I recently saw an IG post explaining that muscle soreness does not equate to muscle hypertrophy.
True. While muscle soreness is usually caused by micro-tears in muscle and connective tissue, it merely means you did something your muscles aren’t used to…
In fact, if you use a heavy weight and only lower the weight slowly, like six seconds, until fatigue, you’re almost guaranteed to get sore. That’s because the eccentric, or negative, phase of the stroke is what causes most of the damage.
So just because you’re sore doesn’t mean you’re growing, BUT…
When you do a different exercise at a unique angle, you will probably get sore. That’s because you have no doubt engaged and damaged some fibers that haven’t been stressed as much in your previous workouts…
What that appears to say is that training at different angles can activate different fibers or stress some working fibers more than others.
To put it another way, you can get variations in fiber recruitment with different exercises…
That’s the reason I use add-on moves. I usually emphasize the ideal because that’s the exercise that’s the most biomechanically sound and engages the most mass, or fibers; however…
Using other exercises, such as a flat flye after dumbbell decline presses, the ideal, can trigger growth in different fibers as well as in unique areas of the muscle—near the insertion, if current researchers are correct.
And researchers have also said that training a muscle with the most resistance at the weakest point, as in the contracted position, can also produce area-specific hypertrophy—such as more development near the middle of the muscle.
To continue with the chest example, that means cable crossovers, where there is max resistance at the “flex” point, can have unique size-building effects…
So stretch- and contracted-position exercises can all help build more “layers” of mass. You can get fiber growth, hypertrophy you might not achieve using only the ideal exercise.…
For a list of ideal, stretch, and contracted-position exercises for every major muscle, see the Positions-of-Flexion Exercise Matrix on pages 42 and 43 of Old Man, Young Muscle. Complete workouts show you how to incorporate them.
Sculpt your perfect physique: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos, and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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