HST Principle "Don't train to Failure"

[thehamma]

In the past I have posted numerous posts on this topic, and after pondering what some have said on the forum regarding this issue, I have decided that more explanation is needed to satisfy my curiosity.
First, Why not train to failure? According to HST we terminate the set, a rep or two shy of this failure "boogeyman" to avoid fatigue of the CNS. We are instructed to stop when the speed of the reps begin to slow down as to not tax the CNS.
But what I don't understand is that isn't it your muscles that are causing the weight to ascend at a slower pace and fatigue and not the CNS?
Where are the studies or logic that show that it is the CNS that is failing and not muscular failure? Why is the last couple of reps of a set to "failure" more taxing to the CNS than doing more sets?

thanks
thehamma

 

[baby a]

Try doing full body workouts 3-6 times a week to failure and see how long you last. You will see things very clearly afterwards....

 

[Fausto]

Hamma

I am surprised at you asking this question, seems to me youneed to dig deeper into the HST principles and the reasoning behind them.

Here is something from the FAQ e-book:

Quote[/b] ]
HST incorporates ever increasing loads in order to stay ahead of the adaptive curve. This curve is set by the tissues level of conditioning at the time the load is applied. This is as much an art as a science. Because we can't do a biopsy of the muscles every time we train, we have to guess how much, how hard, and how often, based on the available research an the "feeling" of the tissue at the time.

Why use submax weights? Because using max weights eventually stops working, and simply increases the risk of injury. Why not just do as many reps as possible (A.K.A. train at “100% intensity”, or “train to failure”) for every increment/workout instead of changing it only every 2 weeks?

Because when using sufficient frequency to stimulate rapid hypertrophy, you tend to get CNS burn out.

Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to train at “100% intensity” to grow quickly. This is a very unpopular statement to experienced lifters who have prided themselves on torturous workouts. They take pride in their toughness and in their willingness to self inflict nauseating exhaustion workout after workout. I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS.

As long as it is not taught as the correct way to train for “growth”.

So why not train one maximal day only, then utilize "complete rest" thus preserving adaptive energies? There is no need to preserve "adaptive energies". This is a false notion. These adaptive energies are, in reality, the ability of the CNS to recover voluntary strength.

Early "thinkers" noticed the effect of stress on health and compared that to the effects of heavy resistance exercise on
strength and came to the conclusion that there was some pool of "adaptive energies" that was limited.

Use it all up and you can't recover. What they had not realized was that there are fundamental differences between mechanical loading and Selye's stress model. This caused them to confuse the limitations of the CNS with the resilience of muscle tissue.

Muscle tissue, as indicated earlier, has been shown to recover amidst continued loading. Take for example "synergistic ablation" studies. In these studies the gastrocnemius of an animal is cut so that the standing load is placed almost entirely on the soleus. In these studies the animal’s soleus is subject to a dramatic increase in load during every waking hour.

There is no "rest between sets or workouts" or any kind of sets or workouts for that matter. There is no time off to allow "adaptive energies" to do their magic. Nevertheless, the soleus will double in size and weight within days. The muscle literally grows and adapts to the new "environment" while
being continually loaded.

Now I'm not suggesting that people have this done to get their stubborn calves to grow, but it does illustrate an important point. Which is - the muscle can adapt while it is being loaded, or trained. The tissue does not necessarily need time off. The central nervous system, on the other hand, does need time off.

The amount of time off it needs depends on how much
"fatigue" was induced. Please try to avoid "forced reps". During the concentric phase push on the weight but make sure
it goes up "quickly". If you are doing an exercise that requires a partner, and he can no longer lift the weight up quickly, you're done.

Fatigue actually "decreases" the damage caused by eccentric reps. The fibers have to be actively contracting while lengthening in order to cause the "right" kind of microtrauma.

Hope this kind of settles the HST reasoning, besides the fact that babya is absolutely right, you can of course try and see for yourself.

IMO there is no better proof that the taste or feel of something you'd like to prove to yourself

or to others.

Unless....of course and we all may be just assuming here...you are on AAS, in which case your adaptive energy would be much much greater...at a cost...again IMO initially it'll cost dollars but later much later on it'll cost health, and that to me is not tradeable.

