Originally Posted by IONOR

Diffrent muscles recover at diffrent speeds. Muscle groups that are made up of mostly type 1a fibers (eg calfs and abs) tend to recover a lot faster than others.Thats why we can train these groups more than once a week (every 72 hours would be fine). To train other muscle groups every 72 hours would be overtrainning, unless we cut down on volume as well as intensity for each workout.Which would be contraproductive towards our muscle building goals.As higher volume workouts have been proven to release higher growth hormone which is a far more anabolic response than you get from trainning your muscle groups 72 hours apart . Thus trainning a muscle group once a week with more volume ,shocking methods and intensity is more optimal towards gains.

Originally Posted by young d

what are your views on this..?

http://www.metacel.com/MaxGrow8wk.pdf

these guys reckon you can train shoulders and arms more frequently too, i dunno about it, wouldn't mind an extra biceps workout each week but i don't think my triceps could handle an extra 1, they always seem to be aching for days and i couldn't see my bench making progress if my tris were still K.O.'ed

Originally Posted by young d

the concept of that article is that different muscle groups recover at different rates

because your arms recover 3 times faster than your legs... why work them both once a week at the same rate? if you train your arms only once a week they will not grow as fast as they should be, therefore that program recommends training shoulders and arms 3 times a week, chest and back 1-2 times a week and legs once

i'm not sayin i'd do that! but would it be worth trying to add in an extra arms workout and seeing what happens? to test if that theory works?

do you know the recovery rates of all the muscles?

i might try adding in an extra chest/bis (lagging parts) workout at the weekend when i start creatine in a couple of weeks (creatine should make my muscles recover even quicker - so it would make sense to try it when i'm on creatine)

peace

Originally Posted by sabre81

ehh, i guess it depends on the person, however, i recover pretty fast and i know i would be overtraining a muscle if i hit it directly every 3 days.

Originally Posted by young d

the concept of that article is that different muscle groups recover at different rates

Originally Posted by young d

because your arms recover 3 times faster than your legs

Originally Posted by berealjohn

to determine fast or slow twitch any muscle group...put 80% on and see how many reps you can do. the bench mark is 6 reps. if you can do more than 6 reps the muscle contains more slow twitch than fast. less than 6 reps it has more slow twitch which mean greater potential for growth & longer recovery time is needed if adequately trained.

Originally Posted by Duncans Donuts

Actually muscles are recruited according to the size principle of muscle fiber recruitment. If you are doing a weight you can barely eek out 6 reps at, the first muscles to be fatigued will be the so called slow twitch, followed by the "intermediate", and failure will be achieved when the "fast twitch" muscles are used and exhausted.

When you do very high reps (I mean very high - 30 +), your slow twitch fibers which operate through aerobic pathways will recover during the working set and have resupplied enough fuel to continue the muscular contractions. This is counterproductive because you aren't really doing anaerobic exercise at that point

I don't understand the point of running out of ATP stores with anything under 6 reps...why again is 8-15 reps not going to do the exact same thing?

Originally Posted by IONOR

Muscles are not actually rectutied this way the raw essence of building mass is TUT (time under tension) for example tests have compared athletes when they lifted in the 5-15 second range (2-5 reps) compared to when they lifted in the 30-70 second range (8-12 reps). Through contless tests great trainers and bodybuilders (eg Lee Priest) have found out that for optimal size gains a set should last between 30-70 seconds the reason for this is this is the same range (as long as your doing the reps right) as the type 2a and type 2b fibers get stimulated best (8-15 rep range) and if you vary your sets between 30 and 70 seconds throughout your workout you will end up stimulating the most optimal hypertrophy possible.In both of these fibers.
The reasons why this is true is that in a lower second or set range (ie5-15 seconds/2-5reps) your mucles would fail due to a rapid failing of ATP shortage and this rapid shortage of energy just does not allow enough time for your muscles to be stimulated enough to grow.Essentaially the total time that your muscles are required to produce force is shorter in low rep sets than it is in higher rep sets. Simply put a hard set that lasts between 30-70 seconds (8-15 reps) delivers more growth stimulates to the muscle cells than a hard set that lasts below this because in a lower rep (time) scale yopur muscles will fail due to reasons other than muscle fiber fatigue and before a significant growth stimulates has been achieved. This should give you a clearer understanding of why bodybuilders lift in a higer rep range than powerlifters.

Originally Posted by cfs3

Sounds logical. Could you point me to a good online document that expounds on this?

Thanks.

Originally Posted by Duncans Donuts

I'm George W. Bush, and I agree with this message