Purpose of Metabolic Work?

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Tom Treutlein

New Member
Okay, so what's metabolic work for, exactly? I know Lyle, over on BR, calls it "pump-growth" or "sarcoplasmic hypertrophy" when you use the higher rep sets.

Typically, he prescribes some tension and some metabolic work. From what I understand, the higher reps cause an increased glycogen storage capability in the muscle, which leaves pretty quickly once you stop training.

Whereas tension work causes more "real" hypertrophy of the tissue, and is more sought after.

So are both really ideal for hypertrophy? I mean, he'll recommend sets of 6-8 and 10-12 for ideal hypertrophy with compounds, then some 12-15 for arm isolation for the "pump" kind've growth.

I feel like I've gotten lost along the way, 'cause what I used to remember/believe was that simply increasing your 5 RM will give you all the size you need, but apparently people (Kelly Bagget and Lyle are the two who come to mind) say that you need the higher rep ranges to give the muscle more of that "polished" look.
 
If you read through some articles on Dan's site you might come to the conclusion that the metabolic stuff is no more useful than doing more work (ie. more reps) with the heavy 5s. If you check out his max-stim ideas you will see that what is happening is that the work done is going up throughout the whole cycle because the number of reps is staying constant as the load climbs, whilst fatigue is being held at bay as much as possible to allow this to be possible.

So, as far as hypertrophy goes, a drop-set or another heavy set may not make that much difference in the end. The problem with adding in yet another heavy set of 5s is that fatigue has usually taken it's toll and then your form suffers. In the case of squats, I find that I start to lean forwards more as my lower back tires. That alters the stress on my quads etc. If I do a drop-set, on the other hand, my lowerback is happy again, my form improves and I can throw the stress back on my legs more.

Using Dan's Max-stim method helps manage the fatigue and thus allows you to get more reps with good form.

Dan explains all the chemical stuff on his site too if you fancy being blinded by science.  
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Do what feels good.

I find if I go heavy on compounds, it feels good to hit arms with 12-15 reps.

Dont know the science behind it but it just feels right.

All this doesn't matter if you are not eating and getting enough calories and protein thought.
 
Interesting question and I believe I responded to Tom before on this and was told it's all just semantics. So I'll leave that part for Tom to decide but on the aspect of the MAPK signalling with divergent exercise it's apparent that pretty much all forms of exercise increase the phosphorlyation of many of the kinases in parrallel. Human studies on marathon running show that both are increased, studies on HFES and LFES show the same. What appears to change is the duration of time that this phosphorlation occurs and this appears to be mode specific. Now what still remains to be seen is how the differing modes affect the differing isoforms of P38, alpha appears to increase no matter the mode and is not strictly skeletal muscle specific, yet gamma appears to be specifically regulated via contraction of skeletal muscle.

Legend:
A:Western blots from the TA muscle in response to an acute bout of HFES. C, control; E, exercise; 0, 3, and 6: hours after exercise; p70S6k, 70-kDa ribosomal S6 kinase; PKB, protein kinase B; ERK, extracellular regulated kinase; p38, 38-kDa stess-activated protein kinase. B: protein phosphorylation changes in the TA muscle in response to an acute bout of HFES. Solid bars, p70S6k; cross-hatched bars, PKB; open bars, ERK; and hatched bars, p38. * Significant from control (P < 0.05).
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A: representative Western blots from the Sol muscle in response to an acute bout of HFES. B: protein phosphorylation changes in the Sol muscle in response to an acute bout of HFES. Bars are as described in Fig. 2 legend. * Significant from control (P < 0.05).
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Protein phosphorylation changes in the TA muscle in response to an acute bout of LFES. Bars are as described in Fig. 2 legend. * Significant from control (P < 0.05).
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Protein phosphorylation changes in the TA muscle in response to an acute bout of RN. Bars are as described in Fig. 2 legend. * Significant from control (P < 0.05).
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Protein phosphorylation changes in the Sol muscle in response to an acute bout of RN. Bars are as described in Fig. 2 legend. * Significant from control (P < 0.05).
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Tom

In my opinion both techniques have their place in tweaking training to obtain somewhat better results, although I cannot say all techniques will be right for all types of muscle groups.

