sure some of you know Ian King - he writes fitness books and lots of articles on T-Mag. Anyway, he came and gave a lecture to a class i was in one time. He was saying that a lot of people push them selves waaay too hard and what happens is it throws your body into a state of depletion. However, the harder you go, the deeper and longer you are in this state of recovery until you actually are fully recovered and can effectively work again.

However, he said that if you didn't push yourself as hard, you wouldn't become as replenished, which means you would heal faster which means you could push yourself sooner than if you needed a lot of recovery time. So, in essence, even though a workout might push your intensity to a greater limit, the overall rate at which you improve over time will not be as great because you spend soooo much time having to recover from previous workouts.

This would be a lot easier to explain if i could show you the diagrams that he made up on the chalk board, but in essence, CCJ, i think this is what you were saying. And i agree with your analogy.

Now, i am new the whole 5x5 thing, but i think it does as you are saying because you don't go to failure all the time, except maybe on the last one or two sets. So, you are working hard, but not overexerting your body's resources.

I am not sure about this last part, but the stuff above is strait out of Ian King's mouth. He mumbles a lot and his english isn't always the best, but he seems to really know his stuff.

-Fatty

 

[coolcolj]

Just an analogy guys

Fatty4U - That is pretty much right on the mark

 

[skaman607]

oh I see, so basically what youre saying is dont train to failure

 

[MOD]

....................

the stronger you get, the longer it takes your CNS to recover. you have the ability to increase your strength by about 300% from the time you start weight training, although your recovery abilities will only increase by no more than 50% ( without chemical assistance ).

 

[coolcolj]

Skaman - not necessarily, you just have to know the balance of every set and every rep you do.

Mod - you can improve work capacity, which is separate from recovery capacity

 

[gimp]

too techinical....do warm up sets to get a pump in whatever muscle group you are working. Don't work a muscle directly more than 1x week, Eat big, lift big, sleep as much as you can, rest alot and you'll get big. end of story.

 

[coolcolj]

sure, but I'll gain faster