On a lark I went to a free sample “Group Power” class at a local gym where I’m not a member. My impression is that most of the glasses are for girls, but this was described as barbell squats, lunges and presses. It sounded interesting so I went.
Well, the class was all women except for me and a 70-year-old guy. It was basically aerobics set to music using barbell weights rather than dancing.
The supplied weights were less that what I’m used to lifting at home, but instead of 5 reps and a rest, it was continues reps for the 5-6 munutes of the song. By 4-5 minutes of continious lifting, I was hurting, so I actually had to lighten up a little.
Now two days later, my arms, especially the triceps, are still sore. Maybe it’s because I don’t have tricep extensions in my current home routine.
So my questions are: What are the advantages/disadvantage of the lower-intensity/hi rep routine like this comapred to a 5 reps & rest routine?
Should I wait for the soreness to subside before resuming my routine at home? Or just go a little lighter on the tris?
Kinda funny the way you presented this. This is just an instance of you doing something you’re not used to. I wouldn’t worry about the soreness in this case if it was me.
If you want to do a little experiment on yourself, try some really light really high rep sets of anything and watch the doms pile up.
Do this often enough though and may start to convert some fast twitch fibers to slow twitch if the limited research to this point is to be believed.
If you want real soreness sign up for a step arobics class. You will have serious pain in muscles you didnt even know about. We had to do this in high school when the majority of the people in our weight training class were training like wussies. We all walked funny for several days, I think this was the most soreness I have ever had
It just goes to show SORENESS IS NOT AN INDICATOR OF PROGRESS! You have proven you can get rather sore with light weight. However if the weight isnt heavy enough it isnt going to provide stimulus for growth. Your body will adapt through other pathways to become better at endurance oriented activities.
This may be kind of difficult to describe, but very high rep induced soreness feels quite different to me than getting sore from very hard worked sets in the 6-12 rep range.
Heavy and low, if you will, doms feels deeper and duller. This leads me to suspect that the stimulus is of a different nature. I can’t be the only one who’s experienced this.
I don’t know what it is, but when I was doing lunges at home last night (with about twice the weight used in the lunges in class), I still felt some soreness in my left hamstring.
Training sessions like these, at a lower intensity than what you described, are great active recovery sessions. Do a couple sets of 12-20 reps of 6-8 exercises with light weight. However, for regular resistance training sessions, stick to the heavy stuff.