All about IMO........
your body is supersmart at determining priorities of what it needs to do to stay alive. If its impossible with what it has , it will do its best to last as long as it can.
No matter what exercise your doing your working ALL of your muscle fiber types , because your body will use the most efficient fibers for whatever the demand , before switching to the backup fibers for other tasks.
Now , lactic acid has been proven to be a fuel source and not affect acidosis directly , the cause for soreness then either goes directly to carbon dioxide build up , or lack of muscle recovery.
Working out muscles that are not fully recovered , is an ABSOLUTE NO , Working out muscles while other muscles are not fully recovered is an IFFY NO. Because your taking away from other muscles ability to recover because your body will recover the most damaged first. If your legs arent fully recovered but your working your biceps , your biceps will have more trama , so your body will give up on your legs currently to recover your biceps. Till your body gets fully recovered. Your body needs time to recover.
The more you eat , the more your body can recover. Because your body needs the nutrition , surpless items leads to your body saying ok I can speed up this process because I can think short term for now instead of long term and save some for upcoming problems.
But so depending on the severity of your workout and muscle trama , your body is going to do in the most efficient manor dependant on your own reliability for nutrition.
Your body has fat storages depending on its own efficiency of how it is built. Your natural fat storage level will give you an idea of how fast you will recover from working out. Your body will utilize more of what you give it at one time thinking more short term if you have lower bodyfat. But the higher natural bodyfat your body likes to store will give you a slower recovery. Because it thinks more long term.
Now your body will take from those nutrients it has store if need be to recover , but not use it at one time. Your body blends efficiency with storage. Now converting from what you have on hand to storage and then getting it back out lowers efficiency. It is scientific proof that the less conversions the more efficiency due to the fact you lose slightly through conversion.
Naturally your body was designed to be active , faster metabolism people think of it as are more agile to catch what its after , while slower metabolism is more of the patient gatherer , that will think more of technique and timing.
in the presence of an abundance of nutrition in the wild these equal out pretty well , while in a famine these rely alot on luck. The more agile can catch easier , but if a missed opportunity arises or a lack they begin to perish , which the more patient can live past the famine. All comes down to heart , intelligence , and luck.
The body will choose healing over feeling. So naturally your muscles will recover faster if your nutrition is high , than removing carbon dioxide from your muscles.
Working a muscle that is sore will impact effiency of the energy you can put forward before it overloads with carbon dioxide and keeps you from performing the action. We all know one sided entities are a failure to a well balanced entity. All muscle fibers are used for a reason. If a muscle is sore dont work it , or do your best to avoid working it.
If its a case of carbon dioxide you will overload the carbon dioxide at a sooner time , leading to less stimulation. So take a break , spend more time trying to figure out how to recover more from the carbon build up.
However if carbon buildup is on a muscle that is not being involved in your workout , then workout , but still do your best with carbon dioxide removing techniques to raise total efficiency of your body.
more stimulation without overload leads to more room for gains.
If your body is not sore the day immediately after the workout , then you either have no trained hard enough , you have no trained high enough intensity , with enough volume , your stimulation is not where it needs to be.
If you are pushing yourself hard , and your training was on point. Then you need to either make changes. due to different angles , or different rep ranges.
Your muscle fibers want to be at an optimal range based on how your body is designed with how much fiber involvement your body has and is designed to work with. If you change a chip on a motherboard your drivers will be off. You have to improve the chip while still keeping the same driver thresholds.
This being said your body is only as strong as its weakest link , you cannot standing overhead press 400lbs if your legs can only stand with slightly more weight than what you walk around at. So your muscles cannot functionally develop to that stength. Train your entire body , and train all fiber ranges.
Some people can become huge and strong without ever changing their fiber training , or without ever changing the exercises they train with , because their body matches the movement more efficiently than other peoples , along with their fibers math the rep range they are training with more efficiently.
You cannot FULLY findout your genetic muscle potential without training in all areas , people live their lives without ever finding out what they are best build for. Professional golfers , golf without ever stepping into a ring and find out they would actually perform overal way better than they do as a golfer.
fast metabolism = faster recovery if nutrition is met.
slow metabolism = slower recovery but more of a backup if not met.
