HST and the stimulus

[thehamma]

Quote[/b] ]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.

I have some questions regarding this FAQ: More specifically, I am questioning the notion of frequency as it is applied in HST and its relation to muscle tissue fatigue and the CNS.
First, as I understand HST does not believe in "overtraining" as it is generally applied to bodybuilding.

Quote[/b] ]HST does acknowledge overtraining of the muscle tissue itself, but the effects are inflammatory in nature and result in injuries that do not heal up properly but instead leave scar tissue in the muscle.
Any loss in the size of a muscle with high volume/high frequency training is the result of altered glycogen and water distribution.

If the only detrimental effects of overtraining of the muscle tissue itself is inflammmatory in nature and the only obstacle is the fatigue of the CNS, then theoretically, the best way to stimulate the muscle would be to bypass the CNS entirely. Would it be possible to stimulate hypertrophy by contracting the muscle via an electrical muscle stimulation machine? This would be optimal, because as the body adapts to the stimulus of the electric current, the amount of stimulus and intensity can be raised at will and at a more precise manner than lifting weights. Whether or not the CNS is fatigued or not would'nt be an issue due to the fact that the contraction via an artificial electric sourse is generating the stimulus. The person could also stay hooked up to the machine day and night due to the fact that muscle deterioration would not be a concern. Would this be true, the problem is I've never heard of anyone having any success with these machines.

I am certainly not an expert on the matter of muscle physiology but I was under the impression that there are a limited number of anabolic tissue building hormones. When the anabolic tissue building hormones are all used up then, the catabolic tissue destroying hormones begin to dominate and the receptor sites fill up with catabolic hormones and the muscle starts to deteriorate. This was the reasoning I thought to believe why atheletes could not recieve stimulus all day using electronic muscle stimulation machines. At what point if at all do the catabolic hormones like cortisol etc. build up?


thehamma