Hey there,
Here are 3 things I’ve learned and/or expanded on this week.
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Fear Of Pain In The Gym
You might be cutting your gains short by avoiding pain in the gym.
Hear me out.
First we have to distinguish between the types of pain that you can experience while resistance training.
There are injurious types of pain that you definitely want to minimize or avoid completely. These include:
- Joint pain which could be felt as sharp or aching pain within the knees, shoulders, elbows, hips, ankles, etc…
- Tendon pain which could be felt as a dull aching pain at the distal or proximal ends of the muscle (the parts closest to the joints).
- Nerve pain which could be felt as a shooting/radiating or shocking pain that travels through a muscle from its nerve root.
- A sudden pulling, cramping, or sharp stabbing pain which could indicate a possible strain of the muscle or sprain of a ligament.
These types of pain all indicate that something is going wrong. It could be your technique. It could also be your ego and the fact that you’re lifting above the capacity that your tissues can handle.
Then, there is what I will call acute muscle pain which is often described by people as an intense burning sensation right in the belly of the muscle. When you apply a high level of tension to a muscle repeatedly, you’re going to have a build up of metabolic byproducts. This is likely what explains this intense burning sensation.
If you’re performing lower repetition sets (ie. 5-8) you might just barely begin to experience this intense burning sensation. The more reps you complete and the closer to failure you go during the set, the more of this acute muscle pain you’ll experience.
People with some experience in the gym are pretty good at predicting their proximity to failure, or how many reps they have left in the tank when they complete their set. Typically, the higher number of reps that someone performs, the less accurate they’ll be able to predict their proximity to failure. I would posit that this is in part due to the accumulation of metabolites and acute muscle pain that people experience.
Have you ever done a leg extension for 15+ reps? You know exactly what I’m talking about here.
You might be cutting your set short and leaving some gains on the table when it comes to building muscle. Try using your performance and repetition velocity as a proxy for your level of relative effort on the set as opposed to the feeling in your muscle for some exercises. On single joint exercises like the leg extension you can even take the set all the way to failure at times, where you can’t possibly get another rep. This will help you gauge how close to failure you are when you start to feel that acute muscle pain/intense burning sensation.
More Gains In Less Time
Not enough time to train is the number one barrier… *cough*cough*… excuse for why people don’t get into the gym as often as they feel they should. The good news is that if you’re just looking for the longevity and health benefits from exercise, as little as 4 minutes of vigorous activity each day along with a step count of say 7000 or 8000 steps is going to do wonders for you.
If you’re resistance training and serious about building some muscle or losing some fat while preserving the muscle you have, you’re going to want to be in the gym doing “hypertrophy” training at least 3 times per week.
I get the whole time barrier. I work 12-hour shift work, which includes day and night shifts, full-time on top of trying to build a business and enjoy my life. I also want to build as much muscle as I can within the constraints of my current life and commitments.
There are some special training implementations that you can use, many of which I use myself, to reduce the amount of time that you’re in the gym and still get a robust hypertrophic stimulus. These can also be used to increase the amount of volume that you accumulate within the time that you spend in the gym already. More volume, in almost any case and with appropriate recovery between sessions, will lead to more muscle growth.
Special training implementations:
- Supersets. Supersets are performing 2 exercises back-to-back with little or no rest in between. There are a few types: antagonist supersets, where you are performing two exercises which have opposing movement patterns (ie. a push and a pull); agonist supersets, in which you typically perform an isolation exercise to pre-exhaust the target muscle followed by a compound exercise that primarily targets that same target muscle (ie. chest fly’s straight into pushups); and another type where you take two completely different exercises which target completely different muscle groups and perform them back to back with little or no rest in between (ie. biceps curls and leg extensions).
- Giant sets and circuits. Giant sets and circuits are very similar and they combine multiple different exercises, say 3 or more, with little or no rest in between. These are typically harder to do in a commercial gym context because it would require you to be taking up multiple pieces of equipment at the same time.
- Drop sets. Drop sets are when you perform a set to or close to failure, drop the weight by 15-30% and immediately perform another set to or close to failure, and so on. This allows you to get multiple approaches to failure in very little time. These are better suited for machines with weight stacks to minimize the time it takes to drop the weight between sets.
- Rest-pause techniques: Myo-reps, as they are often called, are when you perform a set to or close to failure and then take a short rest (10-15 seconds) in the un-racked or the unloaded position before continuing multiple “mini-sets” of 3-5 reps. This again allows you to get more approaches to failure in less time than traditional straight sets. Myo-rep match sets, popularized by Renaissance Periodization, are when you perform 1 straight set to or close to failure and rest your normal amount of time. Whatever number of reps you completed in the first set are the number of reps you’re going to compete in each subsequent set. You’re then perform as many “mini-sets” as it takes to hit the target rep goal from your first set.
Some people might say that some of these are advanced training techniques which should only be implemented when you’ve become an advanced lifter and have eked out the gains from traditional straight sets. I would argue that once you have past the beginner stage and you’ve developed good exercise technique, there’s nothing wrong with using these techniques to save you time in the gym, increase the amount of volume you can accumulate, and add some variation to your routine.
Celebrate The Small Wins
If you’re like me, you want to achieve big things. For a long time, I focused primarily on the big, pivotal moments in my life. I let a lot of the small wins I achieved go unrecognized and un-celebrated.
This generally caused my motivations, life satisfaction, and productivity to suffer significantly.
If instead you choose to celebrate those small wins, a few really great things come to fruition.
- You’ll get an increased level of pleasure and satisfaction out of life. You’ll begin to provide a positive feedback loop to your brain’s reward system.
- You’ll get an increased sense of progress. You’ll feel like you’re getting more done and that the hard work and effort you’re putting in is worth it.
- You’ll be more motivated to adhere to the processes of achieving your goals.
- You’ll have improved productivity over time. This means more big wins and pivotal moments in the end.
When you achieve something really big it feels really good. But now what? What if you can’t top that achievement? Are you doomed to a life of dissatisfaction?
All wins feel the same – James Smith.
You don’t seem to get ascending levels of satisfaction for ascending levels of accomplishments. Think about the first time you started noticing some muscle definition. Damn, that felt good. Now think about the fact that you’ve probably put on the same amount or more muscle, but you don’t seem to feel satisfied with it anymore. Why not? You’re pushing away the small wins in favor of big pivotal ones. It’s up to you to choose to celebrate ALL of your wins.
Peace friend,
Jamie