No Pain No Gain- Understanding Muscle Soreness

We all know the mantra when it comes to weight training or just about any type of intensive exercise- ‘No pain no gain’, and as anyone starting a training program can attest- the first few days after your initial workout can be painful indeed. We call it muscle soreness, or just plain pain, but the techincal term used is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). Call it what you like but it can Unlike the pain you feel as a result of an acute or overuse type injury, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness isn’t always a bad thing. On the contrary, in many ways it is a natural part of the adaptation response- the very process that our body uses to make our muscles bigger and stronger. That being said, there is some credibility to the ‘No Pain No Gain’ credo.

As much as pain may be a part of an intense exercise program you have to be aware of the differences between DOMS and an injury or chronic syndrome like as arthritis. The differences are usually quite marked, however after your first bout of exercise after a period of relative inactivity DOMS can feel quite crippling indeed! Given the high intensity protocols that are the hallmarks of my own training style, I can honestly say that there is almost never a day when I don’t have a muscle group that isn’t sore. So much so that some mornings I wake up hoping that someone got the license plate numbers of the truck that ran over me! You might think that twenty plus years of high intensity training would confer some immunity to muscle soreness, but I can tell you honestly that this isn’t the case (my legs hurt right now as I type this article!) Given my years of being so intimately acquainted with this type of pain, you might call me a wee bit of an expert, and in this article we will explore the mechanisms behind muscle soreness as well as dispel some of the myths.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness- The Mechanisms

You can think of your muscles performing three different types of contractions- concentric contractions, eccentric contractions and isometric contractions.  Concentric contractions occur when you do an exercise like a biceps curl and bring a weighted barbell up to your face. By flexing your elbow to raise the weight up towards your shoulder you contract your biceps muscles and make the muscle  fibers in your upper arm physically shorter- that’s a concentric (or shortening) contraction. However, when you lower the weight from your face back to the resting position you are performing an eccentric contraction. Eccentric contractions are characterized by a lengthening of your muscle fibers and play a significant role in muscle soreness as you will see as we go along. An isometric contraction is one where you simply hold an object in a fixed position- and so using our model of a biceps curl- holding the weight up halfway without moving it would be a classic example of an isometric contraction (isometric, by the way means no change in length.)

Now there are some points that must be kept in mind when our muscles perform a eccentric or lengthening contraction. Firstly, absolute tensions achieved are very high relative to the muscle’s titanic tension generating ability. In plain English this means that you can lower a weight that is much heavier than what you can lift. Anyone who has ever done weight training with a partner or trainer may have experienced this firsthand as there comes a point where you can no longer lift a weight, but if someone helps you get the weight up, you can still lower it under control. The second factor is that skeletal muscle tissue is resistant to lengthening by its very nature. So unaccustomed exercise of repeated or forced eccentric (lengthening) contractions will induce muscle damage. Damage that we experience as delayed onset muscle soreness. [1,2,3]

An example that most can relate to is the soreness you experience after a day of hiking in mountainous terrain. You may notice days afterwards that your leg muscles and calves are sore and this can happen regardless of whether or not you have strong legs and are in good shape. The soreness isn’t an indication that your leg muscles are weak, it’s just a result of the extensive lengthening actions these muscles have to perform while descending and at unaccustomed angles. Funny enough going up a mountain, or climbing flights of stairs won’t do much to make you sore the next day, it’s the descent that gets you. When I was younger and morbidly fascinated with the idea of sprinting up the staircases of tall buildings (we didn’t have much in the way of skyscrapers where I came from) I found that I didn’t feel sore the next day even running up 20 flights of stairs three or four times. I would always take the elevator down and catch my breath but one day it was out of service and I had to walk down the stairs each time. I was quite surprised to find that I was almost handicapped with pain for the next few days- the reason being the extensive amount of muscle lengthening movements involved in walking down the stairs.

The Myth of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness & Lactic Acid Buildup

Now running up those stairs, my legs muscles would feel a serious burn! The same burning sensation occurs during all of my high intensity workouts, but contrary to popular belief, this pain has very little to do with lactic acid. In fact lactic acid doesn’t really play a part in delayed onset muscle soreness. Researchers once believed that lactic acid buildup was indeed the cause of the burning sensation you feel in your muscles during any intense exercise and it was further thought that lactic acid was responsible for DOMS.  However this has been proven to not be the case at all. Lactic acid as it turns out is actually a metabolic by product of our muscular contractions and it breaks down very quickly into a useable fuel source for your muscles. Consequently, there is little accumulation in your muscle cells that could explain the burning sensation or the delayed onset soreness felt afterwards.

Before you get mad at researchers for not getting it right the first time, you have to understand that knowing precisely what goes on inside our bodies during an activity is a very difficult task. Much of what we know of the human body and how it works is akin to having an object inside of a box and trying to figure out what’s happening on inside without being able to open it. We can perform tests that allow us to make educated guesses as to what is going on, but we can’t open the box to be 100% sure. The same applies to our bodies, as short of surgically cutting into our muscles and observing what’s going on during exercise we have to rely on tests that give us indications of what happens after the activity is performed- not during. Modern ultrasound tests and magnetic resonance imaging can give us some clues as to what’s going on inside our bodies during exercise, but as advanced as it may be imaging technology it still doesn’t always conclusively answer all of our questions. That being said, research is always ongoing and every day it seems like we learn something new. The current theory for the burn you feel in your muscles while training is that it is caused by calcium or other substrates in our muscle cells but again, it is still an educated guess at this point.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness & Pain

