Understanding Muscle Soreness:

*Dennis Wolf

I think soreness is a good way to judge whether or not you
did enough in the gym. If you don’t feel any soreness at all,
it might mean you didn’t train hard enough that day. If you
are so sore that you can hardly move a muscle for a few
days, you did too much. I know my limits, and I don’t
always get sore. Does that mean you aren’t going to grow?
I’m not sure about that. My shoulders very rarely get sore,
and they are one of my best body parts. My legs always get
sore, and my chest and back do too. The only time
everything gets sore is when I take a few weeks off from
training and then get back in the gym, but that happens to
everybody. But like I said, soreness can be a way to rate if
what you did was enough or too much. I think if you train
legs and get so sore that you can hardly walk for three days,
that’s way too much.

*Branch Warren

To be honest, I don’t know. I’ve had awesome workouts
where I fully expected to be crazy sore the next day, and I
wasn’t. At other times, I’ve had workouts that I didn’t
consider to be anything special where I did get really sore.
Usually soreness comes from doing an exercise you’ve
never done before, or haven’t done in a long time.
Techniques like drop sets and forced reps can make you
sore too. Higher volume than normal will do it. I don’t really
put much stock in DOMS [delayed onset muscle soreness]
being a marker of a productive workout. I prefer to go by
the pump. That’s something you know right then and there
whether you’ve achieved it or not, and I think pumping the
muscle as much as possible is going to lead to growth, as
long as you’re not using very light weights. My legs, chest
and back always get sore. My arms probably get sore once
or twice a year. I can’t even remember the last time my
calves got sore. Shoulders, occasionally.

*Victor Martinez 

Soreness is a tricky thing. For the longest time, I would wait
until the day after my workout to judge how good it had
been, based on how sore I felt in that body part. If I wasn’t
sore, I figured I had failed even though I thought I had
worked really hard. I think that’s natural for all
bodybuilders. You seek out soreness to validate that you’re
training as hard as you should be. You pat yourself on the
back a little when you get really sore, and you kick yourself
a little if you’re not. But after a while, I started to notice that
I would have workouts where I got great contractions and
had a perfect connection with the body part, I was using
very decent weights and I would get crazy pumped— but
there was no soreness the next day. I knew in my heart that
workout was awesome, so after a while I stopped
associating soreness with the workout being more or less
productive.
Recovery has a lot to do with soreness. I find that when I
am getting plenty of rest, eating very well and
supplementing properly, I hardly ever get sore. The one
thing that does seem to do it for me is whenever I do a lot
more volume than usual for a body part in a given workout.
If you maintain a pump and all that lactic acid is building up
for something like two hours, you’re going to get sore for
sure. And I welcome it!

5 Ways To Lose Weight :

1) DRINK MORE WATER

 

You should have a goal to drink at least half of your body weight in ounces of water. Let’s say that you weigh 120lbs. You should aim for at least 60oz. of water daily or more! In order to drink more water, try to get yourself on a schedule! There are water bottles available which denote how much water you should have consumed by the time marked. You can also “DIY” this by using a reusable water bottle and a sharpie marker.

2) EAT SMALL FREQUENT MEALS

 

Set a goal to consume 6 small meals per day — making two of those “meals” healthy snacks. I am sure you have heard this a thousand times over, but it is for a good reason. Frequent snacking is the key to maintaining your weight or battling the bulge. Can’t remember to snack? Make a schedule!

3) COLOR YOUR PLATE

 

Have you ever heard that you should eat all of the colors of the rainbow? It is no secret that eating a variety of colorful food helps to provide your body with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. All of this is to nourish your body in a way that can’t be replicated in a supplement or multivitamin.
Each color contains their own nutrients:
• Red: lycopene and anthocyanin
• Orange: vitamin C, carotenoids, and bioflavonoids
• Yellow: nutrients that promote good digestion and optimal brain function
• Green: lutein and indoles
• Blue/Purple: antioxidants and anti-aging properties
• White: nutrients that increase immunity

4) GO LIFT

 

According to a Penn State research study, women who lifted weights regularly lost 40% more body fat than those who didn’t. According to Women’s Health, “Other research on dieters who don’t lift shows that, on average, 75% of their weight loss is from fat, while 25% is from muscle. Muscle loss may drop your scale weight, but it doesn’t improve your reflection in the mirror and it makes you more likely to gain back the flab you lost.” This will leave you skinny fat or skinny without muscle tone. The fact is: if you lift, you will burn more calories.