Note that these are very much my opinions and may not agree with your or many of the others

 

[Joe G]

I have a few problems with this thread:

First of all

Quote[/b] ]Try doing full body workouts 3-6 times a week to failure and see how long you last. You will see things very clearly afterwards....

Just because someone asks WHY something is true doesn't mean they dont believe it is true.

Secondly

Quote[/b] ]But what I don't understand is that isn't it your muscles that are causing the weight to ascend at a slower pace and fatigue and not the CNS?
Where are the studies or logic that show that it is the CNS that is failing and not muscular failure? Why is the last couple of reps of a set to "failure" more taxing to the CNS than doing more sets?

Fausto in that whole excerpt from the ebook which i have read many times this is the only sentence that actually relates to the hamma's question.

Quote[/b] ]Because when using sufficient frequency to stimulate rapid hypertrophy, you tend to get CNS burn out.

While I firmly believe this to be true because of personal experience with training to failure and not training to failure there still havent been any answers pertaining to "why" or the physiological reasoning behind it in this thread. This is simply a statement proclaiming it to be true.

The hamma,

When you ask

Quote[/b] ]But what I don't understand is that isn't it your muscles that are causing the weight to ascend at a slower pace and fatigue and not the CNS?

Yes, it is your muscles that are causing the weight to ascend slower because you are reaching the point of failure. However I believe going to muscular failure has a cause and effect on the CNS. As a result of going to muscular failure in turn the CNS gets burnt out easier.

I am also curious as to the science behind training to failure and why it burns out the CNS.

Joe G

 

[thehamma]

Sorry for the double post the page said it didn't go through.

thehamma

 

[thehamma]

First off, let me say that if there is any workout regimen in the world that I believe is most effective it is HST.  So, there is no reason for anyone to get excited or emotional about my post.  I am looking to solidify my understanding of the matter, and I have read the E-book and that passage and others regarding the CNS many times, but I do see some shady areas.
 

Quote[/b] ]Try doing full body workouts 3-6 times a week to failure and see how long you last.  You will see things very clearly afterwards....

I have tried that.  In fact I currently train HST style going to failure more than every two weeks and have great results.  But thats not the point.  
 Let me use myself for example:  My last HST workout I did 5 reps of 315lbs on the incline bench, to failure.  Now what I want to know is why is would be less stressful on my CNS to instead do 1 set of 315 for 3 or 4 reps, stop just short of failure, rest and then do another cluster set of 1 or 2 reps.  How do you know that you are preventing CNS fatigue in those last reps rather than muscular fatigue?
[/QUOTE]But what I don't understand is that isn't it your muscles that are causing the weight to ascend at a slower pace and fatigue and not the CNS?  
Where are the studies or logic that show that it is the CNS that is failing and not muscular failure?  Why is the last couple of reps of a set to "failure" more taxing to the CNS than doing more sets?

thanks
thehamma
PS Fausto: I'm not on any AAS.

 

[noobie]

I think it has to do with rate coding. I learned a little bit of this in psychology so if I'm off let me know. Basically your central nervous system sends neuro impulses to a neuron which is connected to a muscle fiber, myofibrial? Now when the actual impulses are fired, they are fired in bursts and cause the muscle to twitch which as a whole makes the muscle contract to bring a weight up. I think I read somewhere this process is part of the activation system. Activation system ON means neuro impulses sent and contraction occurs as a part of the Force generation system. so Activation impulses = force generation twitching. All the time when this is happening it is drawing energy from the Energy System. The energy system is basically a cycle where fuel is used, recycled, and dumped(byproducts like lactic acid from metabolic fatigue).

Now onto failure. I think there are different ways to reach failure, one is from exhausting the energy system and the other is the limitation of rate coding. Rate coding is the amount of signals a neuron can recieve (per second?) from the brain to create a force or contraction of a muscle fiber. When you train to failure i believe the neuron basically says NO to the brain because it cannot recieve anymore impulses to contract the muscle. When rate coding limits are reached it takes a lot longer for it to recover than microtrauma to muscles. you can still train when the neuron's rate coding is recovering if you avoid hitting that point again and again( i think that's why it's alright to hit failure with HST and still train as long as you can handle the fatigue). Now if you keep training to failure and not letting the neurons in your body to recover then you will burn out. constant CNS failure = fatigue = burnout.