Pain is a difficult thing to measure as our perception of pain is influenced by so many factors including age, gender as well as social and cultural norms about acceptable behavior while experiencing physical discomfort.[4] That being said, two different people can experience the same magnitude of tissue damage due to intensive exercise, but experience radically different magnitudes of perceived pain as pain is such a completely subjective phenomenon.[3] There is the aspect of adaptation as well as someone experienced in high intensity weight training won’t react to delayed onset muscle soreness the way someone experiencing DOMS for the first time after their first couple of workouts. You do tend to get used to it over time, and some people absolutely love the feeling of something aching all the time (I think of it as a dress rehearsal for when I am in my nineties!) while others learn to simply ignore it. My personal observations over the years having trained hundreds of clients is that men tend to be more debilitated by DOMS than women. The pain usually starts within 24 hours of the activity and can become worse the second day and at times it can linger for as long as a week depending on the degree of muscle damage and how accustomed you might be- (or not) to the exercise performed. Either way it isn’t ever permanent and unlike an acute or chronic injury, more exercise can actually make it feel better.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness  & The Adaptive Response

One great part of delayed onset muscle soreness is that it can in some cases be a step in the process of making your muscles bigger and subsequently stronger. In the event of an overload, the microtrauma experienced by your muscles will lead to an adaptive response by your body to make the muscle fibers of the area you worked bigger and stronger so they won’t suffer as much damage the next time you perform the same exercise. (See my article on how Muscles Get Bigger & Stronger for a detailed look at the adaptive response). That being said, we don’t know why the pain caused by delayed onset muscle soreness isn’t instant, nor do we know whether or not the muscle damage theory is the sole cause. Other theories suggest that the pain may be caused by changes in connective tissue as a result of activity and that there is a significant inflammatory response- which could explain why the pain isn’t instantaneous.[5,6] Given that the inflammation response may play a significant role in activating the adaptive response to make your muscles stronger, the practice of taking over the counter anti-inflammatory drugs as a way of relieving the pain may not be a great idea as it might make you get less out of your workouts. Instead the common treatment would be to ice or cool down the muscles exercised immediately after training, followed by warm baths or showers a day or more after your exercise session. Back home the practice was to train and then go take a bath in the sea right afterwards and it did indeed work wonders in reducing the amount of pain you would feel the next day. Massage therapy can also go a long way in helping you deal with the pain associated with delayed onset muscle soreness as well if you can get it.

How sore you are after a workout isn’t necessarily an indicator of how hard you trained and should not be used as such. Some people have naturally high pain thresholds and don’t seem to ever suffer much from delayed onset muscle soreness, and since it can vary so much from person to person it is a pretty weak barometer of how much work you did. Your level of soreness can also be affected by how well rested you are after the workout and your nutritional intake. Either way it’s a huge mistake to use soreness exclusively as a gauge of how effective your workout was since there are so many variables involved. Some days you’ll feel crippled after a relatively moderate workout, while other times a training hard session you won’t hurt that much at all afterwards. What’s important is to know when the pain isn’t just soreness and always consult your physician if you suspect the pain you are feeling might be injury related.

References

1.Fridén et al. Segmental muscle fiber lesions after repetitive eccentric contractions Cell Tissue Res 1988

2 Evans et al. 1985; Fridén and Lieber, 1992

3 K. Noska. Muscle Soreness & Damage & The Repeated Bout Effect- Skeletal Muscle Damage & Repair

4. Strong J, Unruh AM, Wright A and Baxter. Pain A Textbook for Therapists

5. Cheung et al. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, Treatment Strategies and Performance Factors. Sports Med 2003;

6. Smith 1991

Kevin Richardson is an award winning fitness writer, one of the most sought after personal trainers in New York City and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training^TM. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here. If you live in the New York metropolitan area and need help losing weight or getting into spectacular shape, give Kevin and his team a call at 1-800-798-8420.

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Weight Training Builds Stronger Bones And Helps Prevent Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is an ever increasing problem worldwide as people are living longer and the population continues to age. More prevalent among women than men, some estimates report than as many as one in five American women over the age of 50 have osteoporosis. An insidious disease that weakens bone tissue, one of the worst aspects of osteoporosis is that there are no symptoms during the early stages and without a bone mineral density test it can be difficult to detect before it advances to a point where it becomes painfully symptomatic. Most learn of their condition after experiencing a bone fracture as about half of all women over the age of 50 will suffer a fracture of the wrist, hip or spine as a direct result of bone loss. Osteoporosis can be caused by many different factors which are usually lifestyle or hormone related. Excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, poor diet and inactivity are some of the known risk factors as are other circumstances which are not as controllable such as family history or hormone treatments. While there are effective treatments available for osteoporosis today the best defense is to prevent it altogether. Exercise, specifically weight bearing exercise has been shown to be an effective preventative measure against osteoporosis. In an earlier post How Muscles Get Bigger And Stronger we explored how muscles respond to weight training and in this article we will take a look how bones benefit as from resistance exercise.

The word ‘osteoporosis’ means porous bones and one can easily understand that a bone that’s porous would be weak and vulnerable to fractures. Bones weaken as a result of a process called demineralization. Demineralization occurs when our bones lose important minerals such as calcium. If left untreated our bones will no longer have the structural capacity to support the weight of our body and the forces we create when we are physically active- thus resulting in a fracture. Since we can see them all the time most of us are very much aware of our muscles, but we don’t think much of how our bones work in conjunction with them. When you flex your muscles as in a biceps curl for example, the muscles of your biceps generate force that allows you to lift the weight. This force is transferred throughout the muscle and to the tendons at both ends. The tendons are connected to the bones of your arm and cross over your elbow joint. Joints act as levers- which are rigid objects used with a pivot point to increase the amount of mechanical force our body generates to allow us to lift an object. Activation of the biceps muscles in our upper arm causes rotation of the forearm at the elbow (pivot point) which allows us to lift the weight during a curling exercise. Now according to Newton’s third law of motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That being said since bones provide the framework for our muscles every muscular contraction will produce forces that act directly on the bones in our body.

