Common wisdom has it that once a muscle was exercised intensely
using resistance training, it should not be exercised again until
it has completely recovered. This is considered especially true
when a muscle was exercised to failure for several sets, or when
eccentric movements were used for added intensity. What I am about
to suggest in this article goes against this commonly held dogma.
I suggest that advanced trainers only use, on an
occasional, infrequent basis, a technique whereby they will
exercise relatively small muscles, such as the biceps or triceps,
twice a day, both times in an intense manner. I call this
technique a "twist" double-split. It takes advantage of the fact
that muscles partially recover after a few hours even when worked
very heavily, as is the case with advanced training. This
technique has worked very effectively for me, where I have reached
plateaus in the training of these muscles. In this article I will
attempt to explain its raison d’etre and explore its
mechanisms of action.
Introduction
Let us first consider the three major subjective symptoms of
muscle damage related to exercise. The first is soreness occurring
during an exercise and a few minutes to a few hours later. The
second is a decrease in the ability of the muscle to perform work,
or more simply a decrease in the power it can exert. The
micro-trauma endured by the muscle fibers makes them temporarily
weaker, and this would explain the decrease in muscle strength.
The third is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS, which is a
soreness which appears a day or two after the exercise.
Evaluating again the first and second symptoms, what if several
hours after a workout, you feel only slight to moderate soreness,
and more importantly, what if you can handle nearly the same
weight for several more sets? This would seem to indicate that
either the muscle had not endured enough damage to significantly
affect its strength, or that it has recovered to a considerable
degree, or both! Since I often experienced this lack of
muscle fatigue symptoms after working relatively small muscles
like the biceps and the triceps, I decided to use a double-split
with a twist: traditionally one does not work the same muscle
during the two sessions comprising the daily double-split; I
decided I will work only the same muscle during both
sessions.
Caveats, Warnings and Contraindications
The most important issue here is that you should work only a
single muscle during both sessions. This pretty much precludes a
regular split routine the day you intend to employ this technique.
The reason is that this is an extremely taxing routine and to
achieve maximal effect you would not want to hinder the ability of
the target muscle to perform heavy exercise again during the
second session. Performing a regular first session, say in the
morning, where you will exercise several muscle groups, can
dramatically decrease your ability to intensely exercise one of
the muscles you have worked in that session. Overtraining could
result also.
The second issue, and this is of paramount importance, is that
you should not work your muscle in the second session if
you feel considerable soreness or you cannot use a weight almost
as heavy as the one you have used in the first session. Remember,
these are signs of muscle damage that has not been repaired yet,
and true to conventional wisdom, the muscle is not ready
for another workout yet.
Another issue is that, as noted above, this technique should
only be used by advanced trainers. Beginners and intermediate
trainers could suffer acute, local overtraining symptoms such as
acute muscle soreness in both its short-term and DOMS forms, or
worse yet, muscle cramps. So make sure you have exhausted (pun
intended) your options of effectively exhausting the muscle during
a single session, using working to failure, forced reps, and
eccentric motions (negatives) before attempting the "twist"
double-split.
I have not used this method for larger muscles such as quads,
lats or pecs; I can not emphatically determine that it cannot (or
should not) be used for them. But I do advise you are extremely
cautious with experimentation of this kind.
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