Ask an Exercise Science major anything

[NerdyLady]

Do my forearms ache because my grip is too small for the heavier dumbbells?

Oh wait, this thread is 2000 years old. Pfft.

[accountmade]

Hello i'm new to fitness in general, I was wondering if working out like this be okay so I don't injure myself with overuse or anything.

Monday Chest
Tuesday Back
Wednesday Legs
Thursday Arms
Friday Shoulders
Saturday + Sunday rest

Thank you for any help it is really appreciated

[y0lked]

I’ve heard of these newbie gains where once someone new to the gym starts exercising they have a period where they can put on a lot of muscle mass. Unfortunately I exercised for about 1 year confined to a room in my house with very limited equipment. Also I wasn’t eating a lost so I was still mostly losing weight. As of three weeks ago I’m starting to exercise on a plan and hopefully eat more calories but I’m wondering if I lost the opportunity to get those gains because I pretty much spent a year doing the same old exercises and gained little if any muscle.

No you have not. The reason why newbies gain soo quickly is because they are further away from their genetic limitation. There are specific structures in the muscle that limit the amount of muscle that the body is willing to maintain. Everyones set point is different and determined by genetics.

Lets say that max number is a 10. If you have never worked out before, you might start at a 3. After a year you might get to a 6. But lets say you didnt exercise properly and didnt diet. Maybe you only progressed from 3 to 3.5?

This is a logical and simplistic view at best, but still applicable.

Go train hard and eat well.

[y0lked]

I am wondering what exercises can you do to develop speed in your arm, wrist, and finger movements? When I say speed I mean how quickly you can move them with control.

Speed is conducted with fast twitch muscle fibers. Fast twitch muscle fibers can be trained, and developed, with heavy strength training. Idealy we would like to use 3-5 reps per set and approach our failure point.

Do my forearms ache because my grip is too small for the heavier dumbbells?

Oh wait, this thread is 2000 years old. Pfft.

Yeah probably, most women have a hard time gripping and controlling heavier weight because of the limitations in the hands. Train them

[y0lked]

Hello i'm new to fitness in general, I was wondering if working out like this be okay so I don't injure myself with overuse or anything.

Monday Chest
Tuesday Back
Wednesday Legs
Thursday Arms
Friday Shoulders
Saturday + Sunday rest

Thank you for any help it is really appreciated

I have no idea if youre doing 2 sets of 200 sets on those days. In order to accurately design/evaluate a workout plan, there are about 30 different metrics that need to be tested to see if the load is adequate and the periodization is structured correctly.

I highly recommend following a workout routine that is designed by a certified strength and conditioning coach.

[Xpiro]

This is kinda detailed so bear with me:

I’ve been floating around the same weight for 2-3 years, but I’ve made some pretty awesome gains in LBM; strength not incredibly much, mostly due to injuries and high volume probably. Body fat is down, vascularity is up... I look great and don’t have crazy much more fat to lose/muscle to gain to be satisfied. But I want to keep improving, obviously, and I’m more concerned with hypertrophy. And strength, only insofar as it leads to hypertrophy. And deadlifts... I want a strong (controlled) deadlift. Just because I love them.

Needless to say I made the recomp thing work, somehow, but my progress as of late is trying to come to a screeching halt. My bench was progressing linearly up until a couple months ago, OHP more slowly but still on the rise; squats and DLs I’ve had to take breaks from due to tissue degeneration in my low back and chronic back pain and hamstring tightness. So I’ve been back and forth with the weight, subbing in front squats and trap bar deadlifts (the latter of which I’ve made incredible progress on) when possible. As for rows, pulldowns, incline db press and other isolations... most of them I’m stuck on. I’ve reset the weight on several, but still struggle more than usual to add reps every session.

For the majority of my recomp I ate at maintenance most days, occasionally eating more on rest days and less on training days. Back in June however I switched to a training day surplus of about 200 cals and a rest day deficit of 200, and it was going pretty well for a while. I even increased my base maintenance as I got leaner.

I hadn’t stepped on the scale for a while until recently because I’d been the same weight for years and just trusted that everything was going fine, but last week I weighed in and was 5 lbs less than I have been for those 3 years. I can’t really tell at this point if I lost muscle or fat or both, but I’m concerned that it’s muscle at worst and both at best.

