One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
[/quote]
Um, yeah, sure, sounds pretty good and scientific. Preserve homeostasis yeah. 
D
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
[/quote]
OK, I can buy this. However, wouldn’t the body begin to adapt to the new stimulus and ‘move’ the regulatory level? Basically, wouldn’t they perceive to be tired at a later time?
This would then allow a person to make gains, granted, rather slowly.
[quote]Dedicated wrote:
SkyzykS wrote:
One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
Um, yeah, sure, sounds pretty good and scientific. Preserve homeostasis yeah.
D [/quote]
Good point. So lets try to lend it some application.
When is a person most likely to skip stability or prehab drills?
When they have already finished their main workout.
Why? Cause they’re tired and don’t want to screw around with the girly weights and stupid movements.
So, some trainers will put stability and prehab at the beginning of a workout, citing priority, but others will throw the prehab in at the end, because the main workout is their focal point.
But there seem to be a lot of people who fall short on their (joint) stability drills or prehab work.
Remedy- You do the stability, then warm up, then the work sets.
It’s a lot of fun to hit the weight room and blast off into a heavy lifting session, but it’s fools gold if you are setting yourself up for an impending lay off due to injury.
This stuff may seem redundant, but I look at it as more of an exercise in the discrete factors of “why” than some of the more obvious factors of “How”.
I read the beginning of this thread but got lost around the time the vroom-fool debate got heated. So admittedly I may have missed something.
But a few thoughts-
By definition, pain has two components: physiological and emotional. So two people will not necessarily feel equal amounts of pain given the same pain stimulus.
Pain is typically measured with ratio-type scale; in my lab we use a 0-10 scale with verbal anchors such as “very faint pain” or “somewhat strong pain.” We are measuring the psychological component of the pain experience. The endopint on the scale is “the worst pain you can imagaine,” which is likely quite different among people.
Caffeiene has, in fact, been shown to limit muscle pain. Muslce pain is likely caused by mechanical force placed on nociceptors in the muscle, and it is thought that caffeine has some effect on this mechanism.
Exertion is a different construct than pain. It is typically measured with Borg’s Rate of Perceived Exertion scale, which has values ranging from 6 to 20, again with verbal anchors. The “perceived” part of the name should indicate that this is, again, a psychological construct.
Note that the caffeine effects have been found with relation to muscle pain rather than RPE. IMO, separating pain from exertion inside one’s mind is a difficult task to do, so caffeiene may help some while lifting but not others.
Both pain and exertion have some psychological components, making the separation of the the physiological and psychological components difficult at best. This sounds to me like what vroom and fool might be arguing about (or at least how the argument started). If that is the case, I would have to say they are both correct- adaptation to both components are necessary to “go hard” while training.
A few studies have been done on psychological mechanisms for pain reduction during exercise, but no great conclusions have been drawn yet. One of my labmates is working on another study to examine these effects, the results of which should be pretty cool.
Hopefully this will contribute something useful to this discussion.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Dedicated wrote:
SkyzykS wrote:
One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
Um, yeah, sure, sounds pretty good and scientific. Preserve homeostasis yeah.
D
Good point. So lets try to lend it some application.
When is a person most likely to skip stability or prehab drills?
When they have already finished their main workout.
Why? Cause they’re tired and don’t want to screw around with the girly weights and stupid movements.
So, some trainers will put stability and prehab at the beginning of a workout, citing priority, but others will throw the prehab in at the end, because the main workout is their focal point.
But there seem to be a lot of people who fall short on their (joint) stability drills or prehab work.
Remedy- You do the stability, then warm up, then the work sets.
It’s a lot of fun to hit the weight room and blast off into a heavy lifting session, but it’s fools gold if you are setting yourself up for an impending lay off due to injury.
This stuff may seem redundant, but I look at it as more of an exercise in the discrete factors of “why” than some of the more obvious factors of “How”.
[/quote]
On a serious note all of our bodies strive to maintain homeostasis it isn’t natural even for the most genetically gifted to add unnatural amounts of lean mass to their frame.
As far as your selection of exercise and order of them. Whatever one chooses is hopefully going to be most beneficial to them and will be learned as we all know through trial and error. But, again it boils down to the individual and their distinct set of strengths and weakness whether it’s genetic, mental, pain threshold, or other.
One thing I think is important is to look to people who have accomplished this and their advice. I would rather follow the advice of X or Go Heavy individuals who have put in the time and made the gains then those that are striving, but still haven’t broken out of the middle ranks, but theorize on how to do so. That is just my opinion and I will now exit this thread.
D
[quote]Arioch wrote:
SkyzykS wrote:
One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
OK, I can buy this. However, wouldn’t the body begin to adapt to the new stimulus and ‘move’ the regulatory level? Basically, wouldn’t they perceive to be tired at a later time?
This would then allow a person to make gains, granted, rather slowly. [/quote]
Right. But what is a hard gainers complaint? “I’ve only gained five lbs. in five years.”. Or an intermediate lifter that keeps a plateau?- “I don’t have time for all of those girly exercises.”.