Then their are also macronutrient wiring in your body where people respond better with different ratio balances of macronutrients. It all comes down to finding out what is best suited for you.
If you dont ever hit plateaus , keep doing what your doing. If you hit plateaus often try making your exercises go to a max rep range that is suited for all muscle fiber types. Keep the same weight till your body goes through to the last range before you increase the weight and continue the cycle. By doing this you can evenly train your muscle fibers in all areas of developement with a progression load. See how this makes you respond.
Also find out which exercises you can replace for the groups that you train , switch them to see if training the muscles from a different area that hit more of a weaker muscle of that cluster helps improve your plateau , or maybe you need a combination of the rep range along with the exercise changes.
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Switching from one rep range to the other , and being sore , is probably more likely the muscle having a bigger concentration of carbon dioxide inside of it. I mean if you normally train your body for lower reps , your body will adapt to that type of training the best it can , whether thats your optimal rep range or not. But the concentration of oxygen it gets is different.
If you train 3 sets of 5 , you get both sets of 5 but the last set you get 3 , this means your higher rep fibers dont really become involved until the last set which leads to lower oxygen in those muscles than if you did 3 sets of 10 where the muscles fibers you never really worked work more during the 2 sets of 10 , where in the last set where u get 8 , it switches fiber types to lower rep fibers to take to finish up.
which leads to what your not used to getting more carbon dioxide build up , and needs to be broken free or body adapted to handling the carbon dioxide in those fibers more efficiently to match or exceed the efficiency that it handles it in the lower rep fibers.
You might say why do you believe its the carbon dioxide involved from the rep change as the muscle stress... Well if you train to failure , all muscle fibers get targeted in a movement. So if you train to failure they should get equal amounts of stimulation depending on HOW CLOSE to push yourself to failure , your mental level and mind to muscle connection to whether you make your muscles give up , your subconsciously let your muscles give up before going to failure. Which can be improved on going more to failure by practicing it.
Now , your body also wants to survive as long as it can , and carbon dioxide in your muscles , is less of a threat on surviving than microtears in your muscles. I say your body puts priority of recovering onto the muscles. SO if your diet is in check , then if you have delayed recovery then chances are its most likely due to carbon dioxide buildup inside each of those individual fibers.
Because say you start to workout and breathing hard get fatigued your lungs will not draw in as much oxygen as it did to start with because there is a build up inside of the body that it has to push out before it can bring in more oxygen. So if you target those fibers later in a workout , it will have less carbon dioxide buildup , if you train in the rep range to start with that induces carbon dioxide buildup , whenever your strength fibers come in , their not acting with oxygen , so they can continue working until they become fully fatigued. This is where your body improves its ATP production , and usage. Along with lactic acid usage and levels. Because your body uses lactic acid as an energy source.
So in my mind a rep range that targets all fibers , with a progression load , that after reached the number of reps the weight is increased to drop the reps to the stronger fiber ranges for stimulation , until it switches to the endurance fibers , and then continue the load. Is the best way to train the muscles. Powerlifting cycles are known to put good amounts of strength and size on , maybe they are just limited to the most not ALL of the muscle fiber types being worked.
I have just though this out and put my opinions down upon reading this post , Im sorry if this feels like a hi-jack attempt , but anybody is currently in rep range switching could you please try using a rep range of around 20-25 reps , going to failure until you end up reaching 20-25 then increase the weight and continue. Whenever you feel your progress is slowing switch the exercise to counteract the coming on plateau. Then give me your opinions?
I am trying mine with a split routine to start with since I do not have the equipment to train with as of yet , but once I finish up my equipment I am ending up lowering my reps to 20-25 range and then doing whole body workouts. Whenever I feel my body is telling me I can continue.
PS... Stabilizer muscles are most likely used as higher rep fiber types during a movement leading to carbon dioxide buildup in the blood which transfers over to the major muscles being worked which is producing an even bigger amount of carbon dioxide at the end of the exercise.
I am just trying to put my opinions on this out to see if maybe you guys after reading this entire thing agree completely , some , or any. To see if you want to switch things up to see if this might work for you. I am planning on only doing one set per , increased times per week depending on how soon I feel I am recovered. Starting with 1-2 times a week. Maybe adding in sets AFTER if I feel like my reps are not going up from workout to workout.