My gym routine: I’ve been on Viking’s Bare Bones upper/lower for a year now. If you haven’t seen the layout the volume is pretty crazy high, possibly the culprit behind some of the injuries I’ve sustained...but also the culprit behind the stellar body I’ve built over the last year. I’ve deloaded only a few times + one week off in September throughout this program, but I’ve never benefitted from deloads or weeks off in all 4 and a half years of training... so I don’t really take them that often. When I stall, I stall, and resetting the weight by 10% hasn’t helped me much either. The only reason I started progressing linearly so late in my journey is because last December I transitioned from female to male and started administering (doctor prescribed and supervised) testosterone weekly; I broke through all of my plateaus and added 40 lbs to my bench up to 172.5 lbs. Not anything crazy, but considering I was 4 years into training, 5’2” 140 lbs, working with 4 sets of 8 at 80% and eating at maintenance, it’s not too shabby.

But I’m stuck again, just like I was before my transition. The week off in September did nothing for me.

I sleep 7.5-8 hours every night. My maintenance is 3050 calories; macros look on average like 180-250g protein, 300-400g carbs 60-100g fat. Give or take of course.
I’m wondering...

Should I increase my training day surplus?

Should I switch to a lower volume program since my recovery is so compromised eating at maintenance?

Should I deload for a longer period of time, say 2 weeks? (Please no, cries)

I’ve also considered switching up the rate at which I overload. The progression outlined in the program is loose and self directed, so I get to choose the amount of weight (2.5lbs for upper lifts and 5 for lower) and the # of reps to add when I hit the prescribed rep goal. I don’t think that it would make much sense to micro-load any further, but what if I shoot for super low reps when I up the weight? Or would volume at this point be too low and counterproductive?

Thanks for taking the time to read.

[NerdyLady]

Speed is conducted with fast twitch muscle fibers. Fast twitch muscle fibers can be trained, and developed, with heavy strength training. Idealy we would like to use 3-5 reps per set and approach our failure point.


Yeah probably, most women have a hard time gripping and controlling heavier weight because of the limitations in the hands. Train them

I received the straps I ordered yesterday. Going to use them (or try) this evening. The grip thing only happens with the heaviest neoprene dumbbells but not with the metal ones (with which I use Gripz because the bars are so small). I've been using my TENS machine after, using a percussion type setting, and that is helping. It is hard to train hands to hang onto a heavy dumbbell where your fingers don't reach all the way around.

[y0lked]

This is kinda detailed so bear with me:

I’ve been floating around the same weight for 2-3 years, but I’ve made some pretty awesome gains in LBM; strength not incredibly much, mostly due to injuries and high volume probably. Body fat is down, vascularity is up... I look great and don’t have crazy much more fat to lose/muscle to gain to be satisfied. But I want to keep improving, obviously, and I’m more concerned with hypertrophy. And strength, only insofar as it leads to hypertrophy. And deadlifts... I want a strong (controlled) deadlift. Just because I love them.

Needless to say I made the recomp thing work, somehow, but my progress as of late is trying to come to a screeching halt. My bench was progressing linearly up until a couple months ago, OHP more slowly but still on the rise; squats and DLs I’ve had to take breaks from due to tissue degeneration in my low back and chronic back pain and hamstring tightness. So I’ve been back and forth with the weight, subbing in front squats and trap bar deadlifts (the latter of which I’ve made incredible progress on) when possible. As for rows, pulldowns, incline db press and other isolations... most of them I’m stuck on. I’ve reset the weight on several, but still struggle more than usual to add reps every session.

For the majority of my recomp I ate at maintenance most days, occasionally eating more on rest days and less on training days. Back in June however I switched to a training day surplus of about 200 cals and a rest day deficit of 200, and it was going pretty well for a while. I even increased my base maintenance as I got leaner.

I hadn’t stepped on the scale for a while until recently because I’d been the same weight for years and just trusted that everything was going fine, but last week I weighed in and was 5 lbs less than I have been for those 3 years. I can’t really tell at this point if I lost muscle or fat or both, but I’m concerned that it’s muscle at worst and both at best.

