Sunday, January 24, 2010

When To Change Your Program

You will know when to change the exercise when the muscles no longer get a pump. The pump is when the blood fills the muscle after it has been worked. When performing the same exercise over and over you no longer produce enough stimulation to cause excess amounts of blood to rush to the area. This is because the muscle fibers have learned the exercise and figured a way to lift the weight without having to recruit new fibers. The nervous system has been tuned up as well. The nervous cell synapse is more sensitive and secretes just enough acetylcholine and growth hormone to work the muscle. In order for greater stimulation and more muscle cell recruitment the exercise has to be changed. The new exercise will produce a challenge to the CNS causing an increase in growth hormone and nerve stimulation. The new stress will force the muscle to figure out a way to handle the workload. Blood will rush into the area to help with the metabolism and breakdown. This new exercise can last a few workouts until the CNS figures it out and then you will have to change it up again because you won't have a pump.

You have to decide when it is time to change up the exercise. If you still get a pump from the exercise then it is still worthy of doing. However, once you don't feel the pump and aren't getting anything from it chances are you have adapted. Body builders will call this "going stale."

I find that I need to change up my program every two weeks. You must constantly change up the methodic to get the muscles to get stimulated. If you have been doing the same program for a while I suggest that you change it up to give the muscles a new stimulation.

Tags: muscle, body building, vince gironda, health, nutrition, amino acids, strength, strength and conditioning, muscular development.

4 comments:

  1. Are there drawbacks to switching up the exercise each and every time you want to work a specific muscle? Another words, can I perform the neck press on Monday, incline dumbbell press on Wednesday, Gironda dips on Friday, and dumbbell flys on Saturday and get the same results as if I worked the chest with the neck press for two to three straight weeks?

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  2. You will have to experiment with the frequent changing. That is a shocking system that is usually geared for getting out of a rut. However, be careful that you don't follow the same format for weeks on end because that could cause adaptation. But you should be able to change it up enough to get stimulation for awhile.

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  4. Can someone translate what this says. I believe it in chinese???

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