There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
Muscle Fatigue Decoded
Welcome to there is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name. There is a method to the madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412.
Speaker 1:We get to pick this up talking about some muscle fatigue today. This is part two of the podcast the other day, where I was talking about what exactly happens when the muscles are broken down Like. What does that look like physiologically and what do we do to help it recover? Help them recover. So now let's talk about the best way to break them down Because, as I said in the past podcast and I say it all the time that is the goal of a strength training workout. We want to make sure that we've created the muscle damage and, in some cases, the metabolic damage so we can have the muscles repair, recuperate and come back stronger. That's the whole idea of resistance training. Resistance training when we use resistance, those things happen. The muscles break down, the body recovers, you come back stronger. That, in a sense, is the overload principle. So what is the best way to do that?
Speaker 1:Now, when it comes to strength training outside of showing up, we have to show up to get benefits from strength training Right, and that means show up at home, at your home gym with your dumbbells or your body weight. That means show up outside. If you've got resistance training equipment, you can use outside. That means if you're going to my gym, that's great, you got to show up outside. If you've got resistance training equipment you can use outside. That means if you're going to my gym, that's great, you got to show up. That means if you're going to another gym, that's great, you got to show up. So we have to first be consistent with our strength training. I think that is the obvious. We can't do any of this if we don't make a commitment to showing up on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:After that, the most important two variables you need to focus on in the gym often get overlooked, and that is number one form. Because not only is it a safety issue like a lot of times people think, well, form is just about. You know, I can hurt my back, that's true. With bad form, could hurt my elbow if I'm just flinging weight down, pulling down really hard, that's true. I mean that can happen with poor form. But as equally important is the fact that good form recruits the right muscle groups, and that is very, very important. It's not just a safety issue, it's a quality issue, because ultimately, what we want is for you to reach or get close to what is called concentric muscle failure. That is the point where the muscles cannot do another quality repetition in good form. That's concentric muscle failure.
Speaker 1:No matter how many sets you do, no matter how many reps you do, what kind of load you use, the important thing to tear down the muscle fibers so they can be rebuilt and come back stronger is you have to approach failure. There's some debate on how much you have to reach failure, like if you have to reach it every single set on every different exercise. I mean that really depends. That depends on how far along you are in your workout cycle, that depends on your fitness level, that depends on your motivation. Like, not everybody can push to that level, so that's a big. It depends and that's going to be the main thing I talk about today Like how do we figure this out? How do we do it? Like there is no magical way to know? The truth is, we have to reach muscular failure, or get close to it, to further break down the muscles. It's not going to happen just by doing more sets of an easy intensity. That's not how we do it. How much, though, is very individual, extremely individual. As I talked about in the last podcast, we don't know exactly that point where we're going to cause further damage if we keep going, but we do know there's absolutely a point to diminishing returns. Okay, so getting to muscular failure in good form is our goal of every strength training workout.
Speaker 1:Now let's say you hurt your knee and you're coming back from rehabilitation right, you just done some rehab and you're coming back from rehabilitation right, you just done some rehab, you're coming back. Does that mean you go to failure the very first time you do your leg extensions? No, we build into it, but what it does mean is, every time we come in, we challenge that a little bit more until we can get there. It doesn't mean we just sit there and do subpar repetitions and sets over and over and over. It's not the quality or it's not the quantity that's going to get it done, it's the quality that's going to get it done. Now, in my industry there are things called acute program variables and that is often talked about, talked about too much. How many sets should somebody do? How many repetitions? What's the magic number of repetitions? You know, what load percentage should somebody use? And it's, it doesn't matter really. All right, let me take the reps first.
Speaker 1:For the longest time and there's an organization that's still guilty of it, but they'll say so from 6 to 12 is ideal for hypertrophy. So 6 to 12 reps is ideal for hypertrophy. This isn't true, by the way. This is just kind of their generalized logic. From 1 to 6, they'll claim, is ideal for maximal muscular strength. From repetition 12 to 20 is ideal for maximal muscular endurance. And they break up those three different types of adaptations and they'll say that's the rep range for this. Well, the real research and I shouldn't even say newer, it's been out a while pretty much shows that there isn't that perfect number of reps, not physiologically. There might be psychologically for each individual, but there's not that perfect number of reps like that. So one study has shown anywhere from five repetitions to 30 will create almost the identical response, whether it be strength, endurance and hypertrophy, which pretty much all occur if you're strength training.
Speaker 1:They try to say that you can isolate maximal strength with doing really heavy weight for low reps versus hypertrophy is ludicrous. So really the key is getting close to muscular failure, whether it be 25 reps or five. Now where it does matter is psychologically and of course, the load that you use. Like if you're not overly confident with your technique, with your form, then it doesn't make sense to go really heavy weights and do very low reps, like five or six reps or something like that, because you might hurt yourself, because you're not doing it right. It's not because the load is too heavy. It might be just too heavy for the technique that you feel confident doing and I would argue you know why you don't have to do that. You know it'd be much more. It would make much more sense to grab a moderate load and go to failure that you're confident being able to use good technique with, all right.