5) WALK DAILY AFTER DINNER

Making a habit of taking a daily stroll after dinner is a great idea. My husband and I have actually gotten into this habit after our son was born. We enjoy taking him out in his jogging stroller after eating a clean dinner. It helps us unwind, get fit, and spend a little time together.

Training Tips from The Oak

GENERAL TRAINING TIPS FROM THE OAK :

* CHOOSE THE BEST EXERCISES FOR GROWTH

For the Oak, training hard was as important as training smart. "To get big, you have to get strong," he wrote. "Beginning and intermediate bodybuilders shouldn't be as concerned with refinement as with growth."
With this in mind, focus less on single-joint movements (sometimes called isolation exercises) in favor of multijoint ones. The bench press, squat, deadlift, overhead press, bent-over row, and power clean are examples of solid multijoint exercises that require several muscle groups to work in coordination. These exercises should form the foundation of your training plan.
While these movements are more difficult to master than their single-joint counterparts, they offer the added benefit of allowing you to train very heavy to overload the target muscle groups. Arnold believed that performing these moves and challenging yourself with heavy weights was the single most critical component of gaining strength and size.

* USE HEAVY WEIGHTS FOR LOW REPS

For Arnold, choosing the right load was just as important as selecting the right exercise. After all, 8 reps of squats with 365 pounds taken to failure elicits a far better muscle-building stimulus than a set of 95 pounds for 40 reps.
"Start with a few warm-ups [not taken to muscle failure] and pyramid the weight up from one set to the next, decreasing the reps and going to failure," Arnold wrote. "Usually, I'll have someone stand by to give me just a little bit of help past a sticking point or cheat the weight up just a little [once I've reached muscle failure]."
Arnold wasn't just concerned with feeling the weight; he wanted to make sure the load induced muscle failure at a target range: "I make a point of never doing fewer than six repetitions per set with most movements," he notes," and nothing higher than 12. The rule applies to most body parts, including calves." Make sure to choose the right weight to fail within that rep range.

* DON'T GET COMFORTABLE WITH A ROUTINE

Few people know that Arnold has a business degree, but he didn't need his diploma to realize that diminishing returns applies to workouts, too.
Do the same workout for too long without making significant changes, and its value will fall over time. That's when a bodybuilder finds himself in a training rut.
"Within a basic framework, I was constantly changing my exercises," Arnold wrote. "I liked to shock the muscles by not letting them get complacent in a constant routine."
Arnold did his homework when it came to planning his training sessions. If he found that an exercise was no longer producing gains, he'd switch it for another.
Never afraid to experiment with new exercises or alternative training methods, Arnold was on a perpetual search for new ways to become bigger and better as old ways became stale.

* GO PAST FAILURE WITH ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

In his book, Arnold identified the use of a number of advanced training techniques as a weapon to bring up a lagging body part. Arnold used just about every intensity booster in the book, so to speak, but he zeroed in on what worked best for him simply through trial and error.
Don't be afraid to apply such techniques as forced reps, negatives, dropsets, partials, rest-pause, or other ideas you may read about to your own training. Be sure to evaluate how you feel after using one, and remember not to take every set past muscle failure; save it for your 1-2 heaviest sets of each exercise.

* GUARD AGAINST OVERTRAINING

In your zeal to bring up a stubborn muscle group, you might be tempted to employ the "throw everything at 'em but the kitchen sink" approach, but Arnold warned that this strategy might be counterproductive. "There will be times when a body part lags behind because you are overtraining it, hitting it so hard, so often, and so intensely that it never has a chance to rest, recuperate, and grow," he wrote.
"The answer to this problem is simply to give the muscles involved a chance to rest and recover, and then to adjust your training schedule so that you don't overtrain [the same body part] again. Remember, too much can be as bad as too little when it comes to bodybuilding training."