Risks of Instinctive Training
|
1,
2
The Risks of Instinctive Training
By Bryan Haycock
http://www.hypertrophy-specific.com
There are few things more manly than lifting weights. Possible exceptions
might include living off the land with nothing but a bowie knife. Or perhaps
being a warrior or some sort. I think one prominent politician we have today put
it something like this; he said that the best things in life were, "To crush
your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the
women!"
Now, aside from crushing your enemies and hunting grizzly with a knife, we
have lifting weights. It is one of the most accessible ways to increase your
manliness. Anybody can do it and at least look as if they are acting manly.
Unfortunately, there comes along with the assumption that lifting weights makes
you manly, that if you are a man, you instinctively know how to lift weights.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The notion of "instinctive training" comes from bodybuilding magazines that
have run out of made-up routines to publish. Once you have promoted every
possible workout ever to enter into the frenzied minds of the editors, you have
nothing left but to promote make-it-up-as-you-go, or "instinctive training".
This is the ultimate one size fits all poorly workout.
Instinctive training dictates that you simply do what you feel like
doing each time you go into the gym. If your so-called instincts tell you to do
curls while that cute girl from the aerobics class is looking, the by all means
listen to those instincts and start curling something! Just remember to keep
your arms squashed into your rib cage. It will make your arms look bigger from
the side. On the other hand, if its leg day and your instincts tell you that you
don’t feel like doing squats today, you can always do curls instead.
Heck, you can never do too many curls right?
On a more serious note, if you really believe you are training instinctively,
and you finish your scheduled work load for that day but your feelings
tell you that you will never be as big as "Big Ronnie" if you leave the gym
without sacrificing every ounce of energy and might you have within your 195 lb
frame to the gods of bodybuilding, then you better get back in there and do
three or four more sets or exercises or something until you know without a doubt
that you couldn’t lift another weight if your life depended on it. Just be sure
NOT to keep a training journal. If you do, you are likely to experience the
disheartening realization that you were this same size last year and have not
received any massive endowment for your daily gut wrenching sacrifices.
Let me make this clear, my fellow bodybuilders, there is no bodybuilding
instinct. There is no weight training instinct, and there is no instinct that
tells a person what he or she must do on any given day to produce the fastest
gains in muscle mass. From the dictionary we read that an instinct is "a largely
inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and
specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason."(italics
added) "Instincts are actions that are mediated by reactions below the
conscious level". (italics added) Clearly, we do not find ourselves in a gym
lifting weights without having had a conscious thought about it or having
reasoned it out in some manner. So clearly lifting weights and the decisions
about what, when and how to do it is not instinctual.
More often than not, fatigue is misinterpreted as some instinctual signal of
what the body requires to make muscle grow. I don’t think I need to explain why
fatigue is not an instinct. However, a brief explanation about why fatigue is
not an accurate indicator of muscle growth might be in order.
Fatigue, outside of temporary metabolic pathways, is largely a neurological
phenomenon. It originates in the nervous system itself and is thus an indicator
of the current state of the nervous system. The nervous system has a predictable
curve of fatigue and recuperation that occurs with or without muscle growth (see
figure 1). (1) If you exhaust yourself during a workout, and then try to repeat
it too soon, you will have the feeling that you are too tired to do as much as
you did last time. This is not instinct; it is a normal reaction to fatigue.
Figure 1 (Adapted from Busso et al 2002)
Next page |
Should you train when your
muscles are still sore?
1,
2
© Copyright 2005 Applied Lifescience Research Industries, Inc. (ALRI) and/or its content providers.
All rights reserved. No duplication or reproduction of CORE is allowed in
any form without explicit written permission from ALRI. The views
expressed are those of the individual author(s) and are not necessarily
shared by the editors of CORE. The service does not provide specific
medical advice, and is not engaged in providing medical or professional
services. This information is not intended to be a substitute for
professional medical advice. You should not use this information to
diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a
qualified healthcare provider. The articles contained in CORE are for
informational purposes only and CORE (i.e. the editors and publishers)
accept no responsibility for how the contents are used. Products and
companies referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective companies or mark holders. These statements have not been
evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or
prevent any disease.