The reason why I brought up the different systems is because I think the CNS will detect over exhaustion of the Energy system and will just stop sending so many impulses to the muscle, which in turn disables you from lifting weights = recovery of the Energy system. This might be another reason why clustering works.

I probably left a lot of holes but thats basically how I understand CNS failure and fatigue

any criticizing is welcome, still a noob.

pzhang

 

[imported_dkm1987]

Here is A list of references you can use from my forum, some of these deal with fatigue, even prolonged others with what ocurs during fatigue, from ionic changes to metabolites, also there is some stuff on contraction there.

 

[BIZ]

thehamma:

There is more than one cause for muscular failure and it does include the CNS (and peripheral nervous system). Also is the state of hypoglycemia, being ATP is produced from sugars, especially during prolonged muscular contraction. So, a person who is on low carbs will likely reach failure before they would have if they had been "carbed up". For more info on how the CNS is affected by strength training, try a few google searches for "rate limiting step of muscle contraction" and "CNS fatigue". Both should give you some hits and clear some things up for you. Glad you are trying to learn and asking questions.

 

[Jester]

Why do you want to train to failure?

I'm coming from this angle:

If you could achieve the same size gains training just short of, or training to failure...which would you prefer?

 

[thehamma]

Quote[/b] ]Why do you want to train to failure?

I'm coming from this angle:

If you could achieve the same size gains training just short of, or training to failure...which would you prefer?

I'm basically trying to have a better understanding of fatigue, and particularly the role of CNS plays regarding fatigue. I was trying to get some insight by isolating one area of fatigue(when to terminate a set), to keep the focus on one area at a time. I have a million other questions about fatigue and the CNS and frequency but I'm trying not to overwhelm myself or you guys on the forum.
But basically, to answer you're question, I don't always like to train to failure. That's for sure. The times that I do is when I'm feeling very motivated and really what to see what my limits are. I think if you don't try to exceed yourself, sometimes you'll never break your boundaries. As far as achieving the same size gains without training to failure, the verdict is still out in my head. What I really want to look into is muscle fiber recruitment and how it is related to training going from your 0rm all the way up to 100rm or failure.

Thanks for all the posts, I'm going to read all of your input and sources. And I'll be getting back to you guys. If anyone wants to summarize in the meantime or any other thoughts I'd love to hear them.

thanks
thehamma

 

[Jester]

I think that failure for the eccentric part of the rep might be advisable - more microtrauma....but I'm not sure what's gained from concentric failure...I don't know a lot about strength training though.

 

[Fausto]

Hamma

Quote[/b] ]I'm not on any AAS.

Well I am glad...and sorry about the post, it is just that with some many new dudes around I got a little excited.

However I perhaps did not understand the angle of your question.

It seems to me that the CNS burns out when you use 100% intensity, but maybe Dan and he has I see can guide you better.

 

[9to5lifter]

thehamma,

First of all, great question. I think you believe in HST as much as we all here do, but you just want further clarifications on certain matters - aspects of training, which is great. I don't really know much about physiology, so I can't give you an appropriate answer. This is only my intuitive understanding of the "avoid failure" statement.

We know that tension on the muscle is what matters (mechanical load principle). Assuming that the rep speed is constant (more or less, just to simplify things), the tension generated by each rep is constant, too. So, the very last rep of a set taken to failure is not "more productive" than the first one (I mean hypertrophy-wise). 3 sets of 3 would be better than just 1 set of 5 (more reps = more tension = more hypertrophy, just a simplified view of things). Thus, it seems logical to favour more reps spread over several sets, compared to taking a set only to failure (which in turn leads to the idea of clustering).

That said, let us consider an example from the FAQ, 1 set of 10 taken to failure. Although the tension generated by each rep remains the same (remember, we assumed constant rep speed), the last rep feels MUCH MUCH harder than the first one. WHY? I can only assume that at this moment we are trying to compensate for muscular fatigue by increasing our neural drive. As the muscle fatigues, certain fibers "disassociate" themselves (not physically of course, it's just that they contribute less) from the effort to lift the weight. So, we need increased neural drive to "motivate" those tired fibers to assist, or to "persuade" the remaining fibers to work harder in order to lift the same weight (I'm not sure which one is true, maybe both). Either way, increased neural drive means more CNS fatigue.