Since bones provide the frame for our body tissue our skeleton is always under some degree of stress. As you read this blog post the force of gravity is bearing down on your bones even though you can’t really feel it. Too much stress can lead to bone damage at a microscopic level- in pretty much the same way it does in your muscles and like our muscles when bones are damaged they need to be be repaired. According to Wolff’s law, the bones in a healthy person or animal will adapt to the loads they are placed under so if the forces acting on a bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger and denser to be able to cope with the load that it has to bear. In essence it’s a stress response in keeping with the laws of general adaption. From a physiological point of view, stress isn’t always a bad thing as we perceive it in our everyday lives. Quite simply stress is the reaction of our body to stimulation or forces that puts it out of balance- ( a balance that we refer to as homeostasis.) If the forces are too great or too sudden – like the forces acting on your bones during a car accident or a fall from a great height- your bones can’t adapt fast enough or deal with the sudden overload and a fracture will occur. Also if a force is continuously applied through repetitive strain and your bones don’t have enough time to rest and recuperate it can also result in a fracture- in this case a stress fracture. This is what happens to many runners and aerobics aficionados after years of doing the same activity over and over again. On the other side of the spectrum, if there is a reduction in the forces on your bones, be it from being bed ridden or from living a predominantly sedentary lifestyle, your bones will remodel themselves to be weaker and less dense as a result. Just like your muscles if you don’t use it- you lose it.

Understanding How Bones Get Stronger

How your bones get stronger and denser depends not only on the degree of stress placed on them, but also on the availability of  minerals such as calcium which is required to change its structure. Bones are made of collagen which is the primary form of protein found in connective tissues throughout your body. The difference between bone tissue and other forms of connective tissue is that the collagen in our bones are infused with minerals which makes it solid. When a bone is subjected to overload (from an activity like weight training for example) it experiences tiny cracks and fissures. These cracks need to be filled and reinforced so that the bone will not be damaged in the future by a similar load and thus starts a signal that mobilizes our bones to repair itself. In a process called resorption, cells called osteoclasts dissolve and break up very thin pieces of bone in the damaged area. (Think of osetoclasts as tiny construction workers who smooth over the damage done to your bones- very much the same way you would sand down a piece of wood if it was cracked before you repaired it.) After this part of the process is completed other cells called osteoblasts come in and fill in the smoothed cracks left behind by the action of the osteoclasts. (Think of osteoblasts as tiny construction workers who fill in the holes sanded down out by the osteoclasts.) This is capped off by the mineralization of the entire area which makes the bone denser and stronger than it was before- a series of actions known as bone remodeling. Bone remodeling can be affected not only by mechanical forces acting on our bodies but also by parathyroid hormones and estrogen.

How Weight Training Builds Stronger Bones

Just as muscles won’t get stronger unless there is an load applied to them that it isn’t used to dealing with, the same logic applies to our bones. That being said, to stimulate the adaptive bone remodeling process there must be some degree of overload. Doing a compound exercise like squats with weights requires a large amount of force to be generated by the muscles of your thighs and lower legs. Forces that create bending and compressive pressure within the bones of your femur (located in your upper leg), tibia and fibula (located in your lower leg). These forces create changes in fluid pressure in your bones which in turn creates the micro-fractures that trigger the adaption response for increasing bone strength. Bones can tolerate a lot more force than muscles can, and that explains why non weight bearing exercises don’t have as much impact in building stronger bones as weight training. With weight training you can progressively increase the overload factor by simply increasing the weight as you get stronger (within reasonable margins of course.) With bodyweight exercises such as aerobics or calisthenics this isn’t always possible. If you start such forms of exercise after a period of being inactive then the new stress of such exercises will have a positive effect in helping build your bones (and muscles to a degree). But after an initial period of adaptation your bones (and muscles) will have no reason to keep getting stronger as they will comfortably be able to cope with the forces incurred during body-weight exercises. Even though the exercises may be physically challenging to you, you have to keep in mind that your bones were designed to easily bear the strain of physical activity involving the weight of your body.

Studies have found that high intensity resistance training exercises (weight lifting) are an effective and feasible means to preserve bone density.1 Not only are high intensity weight training exercises useful in terms of building stronger bones, but they also improve muscle mass, strength, endurance and balance while burning extra calories and reducing body fat. [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] It can also decrease your risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and reduce the incidence of depression. So pick up some iron and start lifting some weights for stronger bones, a stronger body and a stronger mind.

Related Articles:

How Muscles Get Bigger & Stronger

Kevin Richardson is an award winning health and fitness writer, one of the most sought after personal trainers in NYC and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here. If you live in the New York City area and need help losing weight or getting into shape give Kevin and his team a call at 1-800-798-8420. Check out Kevin’s personal training services here.

References:

1. High-intensity resistance training and postmenopausal bone loss: a meta-analysis.Martyn-St James M, Carroll S. Osteoporosis Int. 2006

2. High-intensity Interval Training: A Time-efficient Strategy for Health Promotion. Martin J. Gibala, PhD, Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada Current Sports Medicine Reports 2007, 6:211-213

3. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Tremblay, A. et al., Physical Activities Sciences Laboratory, Laval University, Quebec, Canada Metabolism.1994; 43(7): 814-818.

4. Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max.Tabata I, Nishimura K, Kouzaki M, Hirai Y, Ogita F, Miyachi M, Yamamoto K.-Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1996 Oct;28(10):1327-30.

5. Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans. Kirsten A. Burgomaster, Krista R. Howarth, Stuart M. Phillips, Mark Rakobowchuk, Maureen J. MacDonald, Sean L. McGee and Martin Gibala, J Physiol 586: 151-160, 2008

6. Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max. Izumi Tabata; Kouji Nishimura, Hirai Motoki, Futoshi Ogita, Motohiko Miyachi, Kaoru Yamamoto, National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 28(10):1327-1330, October 1996.

7. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Tremblay, A. et al., Physical Activities Sciences Laboratory, Laval University, Quebec, Canada Metabolism.1994; 43(7): 814-818

8. Bahr R (1992). “Excess postexercise oxygen consumption–magnitude, mechanisms and practical implications”. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica. Supplementum 605: 1–70. PMID 1605041.

9. Bahr R, Høstmark AT, Newsholme EA, Grønnerød O, Sejersted OM (September 1991). “Effect of exercise on recovery changes in plasma levels of FFA, glycerol, glucose and catecholamines”. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica 143

10. Bielinski R, Schutz Y, Jéquier E (July 1985). “Energy metabolism during the postexercise recovery in man”. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 42

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Leg Day- A Personal Look At High Intensity Training

“No man has ever crossed the border of human suffering”- K. Wotija

I wrote ‘Leg Day’ several years ago after filming my workout DVD and it has since been published in print and praised online as one of  the most inspiring training accounts of all time. I am not sure I deserve that much praise for it, but I wanted to give the public some tangible insight into what my training is like as well as what drives me to take myself above and beyond my limits. I wrote it lying on the floor of the gym immediately after my training session so that I could capture as much as possible in terms of not only what I did, but what I was thinking and I hope it motivates you to higher levels of accomplishment as well.

Author's legs

Leg Day: 10 am

For me, my leg day starts the day before. I always train legs on Sunday but the mental preparation begins on Saturday night. By Sunday morning I have a clear vision of what is ahead and what I need to do to make it a reality. When I finally step into the gym, it is an act that I have rehearsed in my mind over and over again. There is always a certain queasiness in my stomach. A twinge of apprehension that I am not ashamed to admit. My workouts are brutal testaments to the upper limits of human strength and endurance, and just conjuring up images of what is to come, fills me with a sense of dread. But that is what makes it worthwhile. It isn’t ever a walk in the park, but still I do it, and with no one but my inner voice as a guide.

I look up at the clock after a long sip of water from the water cooler. It is exactly 10 am. My lips are pursed in a silent prayer as I make my way over to the leg section of the gym. I never pray for strength or anything so outwardly superficial, I pray instead that the work that I do today will be meaningful in some way. Today I start with stiff legged deadlifts, 135lbs, twenty times, 225lbs 15 times and 315 lbs 12 times, all in rapid, non stop succession, pausing only for as long as it takes to slap on another plate. I am alone today, so I am training fast. Already my breathing is labored and my hamstrings are on fire. But I have more in me and so I do one more set with four 45lb plates on each side.

I set myself over the bar, grab it as hard as I can and use the muscles in the back of my legs to lift it up. I pull, with every sinew straining with the enormous weight until reluctantly, it rises from the chalk dusted gym floor. It comes all the way up and then back down. Up and then down again for a total of six agonizing repetitions. I drop the bar on rep number six after barely getting the weight up and I feel my legs begin to buckle underneath me.

Leg Day- 10:05 am

“Not yet,” I say to myself, there is so much more to do. A quick trip to the water cooler and I am back. It is now 10:05 am. I go straight to the standing leg curl machine and rep out 12 reps with half the stack. With no rest, I do the same with the next leg and then the briefest of pauses to change the weight. Three quarters of the stack now, 12 more reps on each side, hamstrings feeling as if they are ready to snap, and again a weight increase to the entire stack.

Bodybuilding isn’t about lifting weights; it is about making lifting weights harder. An idea that is almost counter intuitive. The goal is to really dig in and squeeze the muscle against the resistance and forcing it to fail. I could easily add more weight to the full stack, but there is no need to, instead I just train faster and make every repetition harder than the last.

Leg Day-  10:09 am

I set myself on the machine and I go into myself to really feel the burn. At rep number 7 the pain is unbearable. My right leg biceps muscles cramping under the weight, but I will not stop. At rep number 10, the weight is barely moving, but I do not yield. Will supersedes the natural instinct to stop as the muscles begin to completely give out. But I want more and somehow, against all logic I get two more repetitions, and with no stop whatsoever, I inflict the same torture upon my left leg. I am back at the water cooler. It is 10:09 am and already the room is beginning to spin. With the hamstring muscles annihilated, it is time for the most painful part, the quadriceps.

Those beautiful muscles that surround the knee and extend all the way up to the hips. As beautiful as they are, there is a price to be paid for them. They are silent monuments to the countless moments of agony.

It starts with leg extensions- first set at 200 lbs for fifty repetitions. I don’t plan the numbers, I just figure out what will be hard and I do it. By number twenty the fire starts. A white, all consuming flame that starts at the teardrop over my knee and spreads throughout my body, searing my very soul. My teeth are clenched and tears begin to well in the corner of my eyes, but I will not stop. There is no one to shout encouragement, today is a lonely endeavor. There is only that inner voice, the one that seems almost older than I am, that gets louder and louder as the lactic acid builds in my legs. That voice that started as a whisper on Saturday night has now grown into an animalistic cry. A cry louder than the pain, with the voice claiming me. Embracing the pain and somehow  finding the strength not only to keep the weight moving, but to find ever fiber in my legs and force them against all that is rational, to contract even harder. At rep 49 I know that 50 is a near impossibility, but that voice just laughs and finds the strength somewhere within me to complete four more.

This is now the point of no return, the place where in order to carry on I have to live completely in the moment, forsaking all thoughts of success or failure or even what is to come next. Every repetition must become a world and a lifetime unto itself, if not I will not endure.  I place the pin at the bottom of the stack after a timed rest of exactly sixty seconds and I go again for my final set, still reeling from the last one.

