What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we’re going to talk all about workout soreness and tell you what you need to know
about workout soreness.
Whether you should be chasing it because you feel like it’s a prerequisite for growth,
or whether you maybe shouldn’t be focused so much on it.
Or whether there’s even things that are more important than it.
You see, when it comes to workout soreness – and anything here on this channel – we’re
trying to put the science back in strength, and we try to do in that ‘no BS way’ so
you understand what it is you’re going after.
When we talk about training and soreness, really what we’re discovering is – and
there’s a lot of research that goes back and forth on whether or not this is true.
But what we see is workout soreness is generally created by eccentric training.
There’s a reason for that.
Concentrically, what we’re doing is – meaning we’re shortening the muscle with tension.
If I were to flex my bicep as hard as I possibly can here, flex, flex, flex, flex hard; it
really actually hurts.
There’s tension in this muscle.
I’m squeezing as hard as I can, but it’s shortened.
There’s a shortening here.
If I were to have tension in the opposite direction, eccentrically, when I’m lowering
and stretching – I’ll show you on an incline curl in a second.
What I’ve done here, if I look at this band in place of my muscle, instead of having this
where I’m actually pulling, and pushing as hard as I can, there’s tension on the
ends of the band.
I’m pushing, pushing them toward each other.
It looks like it’s fine; it’s intact.
However, if I put tension with elongation these little rips that were already in this
band are getting worse, and worse, and worse.
So what happens is, you’re getting these microtears and damage in your muscle fibers
when you do eccentric training.
Meaning, loaded elongation of the muscle itself.
That’s actually what sparks muscle growth.
So, if we look at it here – as an example, I can take a dumbbell and curl it here, and
as I’m curling up I definitely have tension in the bicep.
That’s why it’s flexing.
And it’s shortening.
In concentric only training, ironically, can be done without producing much soreness, if
any at all.
So, when I elongate I’m getting a stretch on the muscle, and tension.
So that’s doing that band effect.
It’s pulling it apart.
It’s creating the microtears from the damage.
The people that don’t focus on eccentric training, and they just drop the dumbbells
without really allowing the tension – there’s no tension there.
So, if you do your eccentrics and you don’t concentrate on slow eccentrics, you’re actually
missing a lot of the tension.
You’re getting elongation here, but not a lot of tension because you let it go.
So, if you’re going to look for soreness, or chase after soreness you’ll get it only
if you slow down the eccentrics, not just by doing eccentrics alone.
As I’ve said, other forms of eccentric training, like sled pushing, or many of the Olympic
lifts like cleans, or snatches; there’s not a real eccentric portion of that lift.
A lot of times you can do those without producing soreness.
We even have a phase in one of our programs where we do back to back training, concentric
focus on a muscle group on a certain day, then we come back eccentrically the next day,
realizing that we’re not going to be very sore from the day before.
So – what the hell is my sleeve doing up here?
So, the fact is, if you’re going to chase soreness you’re going to get it that way.
Now, is it even necessary?
Here’s the interesting part.
It is necessary, I believe, because you’re looking to have that adaptive strength.
So, if you’re not creating stress on the muscle, you’re not going to create the stimulus
for growth.
Keep that in mind.
If you’re training for strength, soreness isn’t necessarily what you’re after.
You don’t have to become sore to get stronger.
If you’re looking for hypertrophy, knowing what we know about eccentric training and
overload, and what it can do to muscle to create the stimulus for growth, you want to
get that effect.
However, here’s where people screw it up, and here’s where people won’t tell you
the truth.
I think a lot of times this is where the studies fall apart.
If we’re training, you’re looking at about 30, or 40, or 60 minutes in a day, of your
day.
Your full, 24 hour day.
You might get everything right there.
You might do everything I just showed you to create muscle soreness and the next day
you wake up, or 48 hours later you wake up and you’re sore.
But did you grow?
If you didn’t do everything else right – the stuff you do in the other 23 hours – like
eat right, supplement if you’re going to supplement, sleep adequately, sleep right.
In other words, sleep for recovery.
If you don’t do any of that other stuff you’re not going to grow.
Just because you’re sore you didn’t support your efforts in the gym.
I always say here, it’s like I can do the best I can to try to get you to do the right
things in the gym, but I can’t walk you through the other 23 hours of your day, and
have you do everything right.
This is where people don’t have the commitment.
It’s really, really difficult to do everything right – and you’ve got to do a lot of
things right – to do everything right for the other 23 hours in the day.
It’s why dieting, and eating right is really so hard because we can all make it to the
gym, but we can’t do the other portion of this for all those hours.
You can certainly be sore and not grow.
So that’s where I think a lot of people come to the conclusion that soreness doesn’t
necessarily equate to muscle growth.
I think it does if you’re doing everything that you need to do in order to support your
hard efforts in the gym.
Now as far as those people who say “I never get sore when I train.
Never, ever, ever.”
If you want me to show you how to do that I will give you a workout, and I promise I’ll
make you sore as shit.
But I’m not going to kill you or do crazy things.
I’m just going to show you exactly how to do that.
let me know and I’ll make a video on that, a separate video, and I’ll show you exactly
a routine you can do to get sore all over.
But today we’re discussing whether or not it’s even necessary for growth.
That’s my two cents.
I think it’s on the right track.
Let me know what you want me to cover here on this channel and I’ll do my best to bring
the ideas, and things you want me to do.
If you’re looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, that won’t
bullshit you along the way that is ATHLEANX.
That’s what we try to do better than anybody.
You can head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get our training program.
All right, guys.
I’ll see you back here again soon.
See you.