This is my elementary understanding of the whole process. More knowledgeable guys are welcome to correct me, but I believe this is the general idea. HST advocates avoiding failure just to make sure that we won't end up sacrificing frequency in order to "work harder". Sure, some guys may lift to failure more often without inducing excessive CNS fatigue. However, experience shows that going to failure all of the time eventually leads to strength losses (which is attributed to excessive CNS fatigue). HST just wants to make sure that this won't happen to us. That's the whole point.

I don't know if this helped or not, it's just my opinion. Please keep up posted with your findings on this matter.

Regards,
Dimitris

 

[jvroig]

That's pretty good 9to5.

Anyway, for the rest of the guys, this is going to be VERY long so stop readiong now if you aren't interested - this is going to be science, stuff from Nerdlandia; I can't help it, it seems to be what thehamma is asking. So for everybody else, let's meet at a different thread and be happy

thehamma,

Quote[/b] ]I'm basically trying to have a better understanding of fatigue, and particularly the role of CNS plays regarding fatigue. I was trying to get some insight by isolating one area of fatigue(when to terminate a set), to keep the focus on one area at a time. I have a million other questions about fatigue and the CNS and frequency but I'm trying not to overwhelm myself or you guys on the forum.

Good. Pretty admirable. I'll see how much I can help.

Quote[/b] ]
Possible mechanisms of central nervous system fatigue during exercise.
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 29(1):45-57, January 1997.
DAVIS, J. MARK; BAILEY, STEPHEN P.

Abstract:
Fatigue of voluntary muscular effort is a complex phenomenon. To date, relatively little attention has been placed on the role of the central nervous system (CNS) in fatigue during exercise despite the fact that the unwillingness to generate and maintain adequate CNS drive to the working muscle is the most likely explanation of fatigue for most people during normal activities. Several biological mechanisms have been proposed to explain CNS fatigue. Hypotheses have been developed for several neurotransmitters including serotonin (5-HT; 5-hydroxytryptamine), dopamine, and acetylcholine. The most prominent one involves an increase in 5-HT activity in various brain regions. Good evidence suggests that increases and decreases in brain 5-HT activity during prolonged exercise hasten and delay fatigue, respectively, and nutritional manipulations designed to attenuate brain 5-HT synthesis during prolonged exercise improve endurance performance. Other neuromodulators that may influence fatigue during exercise include cytokines and ammonia. Increases in several cytokines have been associated with reduced exercise tolerance associated with acute viral or bacterial infection. Accumulation of ammonia in the blood and brain during exercise could also negatively effect the CNS function and fatigue. Clearly fatigue during prolonged exercise is influenced by multiple CNS and peripheral factors. Further elucidation of how CNS influences affect fatigue is relevant for achieving optimal muscular performance in athletics as well as everyday life.

That was in 1997. Zoom to 2004, and they are still talking about 5-HT, plus a few more things:

Quote[/b] ]
(http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/Fword.htm)
Researchers from England and Japan have recently fully clarified the mechanism
of fatigue, known as central fatigue, implicated in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Dr. Eric Newsholme, from Oxford University, and Dr. Takanobu Yamamoto, from Tezukayama University, have made numerous research discoveries about fatigue and the mechanisms that define it.

For starters, there are at least five metabolic causes of fatigue that have been reported in the medical literature. These include 1) a decrease in the phosphocreatine level in the muscle, 2) a proton accumulation in the muscle, 3) depletion of the glycogen store in muscles, 4) hypoglycemia and 5) an increase in the plasma concentration ratio of free tryptophan to branched-chain amino acids.

"Central fatigue" is of keynote importance here due to the fact that it has been implicated in clinical conditions such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) as well as Post-Operative fatigue. Central fatigue is defined as fatigue in the central nervous system (CNS). The implications are important because the fatigue in CFS is central fatigue, in other words, fatigue in the central nervous system (CNS)! According to these researchers, fatigue in the CNS results from fatigue that occurs in a large portion of intercerebral control circuits caused by suppression in the level of voluntary exciting, which are suppressed in the number of motor units to the level of voluntary neuromuscular junction - muscle fibers and the firing frequency. In other words, CFS fatigue is a fatigue different from the fatigue in the motile muscles themselves. Moreover, these researchers have found that this fatigue is different from the so called tiredness feeling caused by physical (muscular) fatigue and, in fact, is generated in a state that is not accompanied by physical fatigue. This is something most of us hadn't read previously!

