JEFF: If you found the video helpful, make sure to leave your comments and thumbs up
below and also let me know what you want to see in a future video and I'll do my best
to cover it for you.
All right, guys.
I'll see you soon.
JESSIE: Cut.
JEFF: Jessie, come get me out of this shit.
Oh my God.
JESSIE: Hold on.
JEFF: Oh, there you go.
I don’t know how the other fitness guys do this shit.
JESSIE: I don’t know.
JEFF: What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I want to talk to you about – oh, screw it.
Hit the arms.
Let them be free.
However you want to hold them.
Guys, the fact of the matter is, today we're talking about Broscience.
More Broscience.
And today the Broscience may not be what you think it is because a lot of guys that follow
the science of training will say – these days – that muscle soreness is not a requirement
for muscle growth.
In fact, muscle soreness has nothing to do with muscle growth.
That's where they took it too far because that's not true.
That is Broscience.
The fact of the matter is, if you want to build muscle, muscle soreness could be one
of the major ways that you're going to do it.
As a matter of fact, it may be one of the easiest ways for you to do it.
So here's what we're going to do: we're going to cover the three ways that your body tends
to create muscle growth.
One of them is related to muscle soreness.
Two of them don’t necessarily have to have it.
That's where the whole saying comes from in the first place.
That "Oh, you don’t need it.
It's not a requirement for that".
But it eventually becomes necessary because these other two pathways might dry up for
you.
So what we talk about is this third pathway, if we jump all the way down to the bottom,
muscle mechanical damage.
We're talking about eccentric overload.
Literally creating damage to the muscle, or as some research will say these days, to the
connective tissue around the muscle.
It depends on what you believe is the actual mechanism of damage.
But we all agree that it's some level of damage occurring to that area of the muscle that
you train.
It has to grow back bigger and stronger, we do that through eccentric overload.
That is what causes this delayed onset muscle soreness that we're familiar with, that we
say "Oh, this is what I need to build muscle", and this is where, now, people are saying
you don’t need it.
Well, they're saying you don’t need it because you've got two other mechanisms that actually
lead to growth that don’t have the associated soreness with it.
The first one is a progressive overload using either tension as a driver, or volume as the
driver.
So what are we talking about here?
The tension is literally adding weight to the bar every time you train.
So every time you train if you can continue to add tension, add more weight to the bar,
which makes the muscles that you have working here, work harder; it helps them to get stronger.
We know we can increase the size of your muscles as you're strength increases, as will your
size over time.
However, there's a major problem with that.
We can't keep doing that forever.
We can't keep adding weight to the bar.
It's easier when you're just starting out and you're training, but ultimately that pathway
will dry up.
You want to always try to do that.
you always want to continue to lift heavy when you can in your training sessions, but
you want to make sure that you don’t rely on this as your only mechanism because when
you can't add more tension then the next thing you might try is volume.
You might say "All right, if I'm not going to be able to add more weight to the bar I
can do more of what I'm doing."
As we do that we start to see that, maybe, isn't necessarily the best way either.
I know a lot of people like to rely on this as their main mechanism these days.
This is the preferred means of getting bigger, and stronger.
However, as a physical therapist I have to look at it from another side.
I have to look at it from the standpoint of: increased volume is not necessarily always
a good thing.
The number one problem with people that are lifting these days is overuse injuries.
I'm not talking about injuries like "I got hurt, I snapped my pec tendon, or I tore a
patellar tendon".
That's not what it is.
It's that really low-key, over time "My God.
My shoulder's starting to hurt a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.
My elbow is starting to hurt.
I have tendonitis in the outside of my elbow here.
I have tendonitis of my knee."
All of those things are coming because we're accruing volume and volume creates overload.
But volume will also create overuse.
If you keep relying on this – especially if you're not using spot on, dead on, nails
perfect form – that will start to rear its ugly head a lot faster.
If we go the metabolic way here, the metabolic way is actually when we create the byproducts
of training.
So we have metabolites that are produced.
We have hydrogen ions.
We have lactate.
All this stuff is being produced as we accrue higher, and higher volume.
We can use a lot lower loads here and we can still get this intense burning in the muscles,
and if we continue to train through that, and train through that pain, and train through
that burn it's been shown that you can actually create muscle hypertrophy using a lot lighter
loads.