With the full 250lb weight stack loaded I am a bit more controlled with my cadence. Not out of concern for myself, but for the machine. I have snapped the cable several times before after overloading it with additional dumbbells and losing myself in the intensity of my sets. And so I am a bit cautious. With a deep breath, I begin anew. Staying in the moment, flexing my quads with each painful rep as if it were my last. Somewhere along the way, I lose myself again and thirty-three excruciating reps go by. With a giant slam the weight stack falls to the floor and I heave myself off of the machine and begin falling to the floor, where at least for the briefest of minutes, I can catch my breath.

But I do not let myself fall. Instead I walk drunkenly, on legs made of rubber over to the relief of the water cooler. It is the only comfort I allow myself, as I drink deeply, holding on to the sides of the cooler to support myself, as my legs right now seem to be of little use. Enough water, and I lumber back to the leg press machine and load three 100lb plates and two 45lb plates on each side for my first set.

Without thinking I blast through twenty repetitions before racking the weight and adding four 45lb plates to each side. Loading the weight in it self is a Herculean task at this point. I can barely walk straight and my chest is heaving, my lungs struggling for air, and I have to load all the plates myself. It is all part of the process though, as it helps me focus on what needs to be done, and it keeps me moving, for at this point, if I stop, I shall not be able to continue. Another set of fifteen reps and I feel that my knees are warm enough for the real working set. To the weights already loaded I add another four 45lb plates on each side for a total of somewhere in the vicinity of 1,500lbs. The machine cannot hold any more plates, but to be honest, I don’t care at his point. I have a job to do.

I sit in the machine, set my feet against it and push with all that I have.  The strain of the weight is indescribable. For a second a pulse of fear grips me as I have a realization that there is the equivalent weight of half of a car over me. Any mishap would most likely result in my immediate demise, but I welcome the realization. It keeps me centered on the need for absolute clarity in focus, and the fear is only a passing pulse. Fear has no place where I am now. I lower the weight ever so slowly, knees coming down to almost meet my shoulders, with every muscle screaming as the burden becomes greater and greater. The weight stops for a second and then I explode it upwards. Once, twice, establishing an insane cadence as once again I am overtaken by the fire.

At rep eighteen the sled starts slowing down, as gravity and the laws of physics find their way back into my reality. Pain is all I feel, and yet I carry on. Eighteen is not a good enough number, so I must get to twenty. Holding the weight for a moment of relative calm, I steel myself and eek out two last punishing reps. I rack the weight and the whole machine sways. I pull myself up with my hands, my legs are not up to the task at this point, and I feel the beginnings of a cold sweat.

Out of the corner of my consciousness I see the other members of the gym staring over at me, perhaps wondering what demons drive me to do what it is that I do, but it is only a flicker, as I go back into myself and struggle for control so as not to pass out from the growing nausea and dizziness. I take the weights off- and it seems an age has passed before all the plates are removed. While I am putting them away I am concentrating on my breathing, regularizing it and consciously slowing the pounding in my chest. It is remarkable that no matter how many times I do this, it is always so much harder. Weights racked, I allow myself a minute to sit down before a much needed trip to the cooler, which is now several miles away. I decide against the water break and instead opt to grab the 100 lb plate and start doing vertical jumps. Going down slowly into a full squat position and then exploding upwards, leaving the ground with a terrifying force before falling back into the full squat position. The hundred pound weight helps me to not hit any of the lights overhead, as it has happened before in the past. It also makes it harder, much harder. I barely get twelve jumps before I freeze in the squat position for a count of ten then do a total of ten more jumps. Another full stop in the bottom position for a count of ten before doing eight more jumps.

Leg Day- 10:15 am

My legs are now beyond pain- there is only a numbing ache. I can hardly catch my breath, though and on the eighth jump I drop the hundred pound plate, which has now etched a groove into my upper arms and lower forearms. I try to stand and for a split second everything goes dark. I fight the darkness, not letting it hold me in its grasp, and instead make my way over to the water cooler, swaying as I walk. I make it and drink once again the coldest and most satisfying drink of my life. I stay there for a while, breathing in between sips, until my eyes can focus once again and the ringing in my ears begins to subside. I glance at the clock. It is 10:15 am, but for me an eternity has come and gone several times over.

I limp over to the donkey calf machine and groan as I bend to place the pin at the bottom of the stack. I set myself on the machine and without pause begin my first set of one hundred reps. The counting in my head is somewhere far away as the searing pain in my calves seem to almost fill my ears. Around number seventy I let out a growling scream that is long overdue (although I am told afterwards that I screamed quite more times than I realized). At one hundred there is the blissful relief of putting down the weight, but the bliss is short lived as I load four 45 lb plates on top of the machine for my next set which will be all the weight the machine can hold, plus 180 extra pounds. The second set of one hundred reps is almost unconscious and I do not recall much save the sweet sound of the weight slamming down as I finish the set. I add another two 45 lb plates and begin what looks to be my last set.

I never plan my last sets- they just happen when my body insists that it has had more than enough. This set is harder than all the others, and at my twenty-fifth rep I start to feel as though I am not going to make it. I am truly at the limit of my powers of endurance, and my legs begin to tremble with the strain, but I do not stop. Instead I think about why it really is that I do this to myself. I think of my family, and how very much what I do here serves to provide them with a better life. I think of my training partners, every one that has been here over the years shouting encouragement and believing in my ability to do what seems to be the impossible. I think of that wide eyed boy that I once was and how far I have come on my road. I think of my clients, my fans, well wishers and all those who I have inspired and who, one day I will inspire. I think of you, and in doing so, I find it. The will.

The nerve to keep on going through my own self inflicted hell. Almost magically the count reaches to one hundred and the weight slams to the floor. Gratitude flows over me, overwhelming even the unmentionable pain. Gratitude for being able to have survived yet another day of the impossible, and gratitude for all of you that are not here, but who helped me along the way. Through blurry eyes I look up at the clock from where I am, as I cannot possibly move for at least another five minutes or so and I note the time. It is 10:20 am.

