Working your muscle twice a week may be the way to go....

[casualbb]

scotty green:

Ive tried 2 times per and all my lifts went down after three weeks and remained down till I stoped. Physically I looked no different and felt much worse.

I wish I could do the 2 times per week deal...

What kinda volume were when you gave that a shot?

gonelifting:

I`m forever trying to find out why I`m SO SORE FOREVER.

How much time do you let elapse between hitting the same bodypart? Oftentimes when guys do the once/week thing, they get incredibly sore each time because by the time they're hitting the same muscle group, it has already detrained noticeably.

-casual

 

[collegiateLifter]

DOMS is not necessarily indicative of damage. Every lifter has had breakthrough growth minus DOMS. Also, working a sore muscle causes the soreness to disappear. Unless the muscles were damaged and magically healed, I don't see how DOMS is caused by muscle damage.

-casual

what then is it?

Also, a side note is once you start warming up, etc your body starts pumping histamines, as i think they are called, natural pain killers.

i think it might be because damage does not equal soreness, but soreness equals damage.

So if you have something damaged it may or may not be sore.
Flipping that around, if something is not sore, it may or may not be damaged.


but if you have something sore it is damaged.

take away the soreness, it still may or may not be damaged.

still possible that DOMS and soreness doesnt mean damage, although i wonder then what DOMS is indicative of.

 

[casualbb]

Could be...I do find that DOMS correlates with growth, although for me personally it correlates more heavily with failure training. Right now my pecs are sore for the first time this HST cycle. Yesterday, coincidentally was also the first time I almost hit failure on incline DB's.

I've seen so many different DOMS theories with so many pros and cons, I basically just ignore it now.

-casual

 

[gonelifting]

gonelifting:

quote:
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I`m forever trying to find out why I`m SO SORE FOREVER.
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"How much time do you let elapse between hitting the same bodypart? Oftentimes when guys do the once/week thing, they get incredibly sore each time because by the time they're hitting the same muscle group, it has already detrained noticeably."

-casual


I go once a week now but I do 3 working sets per bodypart. I do 3x5 with a little variation here and there. The last set and also the first 2 SOMETIMES are pretty much to failure.

What do you think up my volume and eliminate to failure? btw I`m going up in weights or reps every week. It`s been 6 weeks on this program and time for a change anyway.

 

[T-Rage]

Regarding DOMS...

DOMS hits me right at the 20 hour mark. It is strange because I will feel no soreness and then within an hour or so of the 20 hour mark it hits like a ton of bricks.

When if hits if I do nothing then it will last until the next morning.

If I go and do cardio for 45 minutes as soon as it hits (20 hour mark) then amazingly the DOMS goes away.

This could be related to two things:

1) The endorphins (natural pain killers) that were released from the cardio made me unable to feel the pain

or

2) The DOMS is caused my biological by products sitting in the muscle irritating it and the cardio allowed them to be flushed away thus eliminating the pain.

Also, I don't know think DOMS is necessary for growth. I think you can get bigger and stronger without feeling DOMS or atleast without feeling it at the crippling level and long lengths some people are feeling it.

Here is an odd hypothetical question regarding the mucsle hypertrophy theories.

We know that weight training through various physical and chemical variables causes the muscles to hypertrophy (grow). What would happen if someone repeatedly suffered a contusion (a muscle damaging blow) to say their left qaudracep. After the quadracep had healed (a few days later) it was again hit hard enough to damage it again. The repeat this process for 2 months. Would this process cause the muscle to grow stronger and bigger?

 

[frenzyFYTA]

gonelifting

throw some light biking in the days after you work out, makes pain dissapear for me, i usually am the same way, hit a muscle group, sore as hell unless, i get out and do something physical, go for a walk, play basketball, ride the bike.

 

[casualbb]

gonelifting:

What do you think up my volume and eliminate to failure? btw I`m going up in weights or reps every week. It`s been 6 weeks on this program and time for a change anyway.

I'd say switch to a 2x or 3x/week non-failure program. Maybe 2 would be better in the beginning, because it can be hard to balance really frequent training with not overtraining. 2 is actually perfect for the guy who's looking not to train to failure but also do moderate to high volume. If you'd want to increase it to 3x, then you're looking at some super-low volume.

T-Rage:

We know that weight training through various physical and chemical variables causes the muscles to hypertrophy (grow). What would happen if someone repeatedly suffered a contusion (a muscle damaging blow) to say their left qaudracep. After the quadracep had healed (a few days later) it was again hit hard enough to damage it again. The repeat this process for 2 months. Would this process cause the muscle to grow stronger and bigger?

No, the muscle would not grow (although it'd sure as hell swell). The damage induced by training is a very different kind of damage. A blow would cause lots of broken blood vessels, maybe some microscopic fiber tears. Weightlifting places tension along the contractile elements of a muscle fiber, damaging only those. Imagine you have a bundle of rubber bands. It'd be like hitting the bundle, vs. yanking on it hard enough to cause some of them to break.

-casual