That's actually very encouraging for a lot of people because they don’t need to rely
on this all the time.
But this is very difficult training.
Not a lot of people have the fortitude to try to put up with this discomfort when they're
training.
The metabolic stress.
This is also, ironically, one of the newer ways that people always ask about in training.
Occlusion training.
Occlusion training relies on this.
Very light loads, create and occlusion in the muscle, don’t let it breathe, more or
less, continue to allow the accumulation of that pump, and don’t let it go.
That increases the metabolites that are being collected in the working muscle, and again,
it starts this cascade of events that will ultimately lead to muscle growth.
So continuous tension, or the use of contracted position exercises.
So you can take an exercise like a spider curl that trains you in this contracted position,
the most tension, peak tension occurs at the contracted position of the biceps.
I can crank away in that range using lighter loads, increase this, but like I said, you'd
better be prepared to really resist that burn, and train through it if you want to get the
benefits of this.
So now, let's go back to – you don’t need pain, you don’t need soreness to create
muscle growth.
You might need it.
If you dry up here, you might go to volume.
If this starts to cause a problem, potentially, in just the way you feel in breaking down
other areas that make training even more difficult for you – I've seen it a million times.
This can become a problem.
If you go here, this might already become a problem for this.
But if you try this and maybe you don’t even have the ability to do this, or string
together multiple workouts like this, or you're consistently using too light a weight because
this is the only mechanism you're using, you're not dipping into this; where do you go from
there?
Where you go is, you have to start including some mechanical damage via eccentric overloads.
We can do that, and the reason why this is one of the best ways is because It's one of
the easiest things to do.
You don’t have to have this.
You just have to slow down the weight that you're lifting here.
Control it.
Eccentrically allow it to start applying this high level of tension as your muscle is stretching
and elongating.
You can feel the effects of what this is doing to the muscle as you're doing every rep.
So now, what is the danger to this?
The danger is you would never rely on this on its own because if you continue to do this,
and you produce your delayed onset muscle soreness that leaves you debilitated, and
unable to come back and train, then where are you left?
Then you're not able to train as frequently because you feel as if you're too sore.
So when you look at the whole picture here it's wrong to say that muscle soreness is
not a way to build muscle.
That's wrong.
It's not true.
It's one of the three ways that builds muscle.
Muscle soreness is not a prerequisite for muscle growth.
That's right because you can have other pathways, but ultimately you're never going to get away
from the fact that the muscle soreness is a path, one associated with damage via eccentric
overload, that's going to be part of the equation for you.
So the bottom line is, all three of these mechanisms need to be part of your equation.
You need to figure out how you're going to start training heavy.
I can tell you a quick way to even test this with a touch up set.
You can essentially feel how neurologically you can already lift more than you think you
can right now.
Do a touch up set.
If you're going to do a six to eight rep set, take your five rep max, do two reps of it.
Now go do your six to eight rep set after you've recovered for a couple minutes.
You'll instantly feel stronger.
You've turned on the neurological awakening of your muscle that will allow you to lift
more easily.
Lift that heavier weight more easily.
But again, even neurological gains; those end, too.
So for all these reasons, you have to mix them all up.
But don’t say that 'muscle soreness has no effect on your ability to grow muscle'.
That's just not true.
That's complete, and utter Broscience.
Guys, if you're looking for a program that knows how to mix all these up at the right
time to allow you to benefit from all of them – because you're going to need them all,
like I said.
You're going to have to lift heavy sometime.
You're going to have to increase your volume.
You're going to have to increase your tension.
You're going to have to do metabolic exercises.
You're going to have to use continuous tension.
You're going to have to know within the range of the exercises when you're going to work
the contracted position, when you're going to work the stretched position, when you're
going to work the mid-range.
You're going to have to have mechanical damage and overload.
You're going to have to have a respect for lowering your eccentrics slowly, and in control.
All this matters.
All of this stuff, at the end of the day, it's all part of the big picture.
I have a whole program over at ATHLEANX.com.
In fact, all of our programs are based on the principles of training science that works.
You can find the one that's right for you over at ATHLEANX.com right now.
Click on the link below this video.
Use our program selector to help you do that.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments
and thumbs up below.
We'll cover more Broscience in the future.
Let me know what other things you'd like to see us cover.
Give me some ideas.
I'll be happy to go over them for you.
All right, guys.
See you soon.