The importance of shocking your muscles

F

FitnessMetabolism

0
Hey this is one of my first posts here so here is something that I think a lot of you will find helpful

So you've been doing a workout plan for a while, and you see some good improvements. You go back and do the same workout plans, but the improvements slow down and eventually stop. Why is this?

Well the fact of the matter is the only reason your muscles get bigger and stronger is that they are trying to adapt to what is happening to them. So once you have been doing a workout routine for a while your muscles get bigger and stronger, but they will adapt to what you are doing.

This problem is fixed by changing up your routine for a while. Don't do the same workouts over and over, maybe do one workout routine for a week than switch it up every week for a month. Than repeat your cycle, making changes where you see fit.

This should "shock" your muscles and make them get bigger and stronger.

Hope this helps all of you guys.

If you have any questions or want more great fitness advice make sure to stay in touch.

Go get em!
 
Welcome to the forums.

As well-meaning as this is, I'm afraid it's not entirely accurate. What I'm about to say isn't exactly welcome-committee grade stuff. I really don't want to make you feel unwelcome here, but at the same time, what you've posted here (which I honestly presume is with the best of intentions) is something fitness marketers have come up with to conveniently sell the latest, greatest program in each month's edition of their magazine, not something that has a lot of evidence to support it (in fact, anecdotally, what I've experienced for myself and what I've seen in countless others over 8 years of training flat out contradicts a lot of what's been said here). Again, I don't mean to be personally oppositional here, but I have to respectfully disagree with the message, and here's why....

When you learn a new exercise, or start training at a new intensity or volume, you'll rapidly make improvements on that exercise/intensity/volume simply because you were unco at it before, and now you're learning how to do it. But those rapid improvements are neural more than muscular. It's when the basic skill is learned that neurological progress slows, but this is also when muscular stimulus from the exercise/intensity/workload peaks, because you now have the competence in the lift to push your muscles as hard as they can be pushed in that context. Unfortunately, now that the skill has been learned, it'll take a lot more effort to see improvements in performance, because now performance gains will come from actual muscular growth and more fine-tuned neurological adaptations. This is when training gets hard. This is when people think "I've adapted as far as I can and need to do something else."

The reality, however, is that this is when you need to keep pushing along. You're now making a different kind of adaptation, and while it's not an adaptation that's easy on the ego (before when you were learning the skill, you might've added 5-10kg onto your squat every week just by showing up, now you'll have to fight tooth and nail to add 5-10kg in a month), it's exactly the kind of adaptation that really builds strength and muscle. Before this point, you're not really getting stronger, just more competent. Now you are competent, so progress will come by actually getting bigger and stronger.
 
Last edited:
Hey thanks for the reply.

I do also agree with you. Of course one should always stick to my staple workouts (squats, cleans, deadlift, bench)

a point that I am making here is and what has worked for myself and clients is to change up your routine around certain workouts that you do. For example, if I am benching twice a week for a month, and my progress begins to slow then I switch to benching once a week, and once a week doing DB incline press, Decline press etc. Then once I stop seeing progress in this, I continue to bench and switch between a myriad of other chest workouts.

A common problem amongst a lot of people is that certain muscles around primary muscles do not fire on their own, because they are not regularly used. Targeting these muscles will begin to "wake them up" and suddenly you will start using them in your lifts and become stronger and look better.

This is just one of our approaches to fitness that has been successful for us.

Thanks
 
That "waking up" is what Goldfish referred to as the "neural" part of training. The neurological recruitment of muscle fibers is what's contained within the first three or so months of training any given muscles for the first time.

However, that neuromuscular recruitment is not lost unless the muscles go unused for about a month, so once your muscles are "waken up", as long as you're still training them on any sort of regular basis, "shocking" the muscles is not needed (or physically effective).

If you hit a plateau, then you need to find a method to overload your muscles once again. Granted, regular rest/maintenance weeks are a necessary factor in any training routine, where you should be toning down the workout intensity by about 75% to allow for optimal muscle recovery.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top