What we have here is a failure to communicate....or simply vastly different experiences and ideas.
So I will do a thought experiment for you and go back maybe 2 million years or longer. Imagine that our ancestors are hungry and are out hunting animals.
Suppose our hunter and gatherer gets into a fight after tracking some big game all day. The hunter is almost killed. This has been an extraordinary struggle
and he limps into a cave to sleep the night. In the morning the hunter awakes with his body quite sore from that struggle. Doms has set in. So what does
the hunter do since he hasn't eaten in a day? Will his muscles be able to operate and allow him to hunt and struggle? If not then we literally wouldn't be here
today. Keeping this in mind do you think that we can train when our bodies are quite sore? Absolutely. That soreness isn't like a sunburn or blister. We are
sore because there has been significant damage in the muscle fibers and they should adapt by getting stronger and perhaps a bit larger. Growth will occur
as long as sufficient nutrients are ingested.
The major stumbling block to hypertrophy is the repeated bout effect. The body will adapt to severe muscular exertion by growing larger and stronger. This
isn't easily measured in most muscles but a tape can record any growth on the arms and calves. Well over a week you can easily measure any changes.
What scientists discovered is that the body adapts to the stress of a severe workout and this adaptation lasts a long time....even months. So when you
encounter the same stress (workout) nothing much will happen except stay the same. There is no additional growth. This explains why so many trainees
are stuck on plateaus. They have to workout doing something more intense and or different from the last workout. This isn't always easy to do.
I give the example of rolling one of those huge machinery tyres that are used in strongman contests. It takes a big effort to get one of them up and rolling
but not so much effort to keep them rolling along. I apply that to hypertrophy training so that the repeated bout effect doesn't set in. Get the muscle quite
sore and then on the third day train again while it is still experiencing DOMS. The trainee won't feel like training but if he does do another hypertrophy
workout he will keep his muscles in a continuous state of growth. It is imperative NOT to recover completely. That is why I believe Jones and Mentzer were
mistaken about what Selye wrote about adaptation. If you wait until the soreness evaporates the repeated bout effect occurs and then you have a big
problem. How to stimulate more hypertrophy since the workout you did last time won't be sufficient.
If you want to keep the muscle continuously growing you HAVE to keep it sore. That is the gist of what I am claiming.
As you can see this will be easy to test. To me this is all very logical because it works on me. Will it work on other people....everyone?
I hope so but obviously don't know. Are our muscular systems actually quite different? I don't think they are different when it comes
to individual fibers and physiology. Some may have more fibers than others but the principle of hypertrophy should apply to
all muscle fibers.
Now let's talk about intensity of effort and hypertrophy. Is this the main factor in hypertrophy? Jones and Mentzer argued that it
was. I submit that this might be true for strength but it is only partly true for muscle size. What else is required? Volume. If you
do sufficient intensity with sufficient volume you should stimulate hypertrophy. How much intensity and how much volume?
The scientists don't know unless they observe what the huge bodybuilders do. What would they find? Well, the champs do
lots and lots of sets with reasonably heavy weights. Of course that isn't specific enough to distill a theory of hypertrophy from.
More in another post.
Many interesting and thought provoking points and I hope to address them all. I will just take them in the order presented and see how far I get.
In regard to your thought experiment I indeed have a very different perspective than you do. If our prehistoric hunter physical abilities is compromise in anyway it will severely reduce his chances for future success. Even at his pristine prime, our hunter's chance for success is tenuous at best. Even less so if he is injured or physically compromised. Unless he is taken care of by others in his group or tribe he will die. And most died in those days. When you consider that life expectancy was in the early forties back in the relatively cushy 1900s I imagine it was barely drinking age "back in the day" of our bare footed spear chucker. Kicking it Hobbesian style -- nasty, brutish and short -- is not conducive to longevity.
I recent watched a show on Cheetahs and how they are losing the great battle of surviving as a species. Their specialty, great speed, comes at a cost and some trade offs. Being so fast Cheetahs have had to give up size and strength. So they are limited in their choices of prey and the prey they do take down are in danger of being swiped by other bigger and stronger predators like hyenas. The Cheetah is too small, weak and solitary to defend it's kill.
A Cheetah has about three attempts to make a kill before their survival rate begins to plummet drastically. After the third attempt a Cheetah's strength and stamina nose dives and they can longer muster the speed and strength to run down and overcome potential prey. It's state of DOMS is not helping them adapt to their survival and unless they recover and get out of that "DOMS" state they will die. And they do die.
In this study they cited a rare case where three Cheetahs banded together. Being solitary makes survival much more difficult just like no man can survive in the wild very long by himself. Maybe, like humans, the Cheetah is discovering new strategies to enhance and continue it's survival. If not, they will die off just like the countless of other species, perhaps like even different versions of humans, died off and became extinct.
A DOMS infected prehistoric hunter has a chance of slim to none to be successful and contributing to a kill. No one wants a limping, heavy breathing hunter bringing the rest of the pack down. Best he stay at home with the women eating roots and berries until he is fit enough, recovered enough and DOMS free to make a meaningful contribution.
Either that or die.
Vince, if you were to have a hand to hand fight to the death with bigmc would you train your ass off all the way until the night before the event or wpuld you want to take a few days off to fully recover and be at your best and strongest?
Human recovery resources has to be prudently divvied out. Just day to day life without weight training requires a full night of sleep and recovery to be ready for the next day. Having a 20 inch arm is pretty low in the pecking order of human survival needs. Even fully recovered, expending recovery resources for large muscles is hardly a top priority. Imagine how much further it drops when you are in a constant state of disrepair, i.e. DOMS