Dr. Newsholme has been researching central fatigue mechanisms for over twelve years. Along with Dr. Yamamoto, these researchers have now fully clarified the mechanism for central fatigue in the CNS. They found that specific inhibitors of the L-system transporter on the blood-brain barrier (BBB) make it possible to suppress the fatigue in the CNS. Furthermore, two components were found to be therapeutically effective in suppressing this CNS fatigue. The first was a lab based research chemical known as BCH. However, the second component was one that is readily available. That component was branched-chain amino acids otherwise known as BCAA's. BCAA's are essential amino acids for the human body. BCAA's are made up of a mixture of three individual amino acids that include L-leucine, L-isoleucine and L-valine which have a branched-chain in its carbon chain. BCAA's are commonly used supplements by bodybuilders.

In a nutshell, these researchers proved that by inhibiting the L-system transporter, experiments verified that BCAA's and/or BCH suppressed the uptake of tryptophan thereby alleviating fatigue in the central nervous system and thus improved endurance capacity in the animals tested. Research has proven that fatigue in the CNS doesn't show a reduction in the serotonergic system function in the central and peripheral nerves but, in contrast, an enhanced nerve transmission response and this implies a relation to a change in the transmission of extracellular fluid 5-HT (5-hydroxytryptamine) that depends on an increase in tryptophan.
This change in the transmission of extracellular fluid 5-HT causes suppression in the surrounding brain nerves, resulting in fatigue in the CNS. This is the basis for the tryptophan/5-HT hypothesis. The fatigues in both of the central system (CNS) and the peripheral system (muscle system) exist in a related manner. The tryptophan, which is a causal substance of the fatigue, is transferred from the peripheral system (in blood) to the central system (brain) through the blood-brain barrier (L-system transporter) to give inhibiting (negative) information to the CNS. In other words, an excessive amount of tryptophan or 5-HT in the brain suppresses the CNS, causes a reduction in the motor system output that is released through pyramidal tracts and x-motor neurons. This causes inhibition of animal treadmill running performance. It is this mechanism that causes the fatigue phenomena (central fatigue) derived from the CNS. For all CFS patients, this is much more than just "being tired!" Most importantly, however, is the fact that this scientific research may have vital clinical implications for CFS patients due to the applicability of BCAA's.

They've become a bit clearer in the CNS fatigue mechanism, but still no direct answer as to exactly why training to failure can cause CNS fatigue, and why avoiding failure is an efficient way to escape it.

In a 2005 report, Exercise and Its Effects on the Central Nervous System by Eric J Anish MD, things are even more in-depth and clearer. But what is being talked about? Still the same things. 5-HT. Tryptophan. Blood-brain-barrier. Then they got clearer on some old stuff they already talked about: the role of acetylcholine, the most abundant neurotransmitter in the body; cytokines, in particular IL-6 (Interleukin-6) - this IL-6 stuff is pretty interesting, as well as the results they found with animal studies regarding this, as direct administration of this cytokine can result in decreased locomotor activity. (Cytokines are a group of soluble, regulatory proteins produced by a variety of cells, just in case you are getting confused).

However, Dr. Anish notes:

Quote[/b] ]The extraordinary complexity of the bidirectional communication that occurs between the CNS and peripheral organ systems during exercise creates an enormous challenge to understand definitively the role of the CNS in the development of acute fatigue. Further investigation is required to help better understand the role of the various factors discussed above in the development of central fatigue. These studies should help to broaden our general understanding of the effects of exercise on the central nervous system and may have important implications related to endurance performance and the treatment of fatigue associated with various chronic medical and psychiatric disorders.

No actual study - to my knowledge - has actually ever dealt with "training to faiulre and CNS fatigue" as they are still more interested in CNS fatigue itself and exercise - with no regard to training to failure or avoiding it.

What is clear are the physiological mechanisms that kick in to cause exercise-induced CNS fatigue. Or hell, even central fatigue that doesn't even require any exercise.