Speaker 1:Now the downside to doing too many repetitions is. Sometimes that just becomes mentally grueling, like it's very hard to continue to hold really good form, for most people say longer than a minute, which it's going to take longer than a minute If you're doing really high reps. It becomes very mentally challenging, it becomes boring for some people. So you really just got to find the sweet spot of repetitions and then understand it's about getting close. I got to say close because you may not have to hit that concentric failure and I'll explain that term in a second, but you got to get close. And if you're advanced and elite you know I hate to say elite, that's like a judgment thing If you're more advanced and you kind of plateaued, then yeah, you're going to have to hit it to get further benefits.
Speaker 1:Just doing the same old, same old all the time isn't going to make you better. It's going to maintain it, which is great, and we will reach a point where we peak in our muscularity, where we peak in our strength. That's okay. When people sometimes fear that or they're not happy about that, I have to remind them. It's like that's not such a bad thing. Now we just maintain it, like we're going to all reach a point where we're not going to get any stronger and that's okay. We maintain it to keep ourselves mentally fresh. Maybe we move the exercises around so we can peak on a new exercise. You know that's all great, that's all well and good, but just understanding we're going to reach a peak is going to happen. But to get further benefits when we're still on that way up on new exercises or in general, we're going to have to hit failure. All right, so it's close to failure or failure.
Speaker 1:Now, concentric means shortening of the muscle fiber, as I talked about in the last podcast. So your actin and myosin filaments, your protein filaments within the muscle, cross, bridge each other, and when they cross and come closer to each other, we call that a concentric contraction. That's when the muscle fiber is shortening, that's when it is contracting concentrically. We're not going to necessarily hit eccentric failure, which is lengthening when the actin and the myosin are separated further apart. We're not going to hit eccentric failure with that. Very often I mean you can, but that's doing heavy negatives and the negative or the eccentric contraction is 50% stronger than the concentric, so it's harder to hit and there's really no evidence that suggests you have to hit eccentric failure for the muscle to grow. I mean, does it help? Yes, but again, it's going to be hard to do those negatives, to do that, but we do have to reach concentric failure or close to get the benefits. Okay, that's how we do it.
Speaker 1:So just to kind of recap that part, because it's very important, I have to restress that, restate that the goal of going to the gym for strength training is number one, to get there, number two, to do the exercises correctly. And I'm not even going to stress, I'll say it again, so you don't get hurt. Yes, but that's we kind of all know that, but I hope but it's also to do it correctly. So we're recruiting the right muscle fibers, okay. So again, let's say you're doing curls, you're doing dumbbell curls, but you're swinging them up. Are you recruiting some of your biceps? Yes, but you're also recruiting some of your lower back muscles.
Speaker 1:So it's not just about getting hurt. You're taking the recruitment away from the muscles that you're trying to get to failure and you're using momentum to try to get more repetitions, which totally defeats the point. That's totally an ego move to do that. That's so you can look like you're using more weight than you really can handle. I mean, you know we can all do that Like. You can take anybody moderately strong and grab weights that are 10 pounds heavier than they're used to and fling it up there and have the average gym go or go. Oh wow, they're using a lot of weight.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's really not that hard to do and I will be blunt here it is stupid. There is no reason to do. And I will be blunt here it is stupid. There is no reason to do it. We go to the gym to build strength, not to demonstrate our strength to our peers. It doesn't matter, and you know what people nobody cares. They really don't care about you Like you think they do. They're probably not looking at you and if you are flinging weights around, they are looking at you, but they're also making fun of you. So there is no reason to do it. Safety, of course, but also you're not building more strength in those areas by flinging weights.
Speaker 1:So the idea of a good form is to recruit the appropriate muscle fibers. When you're doing standing dumbbell curls I'm just using this example because this is one I often see people cheat on You're trying to recruit your bicep brachii, your brachialis and your brachioradialis. Those are the three muscles of the anterior arm. Those are the three that you're trying to recruit. You're not trying to recruit your deltoids by flinging the weights up or pulling your elbow away from the side, trying to recruit your deltoids by flinging the weights up or pulling your elbow away from the side. You're not trying to recruit your rectus spinae or lower back muscle by swinging or flipping at your waist. You're not trying to build up your quads or recruit your quads by bending your knees and jamming the weight up. You're not trying to do it and I know when I explain it that way it sounds ludicrous, but people do it all the time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so our goal is to get there. Our next goal is to do it right. Our third goal is to get the failure. There will be a quiz on this for everybody. You know who you are. You're going to get that quiz. I'm kidding, everybody's going to get the quiz. So now the next part of this is so then, how much is too much? And that's what we don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay, we know, as I explained in the last podcast, that Hans Selye gave us the stress adaptation syndrome. He gave us the cycle, he gave us the stages. You know we're going to initiate with the alarm stage. I mean, we're going to do that, then we're going to get into resistance, which is a good thing. We don't want to reach exhaustion.
