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It’s pretty common to speak to and hear of people that state that if they take two-three weeks off of training they shrink—A LOT! How can this be? Because it’s plainly obvious that this phenomenon does NOT occur for most trainees. In dissecting these peoples training methods and experience levels closer, a couple things become painfully obvious.
1. These people tend to be…..well…weak.
2. They generally train at extremely low intensity levels doing higher reps and LOTS of volume.
So what is happening here? Well a BIG chunk of the so-called muscle they are carrying is primarily hypertrophy due to increased nutrient loading (sarcoplasm hypertrophy). While this is well and good, unless it is backed up by hypertrophy of the muscle itself (sarcomere hypertrophy) the trainee becomes the incredible shrinking man when training is discontinued even for a short time.
The solution? Well it’s pretty obvious. A fair amount of your workload must directly target the muscle fiber hypertrophy itself and this is best done with sets of 1-8 reps (dependent on rep cadence) with a fairly high intensity level. If most of your size is due to nutrient loading you mostly have non-functional muscle and will quickly revert back to your small(er) self when you take time off. A comprehensive training system takes all of the components of muscle size/strength into consideration. But for many hardgainers this is difficult to put into place without running into the overtraining wall.
More on this to follow………
Iron Addict
1. These people tend to be…..well…weak.
2. They generally train at extremely low intensity levels doing higher reps and LOTS of volume.
So what is happening here? Well a BIG chunk of the so-called muscle they are carrying is primarily hypertrophy due to increased nutrient loading (sarcoplasm hypertrophy). While this is well and good, unless it is backed up by hypertrophy of the muscle itself (sarcomere hypertrophy) the trainee becomes the incredible shrinking man when training is discontinued even for a short time.
The solution? Well it’s pretty obvious. A fair amount of your workload must directly target the muscle fiber hypertrophy itself and this is best done with sets of 1-8 reps (dependent on rep cadence) with a fairly high intensity level. If most of your size is due to nutrient loading you mostly have non-functional muscle and will quickly revert back to your small(er) self when you take time off. A comprehensive training system takes all of the components of muscle size/strength into consideration. But for many hardgainers this is difficult to put into place without running into the overtraining wall.
More on this to follow………
Iron Addict
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