So it seems kind of tricky to bypass fatigue when it is being regulated by the perception of the work load. If exertion is being regulated by the brain according to the load, one would have to find a way to trick the brain.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Arioch wrote:
SkyzykS wrote:
One of the more important statements of that study is that the feedback and regulatory mechanisms are in place to preserve homeostasis.
That would explain a lot as far as the old story of “I’ve been busting my ass and not making any gains” story goes.
People that say this aren’t lying. They are busting their ass- according to their brain. And they aren’t making any gains, because their perception of exhaustion is to preserve homeostasis, not make gains.
Sound correct?
OK, I can buy this. However, wouldn’t the body begin to adapt to the new stimulus and ‘move’ the regulatory level? Basically, wouldn’t they perceive to be tired at a later time?
This would then allow a person to make gains, granted, rather slowly.
Right. But what is a hard gainers complaint? “I’ve only gained five lbs. in five years.”. Or an intermediate lifter that keeps a plateau?- “I don’t have time for all of those girly exercises.”.
So it seems kind of tricky to bypass fatigue when it is being regulated by the perception of the work load. If exertion is being regulated by the brain according to the load, one would have to find a way to trick the brain.
[/quote]
EDIT: Something screwy happened with my original comment.
I agree with this. However, how does one trick the mind? Drop sets, forced reps, intense negatives are all for over fatiguing the muscles. This is still relative. Your mind will still think that the muscles are done at its perceived threshold.
Just some general thoughts, which could serve to be fuel for consideration…
A beginner has relatively untrained muscles which are easily damaged and are then forced to repair and upgrade quite easily.
Moving from beginner to intermediate, you have muscles which are used to regular exertion. It would presumably become more difficult to stress them enough to force continuing gains.
[On a side note, after beginner work the subject should eventually have overall advancement, somewhat balanced development and soft tissue adaptations which make it safer to do more intense work… we’re in it for the long haul]
A question arises as to whether there is a static intensity threshold in general, for causing desired muscle adaptations, once the beginner stage is passed. If so, “tricking” the inhibitory systems would allow one to progress to natural limits fairly easily… assuming proper nutrition and recovery of course.
I’m certainly okay with the fact that many people feel that trainees just have to learn to push hard enough, work hard enough, to get appropriate stimulation and development. Of course, voice your opinion, but leave out the personal beration of those that want to consider the topic.
Anyway, to be sure, my conjecture is that there are possibly different physiological systems that hold some people back. If you feel that people just have to bull it out, then sure, all these people are merely pussies.
That may be, but I’m not convinced of it at this point. I can see how strongly and negatively some people react to the idea that there might be a legitimate factor involved that trainees need to find a way to overcome… and that itself is interesting!
[quote]Go heavy fool wrote:
vroom wrote:
I still get the feeling that were dealing with the “macho” mindset that those that can’t do as others do simply lack fortitude. Yes, sometimes, but not all the time.
That’s it vroom. You’re a smart guy, don’t try to talk yourself out of it. Just go with it. That’s all you can do. Just like death, you’re going to die no matter what… just go with it. Don’t try to out-think it. You have to out-perform it.
I got one more good one to leave you. This is from someone with the I.Q. of a bowling ball but he knew one very important thing.
MIKE TYSON - When asked why he forced himself to get up so earlier than everyone else to train and run… he said because nobody else was doing it. Again, the mindset of a champion. If you noticed the difference in how bad his carreer ended compared to how it started… you would realize for Mike it was all mental. His trainer Gus had his mindset right. Something Mike lost when Gus died(literally). To go above and beyond what you really don’t want to do. Everytime.
[/quote]
I thought that was Daley Thompson. Could’ve been both of them
Hey chill everyone, this isn’t a fundamental disagreement. From another thread, which is going currently, i saw a comment which i thought was relevant. In my experience, going TOO hard can cause injuries.
[quote]1) Waterbury specifically mentions that going to failure on every set sets you up for injury, since that last rep will cause you to shake, bounce, or twist in painful and unnatural ways. He also claims there are studies which show no advantage to going to failure as opposed to “leaving one in the hole.” You’ll have to search his articles, but I’m sure he mentioned something along those lines.
Damn you Vroom, I read your post and had to respond. I think the sting of strong reaction comes from at least from me (I like to keep things simple) in what I see as trying to rationalize a weakness. I learned when I started lifting from reading mostly and then applying the information that it takes strong effort on hard movements, squat, deadlift, presses, gradual increases in weight, and the corresponding nutrition and rest. It took a good ten years of this to really see substantial gains.
When some of us read these intricate theories on why some guys aren’t making gains it seems like an effort to make obstacles we all face to be really complicated and scientific in an effort to justify them as true barriers impeding progress.
Not everyone is going to be Mr. Universe, but to echo what has been said many times before everyone can hit their best physique and make gains with the right effort.
A few of the guys in our workout group at this time started out nine months ago as newbies using the fifteen and twenty pound dumbbells for presses. With the consistency of workouts and bringing the intensity each week they have made awesome progress in strength and muscle. I know “newbie” gains, but in addition to that these guys bring it when in the gym and give an intensity level in their workouts that is beyond high.