Speaker 1:So someone might say so if I never went to failure, I'm probably not going to get into that exhaustion stage. That could be true. It's unlikely, because if you went every day and did subpar reps all the time, you probably will still overtrain. But let's just play devil's advocate and say that could be true. But you're also not going to see full benefits either. You can't. Unless the muscles are close to exhaustion, you can't, you can't see further benefits. That's just not the way it works. You're trying to recruit every muscle fiber within every motor unit and every motor unit within each muscle belly. That's what we're trying to do, and you're not going to recruit that with less than ideal intensity. It is not going to happen.
Speaker 1:So we have to get to exhaustion. If we do too much, we have to get to fatigue. I should say we have to exhaust the muscles, but we don't have to get to exhaustion in the entire cycle. So we do have to rest, all right. What I mean is that once we hit a certain point, we shouldn't go beyond it. The problem is nobody knows what that point is and I don't mean the point in a set. We know that you have to hit failure or close. I mean, do we turn around and do a second set at that? Do we do a third set at that? That depends on the individual's recovery. And we don't know. We're not fortune tellers. We can't tell you know, and no, ai can't tell you either. We don't know. But we do know that too many sets is just going to be completely counterproductive. Too many sets is going to be counterproductive. It is not going to work if we do too many sets or too many exercises. What we have to understand is that we grow from intensity and when we rest, when we recuperate, we come back stronger. If we keep going and going and going, we're not going to, we're going to go backwards.
Speaker 1:So what should we look for? Well, the first thing we should look for is are you continuing to show improvements? I mean again your first year of training, your first six months especially. You should continue to see upward mobility in the weights, in the loads lifted, in the rep ranges that you picked, the best range for you. Oftentimes we'll go from, say, eight to 20 reps at the gym, because it's just a good even number. To get people to. It doesn't take too long. Typically it's not too heavy when we're around eight. There are some people that will go a little heavier and there are some people that their movements are so fast we end up doing higher reps with too, because we're trying to get them to fatigue in good form. But that's usually our range, so we should be able to show an increase in that.
Speaker 1:Another thing to look for is do you still have a desire to train and exercise? If you're starting to feel like you're burned out, you don't want to go to the gym. You might be overtrained, you might be doing too much volume, you might be doing too many sets. I mean, there's the research on sets that we've been fighting for probably over 50 years. I know I've seen it for 40. And that is where and I'm older than that, but I'm just saying I was a nose in the industry but people are like well, you know, three sets is perfect, four sets is perfect. You know, two sets is good, one set not enough. All this is flat out not true. Nobody knows for sure.
Speaker 1:Depends on a person's age, depends on their fitness level, depends on how much they're sleeping and other outside stresses they have and, as I said, unfortunately in the last podcast, it depends on how much drugs they're using. If people are using anabolic steroids and aids, they're going to be able to recover quicker and they're going to be able to do more. That's going to come with a price. That is a, in my opinion, a pretty you know. If it's for recreational purposes, a pretty dumb health decision, but people will make that, but they're going to be able to train more.
Speaker 1:If you're a normal person and you're not doing that, you're not going to be able to do as many sets. You have to figure it out. I can tell you from my own personal experience with myself and with clients less is more. When I start doing too much for me personally, I start losing intensity. When I lose intensity, I don't see the results. I mean, it's just common sense. If you know you're going to do a couple sets per muscle group and you're going to go to failure, your mind can go. I can do that. If you're going to do like 10 sets per muscle group and you are going to ask yourself you know, do I have to go maximal effort? Right, you're going to automatically ask that question and you're not going to want to do it, it's just human nature. Okay, so how much? We don't know. We keep charts. I keep charts on people and I get a pretty good idea as to what kind of volume the person can handle.
Speaker 1:I want you to pay attention to your progress moving upward. I want you to pay attention to your sleep levels. If you're sleeping good, you're probably not getting overtrained. I want you to pay attention to how much your desire is to go to the gym, because if you're a very motivated person but you find yourself losing desire, you might be overdoing it, and you know. I want you to just really pay attention to how do you feel about it when you're doing it, because your body will tell you.
Speaker 1:But the most important thing is understand how we get there muscular failure, and that's what's going to work. How do we get there, how do we do it in good form? And then we just have to pay attention to how much is enough. Wherever you get your podcasts and please select automatic download, because that really helps the show. Now I want to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product. They have the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great people with a great company. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a shout at 386-222-3165.