My gym routine: I’ve been on Viking’s Bare Bones upper/lower for a year now. If you haven’t seen the layout the volume is pretty crazy high, possibly the culprit behind some of the injuries I’ve sustained...but also the culprit behind the stellar body I’ve built over the last year. I’ve deloaded only a few times + one week off in September throughout this program, but I’ve never benefitted from deloads or weeks off in all 4 and a half years of training... so I don’t really take them that often. When I stall, I stall, and resetting the weight by 10% hasn’t helped me much either. The only reason I started progressing linearly so late in my journey is because last December I transitioned from female to male and started administering (doctor prescribed and supervised) testosterone weekly; I broke through all of my plateaus and added 40 lbs to my bench up to 172.5 lbs. Not anything crazy, but considering I was 4 years into training, 5’2” 140 lbs, working with 4 sets of 8 at 80% and eating at maintenance, it’s not too shabby.

But I’m stuck again, just like I was before my transition. The week off in September did nothing for me.

I sleep 7.5-8 hours every night. My maintenance is 3050 calories; macros look on average like 180-250g protein, 300-400g carbs 60-100g fat. Give or take of course.
I’m wondering...

Should I increase my training day surplus?

Should I switch to a lower volume program since my recovery is so compromised eating at maintenance?

Should I deload for a longer period of time, say 2 weeks? (Please no, cries)

I’ve also considered switching up the rate at which I overload. The progression outlined in the program is loose and self directed, so I get to choose the amount of weight (2.5lbs for upper lifts and 5 for lower) and the # of reps to add when I hit the prescribed rep goal. I don’t think that it would make much sense to micro-load any further, but what if I shoot for super low reps when I up the weight? Or would volume at this point be too low and counterproductive?

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Thanks for taking the time to type this out. I like getting all of the info up front and you did a good job illustrating your situation.

In weightlifting we have soo many variables. We can take metric from all of these variables and compile areas of concern and areas of satisfaction. For example; Sleeping 7.5 hours a night, or more, is a number that we can say is ideal. Therefore we don't need to address it.

For most every other metric, its not as easy. Your endocrine system, for example, is difficult to analyze unless we do a blood panel. Metabolism is also difficult to measure without subjecting you to tests and food logs.

I bring these points up so that this idea can be solidified with you, and anyone else reading. According to the scientific method we must only change one variable in a study in order to accurately observe the effects.

My opinion is that you are plateauing because of your training program (or lack of periodization). This would be the first place I would seek for improvement. When people say that deload weeks dont do anything for them its either because they are taking too much or too little of a "de-LOAD" or that their time spent IN THE GYM is not as intense as they think it is, and the body is recovering fine. Since your goal is hypertrophy, and deadlifts lol, then I would begin to use a daily undulating periodization workout plan. There are tons out there, find one that you would most enjoy and GO. Before day 1 I want you to do these tests for me so we can track your progress and see if we are making improvement:

1) Get a tape measure (flexible one that tailors use), and take measurements of your arms, legs, chest, shoulders, hips and waist. If you want to earn the extra-credit get a body-fat caliper and youtube that process as well to get a nice calculation.

2) Test your 5 rep max in Bench, squat, deadlift and OHP

3) Load up a barbell of your 5 rep max bench press and do one set of a static hold for as long as possible and record the time.

We will use this data later to see how well things are going. Lastly, keep doing everything exactly the same that you have been the last year or so and we will re-evaluate in 8 weeks.

[y0lked]

I received the straps I ordered yesterday. Going to use them (or try) this evening. The grip thing only happens with the heaviest neoprene dumbbells but not with the metal ones (with which I use Gripz because the bars are so small). I've been using my TENS machine after, using a percussion type setting, and that is helping. It is hard to train hands to hang onto a heavy dumbbell where your fingers don't reach all the way around.

Great, just dont rely on it. Make sure you're training those grip strength muscles

[Xpiro]

Thanks for taking the time to type this out. I like getting all of the info up front and you did a good job illustrating your situation.

In weightlifting we have soo many variables. We can take metric from all of these variables and compile areas of concern and areas of satisfaction. For example; Sleeping 7.5 hours a night, or more, is a number that we can say is ideal. Therefore we don't need to address it.

