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Counterbalancing
as a result of intensive weight training.
Intensive weight training will cause micro-lacerations in your muscles
and connective tissue.
While you are not training (resting) the body will prepare
itself for the next training session. To be able to cope with
the next session the body will restore balance by repairing
and at the same time reinforcing aforementioned micro-lacerations.
Vitamin C and the proteins contained in your diet are the
most important stimulants of this process.
After a complete recovery the repaired and reinforced muscles
will be able to cope with a load comparable to the ‘previous’
session. Fitness, weight training and body-shaping are in
fact based on this counterbalancing process.
It is therefore
important to realize that muscles should be trained progressively
(i.e. incrementally) over a certain period of time.
Muscular
pain
Simply put, muscular pain is the ‘soreness’ one
feels in the muscles during the days following a workout.
During these days accumulated waste-products, such as lactic
acid and free radicals, are removed.
The pain felt while the micro-lacerations are healing ensures
that you cannot use the muscle as intensively as before or
that you may even prefer to leave it alone altogether. There
is much difference of opinion about muscular pain, but one
thing is certain: muscular pain is a good indicator. As soon
as there has been no muscular pain at all for about two days,
a muscle is normally ready for the next training. Muscle fibers.
Muscle fibers react differently to sets of 4 to 6 repetitions
than to sets of 8 to 12 repetitions. Without going into too
much detail, the following rule of thumb may be applied:
- Sets of 4 to 6 repetitions strengthen your muscle fibers
and connective tissue (which means that you can increasingly
lift more weight)
- As a rule, sets of 6 to 8 repetitions make your muscle
fibers larger (which means that the muscle fibers increase
in size)
- Sets consisting of more repetitions provide the muscles
with neurological stimulation, improving signal transfer
from the brain to the muscles. By periodically exercising
with a higher number of repetitions you lay the basis for
a more effective training with fewer repetitions (4 to 6
and 6 to 8 repetitions).
Recovery
time
In most cases the Body-shaping program works best with a
3-days-a-week schedule. Ideally you would train every other
day allowing your muscles and central nervous system 48 hours
to recover after each training session.
It is most important to listen to your body and to make adjustments
depending on how you feel at a given moment. So, if you feel
rather tired, do not hesitate to just skip a day. If you are
well-disciplined, taking a day or two off will not interfere
with your development.
Often a day of rest
will renew your enthusiasm. Therefore, when in doubt, it is
probably better to take it easy and avoid over-exercising.
Not everyone feels muscular pain. Especially women seldom
experience muscular pain except for the first time they train.
This is because women have more of the estrogen hormone than
men. This hormone protects the muscle against muscle trauma
caused by weight training.
It looks as though there is no direct correlation between
the training of a muscle and the resulting muscular pain.
The moment you finish training a muscle it is tensed, pumped
up and may even ‘burn’ a little.
At that moment the muscle is less strong, but not yet painful
or sensitive. After a few hours the swelling will disappear
and the strength will return, but there is still no muscular
pain at all. However, 24 to 48 hours after an intensive training-session
the muscular pain does set in!
Muscular pain develops slowly and after 1 or 2 days the trained
muscle fibers cause minor pain sensations which worsen. We
normally call these sensations ‘muscular pain’.
This phenomenon can be explained by what we already know:
it is caused by chemicals preparing the muscle for growth.
Muscular pain, therefore, seems to be a necessary evil to
effect muscle growth. You can therefore measure the intensity
of your last weight training by the amount of muscular pain
you feel. In other words, if during the days following your
training you experience little or no muscular pain, be sure
to try and use more weight the next time you train that particular
muscle-group.
Author: Tobias van der
Avort
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