Kevin Richardson is one of the most sought after personal trainers in New York City a lifetime drug free bodybuilding champion and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training. Get a copy of his natural bodybuilding DVD here.

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Kevin Richardson is a champion natural bodybuilder, one of the most sought after personal trainers in New York City and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™

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Author and lifetime drug free bodybuilder, Kevin Richardson

How Do Muscles Get Bigger And Stronger? A Guide

When I started out as a scrawny 125 lb teenager, the idea of building an impressively muscled physique initially seemed to be as unlikely as my reaching the summit of Mount Everest. Surrounded by a cacophony of often contradictory information on the subject of muscle building, I took it upon myself to stop reading the books and magazines (the Internet wasn’t around then, thank goodness!) and focused instead on the science of how the human body actually works. It wasn’t easy, but with the help of some great mentors and my thirst for marketing free knowledge, I was able lead a successful career as a drug free bodybuilding champion and develop my own method of high intensity training. Going from 125 lbs to 225 lbs with a body fat percentage always under 6% without the using steroids or any other kind of hormones required an intricate understanding of how muscles get bigger and stronger. Helping other men and women build world class bodies has gone a long way in helping me come to an even deeper understanding of how muscle growth really occurs and in the following lines I hope to pass on what I have learned to you as well.

How Do Muscles Get Bigger & Stronger- The Role Of Stress

The first and key element required for our muscles to get bigger or stronger is stress. Physiologist Walter Cannon came up with the term ‘homeostasis’ to explain the way in which our body does its best to always stay within a comfortable operating range where our cells can function optimally. The concept is that while external forces can sometimes bring about drastic changes in our body, it always reverts to a default position. Your heart rate is a good example of homeostasis as it beats constantly within a set range under ordinary conditions, but that rate can either go up or down depending on what type of activity you are doing. In spite of these fluctuations, as long as you are healthy,  your heart rate will always return to its regular resting rate. Stress is a key reason for your body to change, and having observed soldiers returning from World War One he coined the oft used phrase ‘fight or flight’ to describe the hormonal reactions in our body in response stress. In addition to life threatening situations, more mundane activities such as exercise also evoke a homeostatic response.

A Polish endocrinologist named Hans Seyle furthered these concepts when he discovered in his experiments that rats who were exposed to certain chemicals all suffered the same

failure of several major organ systems in a way that could be reproduced no matter what chemical was used. He called it, the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) and it encompasses the state of an organism in relation to how it adapts to its environment. The systematic organ failure he saw in the rats was a failure to adapt to stress. He found that there were three clearly defined stages within this particular syndrome, the first being the ‘alarm reaction’, very similar to the ‘fight or flight’ response described by Walter Cannon.  The second stage being an adaptive response- where the organism tries to adapt to the stress as a form of resistance. Finally if the stress is too large for the organism to handle, the exhaustion phase where cell death occurs.

Diagram of the General Adaptation Syndrome model. Author=David McQuillan

As negative a connotation that the word ‘stress’ carries for us today, the reality is that it is an extremely important stimulus in our daily lives as it allows us to adapt to our surrounding

environment. Without stress, we wouldn’t exist and in many ways it can be a very positive thing as it is how the body acts to remove or minimize the effect of a stressful stimulus. A common example of stress at work is a callus. If you wear shoes that are a bit too tight and it rubs repeatedly against a part of your foot, if the action isn’t so strong as to form a blister (the exhaustion phase) As long as the action is not strong enough to create a blister (exhaustion stage) over time the layers of skin that rub against the inside of your shoe will begin to harden. The skin will continue to get thicker and harder until a callus is formed. The callus then, serves as a way your body protects the deeper layers of skin tissue from being destroyed by the action of rubbing against your shoe. In essence adaptation works to minimize the effect of stress on the body.

How Do Muscles Get Bigger & Stronger- Adaptation

The way in which our muscles get bigger and stronger is a prime example of the General Adaptation Syndrome. Understanding how it works can help you make the most out of your workouts. Let’s look at the most ubiquitous of muscles: the biceps. Your biceps are responsible for any movement involving elbow flexion such as a biceps curl. Now your body, over the years is already adapted to the weight of your arm and the regular activities that you do on a daily basis, so you could do lots of biceps curls with no weight and your arms would not get bigger or stronger. You’d get tired, the way you would by performing any kind of calisthenics, but your muscles wouldn’t increase in strength. In order for your muscles to get bigger and stronger, you would have to apply overload. To overload means that the muscle experiences a load above and beyond what it previously adapted to in order to trigger the sequence of a new adaptation.

So in a way, it sounds pretty straightforward- put some weights on a barbell, more than you have ever done, but not so much as to bring about injury and do some curls to increase the strength and size of your biceps. But there are some more principles involved, if not everyone that picked up a barbell and did some curls would have arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger! Our muscles, and our body in general tries its best to remain in homeostasis (remember that word?). So, in a way our body is reluctant to adapt and when it does adapt to a particular stimulus, it will stay where it is until there is a greater degree of stimulation. It is very similar to the way most people do their jobs, if you think about it. We tend to do just what is required of us to get the job done and if the minimum amount of effort works the first time around, then everything is fine. Only if it doesn’t do we increase our efforts incrementally, not in leaps and bounds until the job is done. Our body works exactly the same way, and you might even say it is a bit on the lazy side.

So, back to our biceps curl. When you subject your biceps to the overload of lifting weights they undergo a cascade of cellular events that lead to an increased production of contractile proteins. This process, called anabolism, also increases the size of the muscle. As the muscle gets larger the mechanical stress from the adaptation is spread out over a larger surface area and consequently places a smaller stress on the muscle. To sum it up, increased size equals increased strength. Physiologists will say that increase in contractile proteins is an expression of the muscles’ capacity to generate force. The strength of a muscle, therefore is often relative to its cross sectional area. Now, that doesn’t mean that if you keep lifting weights your muscles would continually get bigger and stronger until you could lift a Honda with one arm, as there are limits determined by our gender and hormones. Men have more testosterone than women, and so will have bigger and stronger muscles, and women not using anabolic steroids or hormones have little chance of naturally developing male sized muscles, no matter how hard they train.