I myself, had fairly strong legs but a very weak upper body when I started weight training around ten or so years ago. With the right intensity bringing it to the workout after good warmups of course, I have made gains light years from where I started and have never suffered a serious exercise halting injury.
D
[quote]Dedicated wrote:
Damn you Vroom, I read your post and had to respond.[/quote]
Woot! 
I really do understand. I also despise the pussies of the gym who do nothing and complain they make no progress. I know how it works.
I’ve been fighting tooth and claw for gains somewhere between three and four years now. This may speak poorly for my gym, but I’m clawing my way up the food chain.
See, and this might be just as unholy, but considering a topic like this might just unlock better or more overall gains for some of these folks we all think are just genetically constrained.
I’m not really one for genetic limits other than a few. For example, total test levels are going to influence your mass equilibrium point or total amount of muscle you can carry an maintain, or so I think anyway.
[quote]A few of the guys in our workout group at this time started out nine months ago as newbies using the fifteen and twenty pound dumbbells for presses. With the consistency of workouts and bringing the intensity each week they have made awesome progress in strength and muscle. I know “newbie” gains, but in addition to that these guys bring it when in the gym and give an intensity level in their workouts that is beyond high.
[/quote]
Nothing I’m saying, or at least conjecturing about, because admittedly - what the heck do I know, is taking anything away from the hard work that thousands of us are doing worldwide. The fact that some people have great intensity and make great gains doesn’t really speak to whether or not this theory has any chance of applicability either.
[/quote]
Also, Danny, I saw your point, but it’s going to make me ramble on a little bit about a few things…
I think in this discussion we are sort of mashing the concepts of total work volume, max lifts and intensity. I think anyone can work hard and to fatigue just by using a weight that lets them push out enough reps.
I don’t have real numbers, but here is an example of what the caffeine may let someone do:
-caff: 5x5 @ 225 lbs
+caff: 5x5 @ 245 lbs
Same total sets and reps. Same approximate time. More work. Higher level of muscle stimulation. So, the theory is, some people might naturally, genetically, achieve higher levels of muscle stimulation.
Does that really sound so implausible, given that people are so variable in just about any other measured quality?
[quote]vroom wrote:
I think in this discussion we are sort of mashing the concepts of total work volume, max lifts and intensity.[/quote]
Even in scientific literature, it’s not uncommon to see pain, exertion, work, and other concepts mixed together, even though they’re different.
I’ve worked on several studies where paticipants are asked during exercise to give RPE and pain ratings. Even after detailed instructions, it’s often difficult for them to differentiate between the two. For example, they think that if RPE goes up, then pain must go up as well, which is not the case.
It might help people who are training with less intensity than they can to learn that pain does not equal intensity (exertion), and that working through pain may be necessary to make gains. And if caffeine and other pharmacological and psychological methods can help with this, they deserve attention.
[quote]vroom wrote:
-caff: 5x5 @ 225 lbs
+caff: 5x5 @ 245 lbs
Does that really sound so implausible, given that people are so variable in just about any other measured quality?[/quote]
Not at all! Unfortunately (IMO), most of the reserach being done on pain and exercise (my own lab included) focuses on quadriceps pain during cardio exercise- treadmill, cycle ergometer, etc. I think the concept of looking at pain threshold and tolerance with resistance exercise needs to be examined.
One thing to note- the dosages of caffeine used in lab settings to achieve reductions in muscle pain are often quite high, to the point that they may not be advisable for some people. I was in a study using around 4mg caffeine per kg of bodyweight, delivered in a capsule in the morning. The day I got the caffeine, I was still bouncing off the walls at 10pm! Maybe a smaller dose would work for resistance training, since the exercise stimulus isn’t persistent for 30+ minutes straight…
Interesting discussion. The idea that the body has innate safety mechanisms linked to pain and fatigue that could inhibit muscle building efforts and that the threshold for these mechanisms are variable and limited by each individuals genetics seems immediately acceptable to me.
I think that there is also a lot of truth to those saying that most people are probably not near their genetic limitations regarding training intensity and pain/fatigue thresholds and that they should emphasize the motivational component.
This is because most trainees have fairly balanced modern lifestyles that don’t focus on anywhwere near the genetic thresholds of pain and fatigue that most of our bodies possess.
After all our genetics are pretty much the same as our ancestors that actively fought and hunted for survival on a constant basis. Fear and the threat of death is probably one of the greatest motivaters to break through pain and intensity thresholds. I am sure most moderns lifters are deficient in this regard.
We all hear about incredible feats of strength and endurance when even average untrained individuals are faced with life or death situations. This suggests that whatever pain and intensity thresholds people may have, the possibilty of short circuiting them is there.
I think that some people like Go Heavy can use their disciplined mindset to effectively do this to certain degrees. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore other potentially easy and effective ways to do this.
Vrooms idea of exploring new ways to trick the body into new levels of intensity to reach higher levels of muscular development is excellent. I would like to hear more.