Also actually crystal clear is that avoiding training to failure makes you avoid CNS fatigue. No study has targeted to asnwer that yet. But we know that training to failure, at that very last failed rep, seems to kick in the physiological mechanisms of exercise-induced CNS fatigue: increase in 5-HT, decrease in dopamine (animal studies), decline in plasma choline concentration, cytokines especially IL-6, etc.

No definitive study yet to just tell us clearly and definitively why. But here's the best I can do: Aside from mere "scientific observation" that avoiding failure is effective in thwarting off CNS fatigue (meaning avoiding triggering the physiological processes that start off the bastard beast called CNS fatige), the latest I got is on dopamine decline, based on animal studies because it is yet still practically impossible to test it on humans (because polar catecholamines do not easily penetrate the blood-brain barrier so measuring concentrations in the jugular blood is more or less useless). But the animal studies seem promising:

Quote[/b] ]
Research has also focused on the influence of dopamine
in the development of central fatigue, because it is
well established that dopamine plays a critical role in
motor control. Animal studies have demonstrated an
increase in central dopamine levels during exercise. However,
at the point of task failure, central dopamine levels decline back toward resting levels

That's the closest we can get right now.
It seems that at the point of failure, central dopamine levels decline back towards resting levels. That's not good because dopamine causes inhibition of 5-HT synthesis, so sudden decline in dopamine means suddenly more and more 5-HT, which as you should know now is bad, as pointed out by the studies I referenced for your viewing pleasure (so you don't have to search for them yourself).

Of course, we are reminded in the same report that:

Quote[/b] ]Thus, conclusive evidence supporting a causal relationship between exercise-related fatigue and dopamine deficiency in healthy human subjects is currently lacking.

Again that's because of the difficulty of measuring the same in human subjects as I emntioned previously.

There, I gave you the background info for the CNS fatigue mechanism, and the latest we've got so far as to why the last rep (point of failure) should be avoided.

Regards,
-JV

 

[thehamma]

First off, this thread got kicked to the second page so fast that I missed the last to posts by Jvroig and 9 to 5.  Thanks for your responses, they were really thought out.
 Let me first respond to 9 to 5, I need some more time to respond to Jvroigs post, its pretty intense.  Also, off topic, I dont have access to any scientific journal data bases, I was wondering how I could read the studies that dkm gave me the link to?
 
 9 to 5, your post did make a lot of sense and expanded my thinking on the matter a lot, so thanks.  But I am curious to see how muscle fiber recruitment is affected in the 2 scenarios you listed.

Quote[/b] ]3 sets of 3 would be better than just 1 set of 5 (more reps = more tension = more hypertrophy, just a simplified view of things). Thus, it seems logical to favour more reps spread over several sets, compared to taking a set only to failure (which in turn leads to the idea of clustering).  

 
 Like I stated in my other post I'd like to see how muscle fibers are activated differently or not using different rep and set schemes.  Heres a passage from John Littles Fast Mass Training Manual, let me know what your thoughts are:
"Our brain recruits muscle fibers solely as it percieves the need for them.  This is accomplished via the brain's motor nerves, which, in keeping with the dictates of the brain, follow a relatively fixed order in the recruitment process.  The process involves only the precise amount of electrical current necessary to turn on the required muscle fibers.
 Of the four fiber types the "s" of slow fibers are the easiest to engage, as they don't require a lot of energy, being recruited for low intensity muscular contraction.  Slightly more intensity is required to engage the FO fibers and more still for the FOG's.  The ones that require the greatest intensity of effort to engage are the FG's.  It's important to use the heaviest weights your muscles are capable of contracting against if you wish to activate the FG's, as the brain is in no hurry to hit the switch for those FG fibers-which are precisely the ones you want to stimulate for optimal size and strength increases.  The brain would rather engage the least amount necessary to accomplish a given task.  After all, the brain is an organ of survival and it knows how to conserve energy as the conservation of energy has proven, over millions of years, to be an asset for survival.
 The brain will first attempt to accomplish the sustained contraction of a given muscle with only the "s" fibers. When those soon become inadequate to sustain the contraction, the brain will recruit the FO's and shortly therafter the FOG fibers to assist with the task.  If these fail, and they will, the brain will have realized that it needs more fire power than it's providing and only then will it send out the signal to engage the elusive FG fibers.  This process is known in physiological circles as "Orderly Recruitment", for the brain does not engage in firing of the muscle fibers randomly.  When recruiting muscle fibers for the purpose of contraction the brain doesn't concern itself with issues of speed, save as it pertains to force.  It has no concern how fast you want to lift a weight or how quick you want to run-again, it cannot randomnly recruit muscle fibers.  Instead, the brain ascertains the precise force required to move the resisitance you are up against and recruits only the precise amount of muscle fibers accordingly.........
.......training with submaximal weights will not activate the Fast Twitch of FOG fibers- no matter how many sets you perform, which means that you will never stimulate maximum size and strength gains by training with weights that are well within your exisiting capacites."