Now after doing the bicep curl with an overload high enough to trigger an adaptation, a number of hormonal and chemical events occur. Among them are factors that bring about adaptive anabolic muscle building. These chemical actions, along with the mechanical stress to the point of overload leads to increase in muscle size, which we call hypertrophy. But, and this is important- the adaptation does not happen while you are training, but while you are at rest! What does that mean? It means that if you really want to maximize your results in terms of strength and muscle size you need to do three things:

1.      Always train to a point where your muscles are seriously taxed- as if you do not, there will not be adequate stimulation for the adaptation response to be triggered.

2.      Always keep changing the exercises you do and the way you do them so your muscles do not adapt too quickly to the work you are doing.

3.      Make sure that you spend more time resting that you do training. Physiologically, training is about breaking down your muscles, while resting is about building them up, so if you are serious about increasing your results, you should train harder but less frequently. My rule has always been, train three days- rest and grow for four days.

What Can Stop Muscles From Getting Bigger & Stronger- Overtraining

Say the words ‘Train less’ to most serious exercise enthusiasts and they will look at you as if you have two heads, but it makes perfect sense. Remember the General Adaptation response model? If the action is too great and the organism is unable to adapt to the stress, it results in the exhaustion phase, where on a cellular level instead of a building (or anabolic) action, there is a destructive action (catabolic). This, in terms of exercise stress, is what is called overtraining and is defined as a physical, behavioral, and sometimes emotional condition that occurs when the volume and intensity of your exercise exceeds your body’s capacity to recover. You stop making progress and in many cases find yourself getting weaker more fatigued and generally less motivated as time goes on.  Overtraining can also lower your immune system and increase the incidence of injury. (See figure 1)

In my experience, the number one reason why most people don’t make the progress they expect in the gym is overtraining. Having put on over 100 lbs of muscle using short high intensity workouts lasting from ten to thirty minutes in duration three days a week, I can say with authority that less is indeed more. Unfortunately, many look to the examples set by those using anabolic steroids as an example of how they should train. In doing so, they fail to take into account that one of the primary advantages of steroid use are faster recovery times and that overtraining is no longer an issue. It is an issue, however for those of us who train without the benefit of such potentially dangerous drugs and while it may be hard for many to consider training less frequently and for shorter times, it is hard to argue with the results it can bring.

Kevin Richardson is a drug free bodybuilding champion, one of the most sought after personal trainers in New York City and creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training 10 Minute Workouts™. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here! If you live in the New York metropolitan area and need help losing weight, building muscle or taking your body to the next level give Kevin and his team a call at 1-800-798-8420 or click here to get started with 50% off your trial personal training session.

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Why We Regain Weight And How To Stop It- The Leptin Connection

Losing weight is easy- most of us have done it several times over the course of our lives. The problem is that after faithfully following a regime of diet and exercise, something happens.  A shift occurs. Not all at once, but subtly. You find yourself after weeks or perhaps even months of dedication, slipping back into the old unhealthy eating habits. Foods that you religiously avoided suddenly seem to regain their appeal. A hole opens up in your stomach that begs to be filled and your appetite once again becomes a raging and uncontrollable beast! Fast forward several weeks and you’ve regained the weight that you worked so hard to lose. What gives us cause for alarm is that this Sisyphean tale isn’t an extraordinary case- it is the plight that most people face when trying to lose weight. Today, weight loss has become almost a national preoccupation as we spend billions of dollars in the quest to lose weight and not regain it. In spite of the fact that more people are trying to lose weight ( more than at any time in our history) the average American’s BMI has increased steadily over the past 20 years. [1,2] In fact studies have found that the more we diet, the more likely we are to regain weight in the future. [4, 5] That being said, why is keeping the weight off so hard?  How can we stop this seemingly never ending cycle of losing weight and regaining it? The answer may lies in understanding a hormone called leptin.

Why We Regain Weight- The Leptin Connection

Leptin, (coming from the Greek word, leptos which means ‘thin’) is an important hormone responsible for regulating our caloric intake, metabolism and appetite and is one of the most important hormones produced by adipose (fat) tissue. [6] Leptin sends information about our food intake to key regulatory centers in our brain called hypothalamus.

Studies have found that increased body fat is associated with increased levels of leptin, which then acts to reduce our food intake by killing our appetite so we don’t get too fat. Unfortunately,  although it works as a signal to reduce appetite, most obese individuals have an unusually high circulating concentration of leptin.[6] These people are said to be leptin resistant  in very much the same way people with adult onset (type 2) diabetes are resistant to the effects of insulin. The high concentrations of leptin from high levels of fat tissue seems to result in leptin desensitization thus people with high fat levels don’t always feel sated after eating and will tend to overeat. There are many theories as to why this occurs- some studies have found connections to high fructose corn syrup. [6,7,8,9] but there are several questions yet unanswered.

While we understand how leptin resistance can make us overeat,  what most fail to realize is that leptin can also sabotage our attempts to lose weight as well. Any decrease in body fat will, as a rule, lead to a decrease in circulating leptin levels, which stimulates food intake and reduces energy expenditure. [10] Our urges to eat are enormously complex, and don’t only fall within the realm of hormones.  There are also sizeable social, behavioral and sensory components to our eating habits that make it intrinsically difficult to change our eating habits in the first place. Add to this, the unconscious urges to eat brought on by leptin and other hormones and you have a recipe for throwing diet to the wind after losing a certain amount of weight.

