Elvia1023
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My opinion . . .
Muscular soreness is not an indicator muscular growth. We know to induce it and we
know how to avoid it.
If you take an elevator to the top of the tall building and walk down your legs will
be sore within 48 hours or less; maybe that night or later that day (me), perhaps the
nest day (most common) but they will get sore. Conversely, it you walk to the top of
a tall building and take the elevator down your legs will not get sore; fatigued and
tired, yes. But not sore.
An eccentric movement is primarily responsible for muscular soreness (think lowering)
and muscular strength and growth. While a concentric contraction (think pushing) will
produce little to no muscular soreness. A isometric / static 'contraction' (holding) will
induce almost crippling muscular soreness but will do little if anything in the way of
promoting muscular growth.
(I can remember long road trips in the Spring when I was rock climbing in Yosemite or
Joshua Tree. The first 2 - 3 days of climbing my forearms would be brutally sore; sore
to the touch. And all I did was hold a static contraction; sometimes, many times longer
than I wanted. )
Some exercises will make you crazy sore (me, squats), some exercises will induce zero
muscular soreness regardless of how you preform them (everybody, leg extensions).
Muscular soreness does not indicate or is responsible for certain portion of a muscles
growth. It will provide soreness to a particular area that is under stress as in doing
'preacher curls' which will most definitely make the lower part of your biceps sore
but will not result in any muscular growth localized to the lower biceps. So do not use
muscular soreness as a means of determining the 'effects' of an exercise, believing that
that both the location and the degree of soreness is valuable for evaluating an exercises
productively.
Below some interesting thoughts on muscle soreness by Arthur Jones. (And don't shoot
the messenger.)
"Nobody really knows anything about muscular soreness apart from the fact that it is
misnamed. The working part of a muscle, the contractile tissues, do not have the type
of nerves required to either record or transmit pain; so, in a very real sense, it is not
the ''muscle” that feels pain. But, as we all know, “something” damned sure can get
sore as a result of exercise. It has been suggested that it is the connective tissues that
experience such pain, but that is pure guesswork at best. It has also been suggested
that such soreness results from damage to the muscle fibers; but that suggestion is
wrong for two obvious reasons: one, muscle fibers cannot feel pain; two, while it is true
that a hard exercise performed after a long layoff usually will produce muscular soreness,
it is also true that an equally hard exercise performed the following day will reduce
the degree of soreness.
So, if one hard exercise produced “damage,” then two hard exercises should produce
more damage and thereby make the soreness worse. But that does not happen.
If, after a long layoff from exercise, you perform a hard first workout on a Monday,
then 24 hours later you will have If, after a long layoff from exercise, you perform a
hard first workout on a Monday, then 24 hours later you will have “some,” but not
much, muscular soreness; and 48 hours after the workout it will be a lot worse;
and the degree of soreness will increase day by day for a period of five to six days,
eventually reach a peak, and then gradually go away. Assuming, that is, that you
perform only one exercise and then quit. The soreness from that one hard workout
will not be entirely gone for at least a week, and may last for ten days.
But if, instead, you perform a hard workout every day for three or four days in a row,
then the resulting soreness will not be as bad as it would have been from only one
workout, and it will go away faster. Thus it is obvious that the first workout causes
the soreness but that following workouts tend to reduce and remove the soreness.
so I believe we can scrap the theory about damage to the muscle."
The full article here: http://www.arthurjonesexercise.com/First_Half/49.PDF
I agree with your post but one thing that that stood out was stating that leg extensions will generally not induce muscle soreness. I don't think it's a matter of exercise/movement but moreso intensity and volume. Any movement can cause soreness but it's about how you do that movement. Now everyone is different but most people also don't train brutally hard. Now even if they do if they do it all the time that will reduce doms because your body adapts. Now if that person had 6 weeks out of the gym and trained legs brutally hard they wouldn't be able to walk properly the next day... I think that can apply to everyone. If they train brutally hard every 3 days it changes things as some may get sore but many will experience no doms especially if all other factors (diet, sleep, drugs etc) are in place. I know you know all of this but just that one comment that stood out. It all depends upon intensity and volume. A guy may train brutally hard all the time but if he adds in 5 working sets or perhaps a new movement (lunges for example) that could be enough to create bad doms.
Granted leg extensions are an isolation movement and they won't have the same overall impact of a squat but they can be just as brutal it's just how you perform the movement. I bet I could take a guy on here and he does his usual leg workout with me then I make him to leg extensions only and I bet he is sore the next day. Now I wouldn't recommend people do this but if my sole aim was to make him sore it would be possible. Having a guy even just doing 1 massive drop set could be enough. A set were he wants to fail 1/3 of the way through and you have him drop the weight multiple times and do assisted and partials reps and static holds and he probably won't be able to walk the next day especially if he has never done anything like that before.