 

[jvroig]

Not accurate.

You can train with submaximal loads and still recruit all fibers. Can be between 50% - 85% of 1RM, depending on muscle group. In fact, saying "submaximal weights don't recruit all fibers" to imply that "maximum load" is needed raises the question: what, should we train with our absolute 1RM all the time? Because that's the maximum load, the 1RM, not the 5RM, not the 3RM, but the 1RM. Saying that the best hypertrophy would come from training at that is simply misleading and goes nowhere useful to hypertrophy.

Read (or review) the thinkmuscle newsletter about this (http://www.thinkmuscle.com/articles/haycock/hst-07.htm) as well as the thread in the HST FAQ "Training for fiber types".

 

[9to5lifter]

JV has already responded, so naturally there is not much for me to say. In the example about 3x3 and 1x5, I simply assumed that the weight is heavy enough to cause maximal fiber recruitment, so that the equation
more reps = more tension
would hold.

Apart from that, remember that we focused only on p38 hypertrophic activity, ignoring other aspects of weight training (metabolic work and erk1/2, strength gains and "CNS training" etc). If somebody is interested more in endurance or strength gains, obviously they would need to modify their program accordingly.

Anyway, my view of things is naturally rather simplistic. That's why I talked about an "intuitive" and not a "real" explanation in my previous post. The "real" explanation should be found somewhere among the lines of JV's post.

Actually this is the best thing about this forum. You never stop learning.

 

[Joe G]

I may be the only person who has read all of JVs post

.
While it is interesting regarding CNS fatigue and exercise, it does not touch upon CNS fatigue and training to failure. JV points this out himself in the post.

Also,

Quote[/b] ] In fact, saying "submaximal weights don't recruit all fibers" to imply that "maximum load" is needed raises the question: what, should we train with our absolute 1RM all the time?

Actually I do believe that in one of John Little's training routines all you do is use your 1 Rep Max.

I really can't imagine making gains using my 1RM everytime I was in the gym.

Joe G

 

[jvroig]

Quote[/b] ]While it is interesting regarding CNS fatigue and exercise, it does not touch upon CNS fatigue and training to failure. JV points this out himself in the post.

Yep, because as I mentioned, no study has actually made it's subject to be "CNS fatigue induced by failure training" or around it. So we don't have any definitive study to lean on yet as "official".

However, as of the 2005 report by Dr. Anish, we already get a hint that it may actually be the sudden dopamine decline at the point of failure that starts the development of failure-training-induced CNS fatigue - dopamine level declines, dopamine-inhibition of 5-HT synthesis decreases as a result, more 5-HT is produced and excessive amounts of this suppresses the CNS and causes a reduction in the motor system output that is released through pyramidal tracts and x-motor neurons - and there you have it, in broad strokes, CNS fatigue because of the last rep (point of failure).

Let me stress again to avoid confusion that this hypothesis, as noted, is based as of now purely on animal studies as measuring in humans is a little more complicated, and thus the same cannot be measured and thus proven for healthy human subjects.

In my opinion only, however, the mechanism is more or less the same for us - perhaps a little more complex, but I don't see right now any reason to believe ours would be a lot different - and seeing that avoiding the point of failure (the last rep) does save us from CNS fatigue, I really believe that the mechanism described above works pretty much the same for us.

Now, isn't that what you asked for, hamma? (as well as anybody else who wondered why going to failure, in particular the last rep, is more dangerous and taxing to the CNS)