Why We Regain Weight- The Role Of Hormones On Our Unconscious Urges

Yes, we have the ability to control our eating- and there are many tried and true techniques we can use to distract ourselves- but outside of these methods, most find themselves utterly lost when it comes to self control in the face of long term dieting. From my own experience devouring pizzas (meaning more than one at a sitting) and donuts in the double digits after having reduced my body fat levels to under 4% back in my natural bodybuilding days, I can personally attest to how powerful hormones can be in forcing you to overeat when your body fat levels drop! It isn’t about willpower at that point- the drives are far too primal in nature to be ignored when your fat levels are so low.

Why can’t we always stop ourselves in the face of such urges? Why is motivation almost useless at these times? Feeling hungry is an intense experience. One that seems to turn off the light switch for rational thinking. The more weight you lose, the greater the hunger you will feel, growing more and more in intensity as you lose more and more weight until your conscious desire to lose weight is simply overwhelmed by the primal desire to eat. The basic drive to eat, while not as powerful as our need to breathe, is very similar in that no matter how hard we try to suppress it, in the end our unconscious inevitably wins. Try telling yourself, for example, to hold your breath. You can, using the force of sheer willpower hold your breath for a minute or two, but as time goes in, the need to breathe will always overcome your will to hold your breath and you will exhale. The same plight awaits those who use conventional means of dieting. It isn’t that the overweight among us don’t want to look and feel better by losing weight, but in the process of losing weight, most are doomed to eventually give in to the compulsion to eat everything in sight. A sobering thought, but is there a way around this, or are we hardwired to be fat no matter how hard we try? The answer thankfully, is yes, but it isn’t easy.

Why We Regain Weight- The Need For Building Muscle & Not Following A Fixed Diet

One of the most important aspects of any diet and exercise program has to be an emphasis on muscle building. Its importance comes from the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you will want to eat more as you lose more and more body fat and the more muscle you have- the more you can eat and still keep losing weight! At 6 feet tall, 225 lbs and just about 5-6% body fat, I need a staggering 6 to as many as 7 meals a day to keep from consuming any small land animals that venture in my path. Muscle requires energy to be built and maintained and so, by following a program of high intensity weight training focused on building lean muscle mass, you can offset the reduction in energy expenditure that comes with losing weight and be able to eat more as you may need more calories than you did before you lost weight in the first place! A perfect fix- but not without some key interventions. Your diet has to be regulated and changed as your nutritional and caloric needs change with the reduction in body fat and the increase of activity and muscle mass. If you find yourself feeling really hungry, your diet has to be carefully adjusted to increase your macronutrient intake so that you are not starving at the end of the day when we are most susceptible to food cravings.

This method has been proven over decades to help bodybuilders to fitness models in the know, get lean and stay lean all year round and it isn’t terribly complicated. It can be done on your own, but most need professional help with creating and regulating their dietary intake- as it isn’t a one size fits all situation, and some instruction is usually required in terms of the appropriate exercise intensity that will stimulate muscle growth. The end result of this process are the very stars and fit bodies that we see gracing the covers of magazines, and not the unsightly and over muscled image that most associate with muscle building. This negative image, reinforced by millions of steroid users, is the major reason why weight training is less in vogue and why many shy away from it in favor of aerobic exercise and conventional dieting that almost always ends in failure. The muscle minded fitness boom of the 1980’s saw many people embrace the benefits of weight training as an effective form of permanent weight loss, but the competitive and often drug induced extreme aspects saw to it that it fell very much out of fashion with the general public. High intensity weight training isn’t easy- nor is it as do-it-yourself as hopping on an exercise machine or taking a class and it does require some knowledge in nutrition to make it work – but in my experience it is the only way I have seen anyone who was obese get a six pack and keep it. The focus on self reliance and individuality  as opposed  to a one-size-fits-all approach makes it difficult for the weight loss industry to cash in on it- but it is an important method that needs to be studied and implemented more, as conventional approaches as so many of us know, ultimately fail.

References

1. Flegal KM, Caroll MD, Ogden CL, Johnson CL. Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults, 1999-2000. JAMA

2. Ogden CL, Flegal KM, Caroll MD, Johnson CL, Prevalence and trends in overweight among US children and adolescents, 199-2000. JAMA

3. Korkeila M, Rissanen A, Kaprio J, et al. Weight-loss attempts and risk of major weight gain: a prospective study in Finnish adults. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

4. Gasser GA. Big fat lies: the truth about your weight and your health. Carlsbad: Gurze Books

5. Korkeila M, Rissanen A, Kaprio J, et al. Weight-loss attempts and risk of major weight gain: a prospective study in Finnish adults.

6. “Fructose Sets Table For Weight Gain Without Warning”. Science News. Science Daily.

7. Vasselli JR (November 2008). “Fructose-induced leptin resistance: discovery of an unsuspected form of the phenomenon and its significance. Focus on “Fructose-induced leptin resistance exacerbates weight gain in response to subsequent high-fat feeding,” by Shapiro et al.”. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol.

8. Shapiro A, Mu W, Roncal C, Cheng KY, Johnson RJ, Scarpace PJ (November 2008). “Fructose-induced leptin resistance exacerbates weight gain in response to subsequent high-fat feeding”. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol.

9. Considine RV, Sinha MK, Heiman ML, Kriauciunas A, Stephens TW, Nyce MR, Ohannesian JP, Marco CC, McKee LJ & Bauer TL (1996). “Serum Immunoreactive-Leptin Concentrations in Normal-Weight and Obese Humans”. N Engl J Med

10. Friedman JM. War on Obesity- Not the Obese. Science

Kevin Richardson is one of the most sought after NYC personal trainers and creator of Naturally Intense™ High Intensity Training. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here. If you live in the New York City area and need help losing weight or getting into shape give Kevin and his team a call at 1-800-798-8420.

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