What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
You want to get a little bit bro-y?
Well, we'll start talking about muscle pumps.
But before you actually think that we are going down the bro science road, it's actually
not.
You see, real science backs up the justification for why you might actually want to be chasing
that pump.
And I'm going to break that all down for you here today with one big caviate, and I'll
explain that in one second.
First of all what is the pump?
The pump, if we have a muscle cell, ok, it's not just due to the influx of blood because
matter of fact, blood is not gong to be flowing into your muscle cells.
What you're going to get into your muscle cells is water, ok, because as we train, we
get metabolic breakdown, metabolic byproducts that come from our training, lactate being
one of them, ok.
And it accumulates inside the cell.
Well, anytime we have this big influx or concentration, a higher concentration, of something inside
the cell,
then your body wants to equilibrate that.
It wants to have water flow in from the outsid eof the cell to try to diffuse that and equalize
the concentrations of stuff inside and outside.
Well, with this great influx of water, we then have this increased size of the muscle
cell itself, of course on the outside of that, we're looking at the muscle belly, we do get
blood flow that comes in around that muscle belly that also increases the size of the
overall muscle that you're seeing and experiencing.
That's the pump.
Now, why does that happen?
The blood comes in here and it cant' leave as fast as it's coming in.
A lot of that has to do with just the position of the muscle or the limb when you're training.
If you're doing a bicep curl, most of your action occurs right here near peak contraction.
Remember that because I'm going to come back to that in one minute.
Near peak contraction, the blood simply doesn't have an equal chance of leaving as fast as
it's coming in.
So, you do get that accumulation in there of that noticeable swelling.
But of course it's this inside cell swelling that's just as important.
Now, why is that important?
Because as this cell starts to swell, it actually sends a signal not only to increase protein
synthesis as some new research has shown,
but it also sends this signal to the cell of, 'Oh, shit.
this thing is starting to cause some tension on my walls, ok.
All this influx of water is causing some tension on the walls of this cell to the point where
it might fear that it could burst or break open.
Well, what it will do is, it won't break open but it will actually send a signal to start
fortifying the strength of the walls of that muscle cell.
As it fortifies, you can see what will happen is it might actually start to get a little
bit bigger as the wall gets a little bit thicker.
Well, if you multiply that times millions as you count all of your muscle cells next
to each other, ok, but you start to increase the size of that overall muscle.
So, in the long run, yes, you can get some hypertrophy response because of this.
We also know that a hydrated cell is a good cell to have if you want to grow.
Now, that brings us back to a point of growing vs strength.
If we're talking about strength training, if we're talking about training in the very
low rep ranges,
then no, you're not really going to experience a muscle pump for a couple of reasons.
A lot of the exercises that are done at low rep ranges, let's just say like a Hang Clean
or
a snatch or some type of high powered low rep movement, even a Bench Press done for
just 3 reps or 4 reps is not enough of a targeted muscle contraction in one particular
muscle to cause a pump to really be maximized.
So now, let's go back to the whole point.
Is it really necessary?
We're going to qualify it.
It better be a high tension overload exercise that is related to the pump because I can
grab this banc right here next to me
and we all know that if I sit here and I do Curls like this with no tension no real, yeah,
there's tension but nothing really significant, no real overload, ok,
if I do this for about a minute to a minute and a half, I will definitely get a pump in
this muscle, but do you think that's enough to cause a hypertrophic response?
No chance.
So, just going after the pump alone is never going to give you the gains that you want.
you have to always accompany a pump with a high load high tension overload type activity.
So, what's the best way to do it?
Well, here we go.
The best way to do it is to do some high tension high load weighted, heavy weighted movements
that you simply drop down and do a drop set from.
So, if you do a 6 to 8 rep max exercise, drop it down to half the weight and rep out until
failure.
Now you're getting the best of both worlds.
You're getting all that tension, and then you're carrying it through additionally to
this point of pump because you're actually u now having more metabolic byproducts
because of that lengthened set.
You're having more accumulative tension over time, and you're getting all the benefits
of the blood coming in here.
The second thing you're going to want to do if you're looking to maximize pump is choose
some exercises that will allow you to do.
The best way to do that is to choose exercises that allow you to experience peak contraction
at some point.
Again, a power clean.
Again, an Overhead Snatch, there's no real contraction moment in any of those exercises.
those wouldn't really lend themselves to a pump.
If you want to get a pump, Tricep Push Downs, peak contraction.
Bicep Curls, peak contraction.
You can do Tricep Extensions and load up the weight.
You're getting a peak contraction, and you're getting an overload so it's a great exercise.
But you're going to want to make sure that you're choosing the right ones to make sure
that you're allowing yourself to get that