For most every other metric, its not as easy. Your endocrine system, for example, is difficult to analyze unless we do a blood panel. Metabolism is also difficult to measure without subjecting you to tests and food logs.

I bring these points up so that this idea can be solidified with you, and anyone else reading. According to the scientific method we must only change one variable in a study in order to accurately observe the effects.

My opinion is that you are plateauing because of your training program (or lack of periodization). This would be the first place I would seek for improvement. When people say that deload weeks dont do anything for them its either because they are taking too much or too little of a "de-LOAD" or that their time spent IN THE GYM is not as intense as they think it is, and the body is recovering fine. Since your goal is hypertrophy, and deadlifts lol, then I would begin to use a daily undulating periodization workout plan. There are tons out there, find one that you would most enjoy and GO. Before day 1 I want you to do these tests for me so we can track your progress and see if we are making improvement:

1) Get a tape measure (flexible one that tailors use), and take measurements of your arms, legs, chest, shoulders, hips and waist. If you want to earn the extra-credit get a body-fat caliper and youtube that process as well to get a nice calculation.

2) Test your 5 rep max in Bench, squat, deadlift and OHP

3) Load up a barbell of your 5 rep max bench press and do one set of a static hold for as long as possible and record the time.

We will use this data later to see how well things are going. Lastly, keep doing everything exactly the same that you have been the last year or so and we will re-evaluate in 8 weeks.

Thanks man, just a few things:

Looking into periodization, it seems like hypertrophy training comprises only 1 mesocyclone while the rest are strength, power, and recovery focused or something similar. How can I maintain the mass I’ve built if I’m training with low volume? Will my TDEE decrease as well?

I’m not actually able to find any pre-established programs for this method, just various articles outlining the organization of it. I wouldn’t know which lifts to choose to maintain a balanced physique (push/pull ratio, variations, horizontal vertical etc.) as I’ve always relied on the program to draw that out for me. Do you have any resources on this? Or could I just use my current program and switch up the intensity/volume to suit the new plan?

Lastly... does a deadlift max necessitate I focus only on the pull and not the eccentric? I don’t think I’ve seen a single person at my gym pull heavy without dropping the thing.

Edit: I found the “pendulum” model in which micro cycles are rapidly cycled through and then reversed (I.e. week one 12-15 reps, week two 6-8, week three 3-5, week four 6-8 etc etc) which in theory should be a better option for LBM maintenance, no?

[player002]

Hi i don't have a question just wanted to share my feelings I just have started working out this week I really feel very nice about myself . Working out really helps in relieving stress.
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[Xpiro]

Hey btw—don’t remember on which page you said this but you were like “whichever workout has higher total volume was the better one,” but... say I perform 195lbs 4x6, decide I jumped the gun on the poundages and couldn’t progress any further without sacrificing form, so I reset to 175 and get 4x8... the latter is higher in total volume, but does this mean I’m damaging the muscle and provoking hypertrophy more effectively than 195 at 6s?

Edit: ah first page lol. What gets me is that something like 140x15 (upper limit of what some ppl claim is the “hypertrophy range”) carries more volume than195x6, yet I can’t imagine the former would be damaging enough to be more useful than the latter. Am I overblowing it? Say... the closer two intensities and set/rep schemes are to one another the more neural connections are retained (if I reset) and the more it evens out if that makes sense? And I’m referring specifically to hypertrophy, strength itself being secondary.

[LisaAlix]

which type of exercise?

[henryalb]

Ask away. This thread will be nice for any basic or advanced questions as well as help me develop my knowledge and proficiency in my field.

background in:
biomechanics
kinesiology
exercise physiology
athletic injuries
all kinds of workout programming as well as advanced courses in nutrition

go!

edit: also, anything I feel is interesting i might throw in this thread.

I can’t get my abs to feel anything during my workouts, and I usually have lower back and groin pain. Any fixes?

[LisaAlix]

You are right saying but you check this car transport in this topic too much programming how to develop car software.

[Xpiro]

You are right saying but you check this car transport in this topic too much programming how to develop car software.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?