High Intensity Training Parable

In my experience there are two distinct types of post-weight training aftershock: direct muscle soreness (DMS) and deep muscle fatigue (DMF). Both are the result of training intensely enough to trigger muscle hypertrophy. High repetition training is the culprit for DMS: I have never experienced direct muscle soreness "sore to the touch" muscle trauma using low rep sets, even when using multiple sets. Direct muscle soreness is fiber trauma related to high repetition training. DMS is caused by performing high rep sets that equal or exceed capacity in some fashion. This type of training creates intense muscle soreness that is a result of cellular micro-trauma.

Are the cells torn apart or pressurized? Forcibly expanded? Forcibly contracted? Ripped or shredded? The medical people can't seem to agree, but one thing is for sure, some sort of micro-cellular calamity is occurring. Deep muscle fatigue, DMF, occurs when a particular muscle or muscle group is hit so hard using low reps and heavy poundage, that the entire body is engulfed in waves of fatigue. For days afterwards the afflicted athlete feels as if their limbs are made of lead or that they are moving through mud or water. Overcoming DMS and DMF requires sleep, food and avoidance of further weight training until the sore to the touch or leaden feeling subsides.

Sometimes the intensity of DMS/DMF becomes so severe that it debilitates the athlete. The muscles are traumatized to such an extent that the athlete actually experiences mild forms of paralysis. In both cases nutrients, rest and often therapeutic remedies such as heat, water and massage can accelerate recovery. Traumatized muscles and fatigued muscles need to heal, repair and regenerate before subjecting them to any further weight training.

Childhood Experience

The exhilaration on Monday went out the window Tuesday Morning when I awoke in intense pain. Something was terribly wrong. I sat up in bed with both fists involuntarily clenched next to my face My arms had locked up; each arm had frozen in the contracted position. The biceps would not, could not relax. Flex your biceps with you fist next to your cheek as hard as humanly possible as you read this: now imagine this extreme flexion lasting for two days. My trauma was so complete and intense that both biceps remained involuntarily contracted for 48 straight hours.

Any attempt to straighten my arms even a few inches resulted in excruciating pain. Nothing could be done for me and I tried to hide the fact that I had racked myself from my 80 year old grandma and my needlessly cruel brother and hillbilly cousins. That was easy as her eyesight was bad and she was kindly and not suspicious. My brother and cousins sniffed out my dilemma like a pack of wolves separating a young caribou from the herd for a kill. They used to occasion to pay me back for what they mistakenly perceived as the horrible things I, the oldest and strongest, did to them on a regularly reoccurring basis.

The easiest payback was to simply grab my hands and tug them downward. This sent spasms of intense pain shooting up my arms and spasms of glee across their satanic little faces. It was oppressed sibling payback time. The inmates had rioted and taken control of the prison camp capturing the commandant. They sincerely hoped my condition would last for the rest of my life.

My grandmother kept asking what my periodic screams were all about. My male pride kept me from saying anything and the gleeful torturers weren't about to fess up. On day three I awoke and the pain was gone. I lay in bed and plotted. I slipped away to the woods before anyone arose and set up an elaborate payback scheme. I pre-positioned garden tools I swiped from the shed. I returned and pretended to still be asleep and debilitated. I faked pain for the first couple times they pulled on my arms and pretended to run away to avoid them. I ran into the woods behind the farm. They ran after me like a lynch mob.

They were quite shocked when after getting out of earshot of the farm I ambushed them and beat them bloody. I stacked them up like cordwood and tied them up. While roped together at the ankles like a chain gang, I made them dig a shallow hole in the sandbank next to the creek with a shovel I'd stashed there earlier. I then buried them up to their necks.

Only their heads protruded above ground. I told them I was going to run over their heads with a lawnmower. They screamed like sissies when I fired up the mower. My tools of mayhem were pre-positioned and I took several close mower passes by their heads. I made them cry. One actually pissed his pants. They ran home bawling and sandy. I told my grandmother that they had ruined their clothes and soiled their britches. They told her outlandish tales of beatings and burial and lawn mowers that sounds so ridiculous that she dismissed them as lies.

I laughed as they got whippings. Good clean kid fun! 

Lesson Learned

I had to ride out my muscle soreness until my shattered biceps eventually relaxed. This taught me a lesson about resistance training that has lasted me a lifetime. I use milder versions of muscle soreness to determine if the exercise used is targeting and isolating the intended muscle in the way I want. Muscle soreness tells me two things: did I train intensely enough to generate soreness, and if so, is the soreness where it should be? I will often perform a single resistance exercise and wait and see if, when the muscle soreness arrives, it is centered on the targeted muscle. If I do barbell rows does the exercise generate soreness? If not, I am disappointed. Secondly, if there is soreness, is it located on the targeted lat muscles? Has the exercise totally missed the target muscle? Perhaps I feel the soreness in the traps or rear deltoids.

Before every set of every resistance exercise I identify the target muscle and strive to make a mind/muscle connection. Soreness is the targeting report card issued later. Soreness determines if the muscle targeting has been accurate. If I become sore in other than the target area, that means I need to change the technical execution of the exercise. If there is zero soreness then I know I need to train harder. I will tell myself that perhaps the mind/muscle connection was ill-defined, unrefined or not focused enough. The Iron Elite understand that soreness is a natural part of the resistance landscape. The modern "split routine" was born as a direct result of the soreness phenomena. With both types (soreness/deep fatigue) I have found that light to moderate cardio exercise helps to flush toxins and waste products out of afflicted muscles.

Accelerating circulation within a sore muscle stimulates recovery. If deep fatigue prevents me from blasting away, moderate intensity power walking super-oxygenates the body and, along with food, accelerates fatigues recovery. Use your common sense and be aware that Purposeful Primitives pay heed to fatigue and soreness. You can actually use it to your advantage.

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