Another good article by Mike Israetel, this bit in particular I found interesting: 3.) Jogging to Reduce DOMS For as long as humans have engaged in planned and intentional training for sport, they have struggled with the effect of muscle soreness. Soreness, particularly delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), can be uncomfortable and interfere with hard training. It reduces force output for those working with weights and reduces flexibility for those working at extreme ranges of motion. Thus, for as long as training has been practiced, athletes and coaches have been experimenting with ways of reducing or eliminating DOMS. One of the ways in which athletes have noticed DOMS can be mitigated is via low intensity cardio. Especially bodybuilders have noticed that a brisk walk or light jog of 20-30 minutes duration after training (especially leg training) can go a long way into reducing the eventual intensity of the DOMS that arises the next day. Track and field athletes have noticed a similar process when they engage in a cool down after hard training. While light cardio can in fact help recovery, not all of the effects are positive. As a matter of fact, light cardio may be enhancing recovery at the expense of adaptation itself. That is, while doing light cardio can limit DOMS and allow you to train harder and sooner, it may have the side effect of limiting how much muscle you grow or how much strength you gain from that very training. Light cardio interferes with training adaptations in three primary ways; intercellular signaling, nervous system adaptations, and metabolite flushing. a.) Intercellular Signaling Intercellular signaling is a major component of muscle and strength gains. Heavy resistance training activates a variety of intercellular messengers, one of the primary being mTOR. mTOR is the central regulator of muscle growth and fiber type transitions in muscle cells, and quite literally turns on the muscle growth process after training, at least in very large part. However, cardio training activates an opposing pathway called AMPk. This pathway leads to endurance adaptations like mitochondrial biogenesis, but literally blocks the activation of mTOR. Thus, the very same cardio that reduces DOMS may actually directly reduce muscle growth and strength improvements that weight training is supposed to stimulate. b.) Nervous System Adaptations Weight training and cardio not only effect muscle tissue, but the nervous system as well. Training with heavy resistance changes nervous system function to allow it to maximally contract the muscle and allow for the production of highest forces. On the other hand, cardio training optimizes the nervous system into the direction of sustainable, small, repetitive forces. In reality, the nervous system cannot be the best at both actions, so some tradeoff of one is made when the other is trained. Thus, light cardio may actually interfere with maximal nervous system adaptations for high force outputs. … Hardly conducive to best results in the strength sports. c.) Metabolite Flushing A small but significant percentage of total possible hypertrophy is caused by metabolite accumulation. When hard training is performed, especially with higher reps, metabolites such as lactate flood the muscles being used and the vasculature around them. The very presence of these metabolites seems to signal hypertrophic processes (possibly mTOR) to some extent. Metabolites don’t cause the majority of the hypertrophic response (high workloads with heavy weights do that), but they may account for up to 25% of possible muscle growth in a training program. Because metabolites stimulate growth with their very presence, it has been shown that higher levels of metabolites present for longer seem to cause more growth. This is the basis of the training modality known as KAATSU, or occlusion training. By restricting blood flow away from a trained muscle, the metabolites summed up during that training hang around for longer and potentially stimulate more growth. And here lies the problem with doing light cardio immediately after training. By increasing blood flow to the muscles in which metabolites have been generated, those same metabolites are now more rapidly flushed out of the area. Because this flushing reduces the total exposure of that area (and those muscles) to growth-stimulating metabolites, a potential reduction in training effect occurs. If you want the most muscle size possible, it’s probably good to keep metabolites around, rather than flushing them out ASAP. Practically, light training absolutely encourages better recovery while enhancing and not detracting from adaptation. The best way to ensure that these positive effects are expressed is to keep the light training sport-specific (runners should do light runs, lifters should do light lifts) and keep the sessions far away from the hard training sessions. For example, benching three times per week means you might bench heavy on Monday and Friday, but keep Wednesday as a lighter recovery session. You would not just slap the Wednesday session right after the Monday session. Lastly, some athletes will knowingly and intentionally sabotage some adaptations in order to gain others. For example, soccer players will sacrifice some small amount of leg hypertrophy by performing a cool down after their practice. However, this allows them to recover faster and practice more times during the week, which has a positive effect on their soccer skill and repeated sprint ability. The sacrifice in leg size is more than worth the tradeoff. But if your goal is maximal size and strength, be wary of processes that reduce adaptation to promote recovery, of which our next and final “bad recovery strategy” is perhaps the perfect example. jtsstrength/articles/2014/12/09/everything-need-know-recovering/
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 15:45:13 +0000
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