Chest Pain and Progress Question

J

johnnyg2008

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Ok as i've said many times i'm on FBW 3 times a week (tue, thur, sat):

3 sets: 12,10,8 reps... increase weight each set
squat, dumbbell chest press, single arm row, shoulder press, pullup

But yesterday i went to gym with some friends and did what they do:
All sets are 12 reps:

Bench Press - 4 sets
Incline dumbbell chest press - 4 sets
cable crossovers - 2 sets
tricep pulldown - 4 sets
dips - 3 sets
shoulder press - 4 sets
lateral raise - 2 sets

And my chest and my shoulders (a bit) are in SO much pain today....

1. What does this mean? does this mean my home routine is crap? i really push myself on it but only get mild pain next day barely noticeable... So is my FBW workout not good enough that i would be in so much pain from the gym? Whats happened here?

2. Should i add incline chest press and/or lateral rasies and/or chest flies to my FBW or will this make it too hard to recover to perform the FBW 3 times/week? Are these exercises useless for me?
 
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By doing 12 reps each set, it sounds like your friends are training for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This means they will get bigger, but they won't get significantly stronger. There IS a difference between size and strength. An increase in post-workout pain doesn't necessarily mean the workout is more effective. It's probably just that the workout was completely new to your body, so your body was effectively "shocked" - hence the pain.

If I were you, I would tell your friends to research something called myofibular hypertrophy (heavy weight, low rep training). This essentially means that the muscle fibers themselves are increasing in size, rather than the fluid that surrounds them (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy). If you want to get both significanty stronger and significantly bigger, I would recommend training within the 4-8 rep range. This allows you to use enough weight to promote myofibular hypertrophy and enough reps to promote sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, effectively making you both big and strong, rather than one or the other. Of course, these aren't hard and fast rules. Training with high reps will still make you stronger, and training with low reps will still make you bigger, but if you want to get serious about your training, research myofibular hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. If nothing else, it's a very interesting read.

P.S. You don't need to add lateral raises or chest flys into your FBW because they are isolation exercises and you already do chest press and shoulder press. I personally like incline bench pressing, and it's a compound lift, so add it in if want.
 
JethroTull said:
By doing 12 reps each set, it sounds like your friends are training for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This means they will get bigger, but they won't get significantly stronger. There IS a difference between size and strength. An increase in post-workout pain doesn't necessarily mean the workout is more effective. It's probably just that the workout was completely new to your body, so your body was effectively "shocked" - hence the pain.

If I were you, I would tell your friends to research something called myofibular hypertrophy (heavy weight, low rep training). This essentially means that the muscle fibers themselves are increasing in size, rather than the fluid that surrounds them (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy). If you want to get both significanty stronger and significantly bigger, I would recommend training within the 4-8 rep range. This allows you to use enough weight to promote myofibular hypertrophy and enough reps to promote sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, effectively making you both big and strong, rather than one or the other. Of course, these aren't hard and fast rules. Training with high reps will still make you stronger, and training with low reps will still make you bigger, but if you want to get serious about your training, research myofibular hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. If nothing else, it's a very interesting read.

P.S. You don't need to add lateral raises or chest flys into your FBW because they are isolation exercises and you already do chest press and shoulder press. I personally like incline bench pressing, and it's a compound lift, so add it in if want.
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I read up on that... very interesting.

And personally at the moment i do NOT care at ALL about strength, i will work on that once ive added some size.... i just want to add size as fast as possible.

Now you're saying if i did 12 reps with as heavy weight as i can use for all 3 sets i would get bigger faster?? Would these gains disappear very fast if i stopped?
 
If you want to add size as fast as possible, I would use a weight that will allow you to get a maximum of 8-12 reps for a total of 3 sets. This will induce sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, and your muscles will grow fast. Be forewarned though, you might not be as strong as you look in a few months time, so don't accept any arm wrestling challenges anytime soon.

Of course, the difference between myofibular hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy means very, very little compared to how much you eat. If you want to add size as fast as possible, eat a fridge-load of food every day. Reps, weight and training routines come in at a very distant second compared to good, old fasioned food. Eat, and you will grow, regardless of whether you lift for 4 reps or 6 reps or 7, 8, 9, or 10 reps.

Eat, and you will grow.
The difference between myofibular hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is just the icing on the cake. Not that you should be eating cake, but you know what I mean.

P.S. Size gained through sarcoplasmic hypertrophy will disappear faster during a layoff than size gained through myofibular hypertrophy.
 
and you should really space out your workouts more, 3 days in a row for you FB would be detremental to progress. Your muscles need time to rest and repair.
 
NoSweatNoGlory said:
and you should really space out your workouts more, 3 days in a row for you FB would be detremental to progress. Your muscles need time to rest and repair.
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It's not 3 days in a row...

I do it on tuesday, thursday, saturday....

So 1 day break inbetween and 2 days after the saturday workout...

Is this still too often?
 
Sarcoplasmic and myofibular hyp aren't that different. True, you might loose s.hyp faster when in a state of detraining, but other than that, contraction strength is not the differentiating factor.

Strength is about the muscle's ability to generate force when it contracts. The relationship of size and strength is commonly about the bigger the muscle is, the more work it can handle, rather than the greater force it can generate.

Typically, rep ranges from 1-5 emphasize strength gains, 8-12 will promote size more than strength, 5-8 will promote both equally, and 15+ will be more about endurance. If you stimulate your muscle and you eat, you will grow.

You were sore because you:
1.) tried exercises that were new to you
2.) went to failure
3.) were not ready for such a high volume load
4.) did not recover well due to factors like diet
 
johnnyg2008 said:
And my chest and my shoulders (a bit) are in SO much pain today....

1. What does this mean? does this mean my home routine is crap? i really push myself on it but only get mild pain next day barely noticeable... So is my FBW workout not good enough that i would be in so much pain from the gym? Whats happened here?
Click to expand...

Some train for strength.. some train for hypertrophy, some train for pain!

If you want pain, than do 15 sets of bench press and 10 sets of incline bench press, you're obviously gonna overtrain, and I'm sure your chest will be killing you the following day, you'll get the pain that you want.
My point is not to rely too much on pain(muscle soreness) as a factor whether your workout is good.
 
johnnyg2008 said:
It's not 3 days in a row...

I do it on tuesday, thursday, saturday....

So 1 day break inbetween and 2 days after the saturday workout...

Is this still too often?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, though a FB workout 3 days a week is still a lot. If you continue to have a lot of post workout pain (vice soreness), you might want to think about breaking down your workouts a little but, such as:

Tuesday: Chest/arms, shoulders/back, core

Thursday: Shoulders/back, legs, core

Saturday: Chest/arms, legs, core.

Hard to say what will work best for you, everybody is different and no training plan is really ever exactly the same. Also, though I don't know your own current level of fitness, sometimes it is haphazzard to go and just do whatever your buddies are doing. I've made that mistake before when I was younger when I got back into ice hockey after being out with a head injury, and ended up with a grade 2 muscle strain in my lower back that kept me out for almost half a season.

Remember that when you train that you are exercising and dieting for your own goals.
 
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