Muscle-Groups that respond well to heavy loading (Back/Quads to name a few) will go well with drop sets.

Other muscle groups respond well to high reps (biceps, calves, triceps), for those after loading with compound work I use a high rep set or two to get them to where I want.

This is my own opinion and is subjected to criticism, but seems to work well for me, there is some of this info in the Faq e-book, which would help you.

Vicious also elaborated quite a bit when he "pimped his HST e-book"
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- some good work there I'd say, and he tends to lean towards Lyle'ds opinion too!
 
My calves don't respond well to high reps, so again, it's one of those 'suck it and see' situations. Lower rep/higher load sets seem to work much better in my case. Evidently, there is some degree of difference in fiber composition for different people.

Vicious has a list of muscles and whether they are predominantly tonic or phasic in composition. For lower legs these are:

Gastrocnemius (lateral head), Tonic (% ST 50.5)
Gastrocnemius (medial head),  Phasic (% ST 43.5)
Soleus, Tonic, (% ST 87.7)

So the Soleus is the muscle that has a high %age of slow twitch fibres whereas the Gastrocnemius is around 50:50 according to this.

and he adds:

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">For highly tonic muscles (such as the soleus), then, you may have to start at 70-75% 1RM (~ 10RM) right out of SD and work up to 120% 1RM (high-load negatives) with larger than 5% increments in order to facilitate growth.

Because most trainees are unaccustomed to working beyond 85% of 1RM for any bodypart, let alone the calves, this has been traditionally perceived as a difficult bodypart to accentuate.
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Well is there really a need for isolation exercises when you could simply do the compounds for higher reps then?

I mean, sets of 12-15 on the bench, with dips, or on inclines would provide the same metabolic/sarcoplasmic/pump-growth effect on the triceps as isolations would, wouldn't they? Or am I missing something?
 
Here's the thing guys.

To think that oxidative increases only occurs through highly aerobic activity is wrong, so to say that high rep workouts are the only means to increasing mitochondrial oxidative activity is wrong. Even in anaerobic work, high intensity activity primarily drawing from glycolytic metabolism, aerobic function is increased and plays a large role in energy provision. This will also have an impact on mitochondrial oxidative efficiency.

As far as hypertrophy, it doesn't matter. What matters is the progressive increase in work via increasing load. So if you want to use 1 set of 30 reps throughout the cycle go for it as long as you increase the load over time hypertrophy will occur.

As far as sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar hypertrophy, yes high reps cause an increase in blood pooling, swelling, and so forth but does a temporary condition, IE PUMP, cause growth?, not directly, or rather it's overall impact to chronic hypertrophy is not nearly as important. In a context as I stated above IE always working for a pump while at the same time increasing the load and work, yes it can but it is not the pump causing it. Yet this isn't saying that high rep work only impacts the sarcoplasmic volume it will have an impact on contractile proteins and structure as well and vice versa.
 
Alright, so what I'm getting is what I mainly considered long ago - focus on a hypertrophy-friendly rep range that is easy to gain strength in - thus the popularity of the 5x5 routine, and people's wonderful results with 5's on HST. It's a lot easier to increase your 5 RM than 30 RM, and a lot more conveinent and fun as well.

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Thanks Dan.

By the by, what do you support regarding compounds or isolation for optimal arm size? I never saw your take on it, or if I did, I forgot. From everything I understand, if you're doing compounds in a way that they involve the arms (supinated, shoulder-width or closer-gripped chinups and benches, dips or OHPs), then they shouldn't need isolation. Yea?
 
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(Tom Treutlein @ Jun. 05 2006,17:29)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">From everything I understand, if you're doing compounds in a way that they involve the arms (supinated, shoulder-width or closer-gripped chinups and benches, dips or OHPs), then they shouldn't need isolation. Yea?</div>
Well they shouldn't need as much but this depends on your focus. In a lot of cases, not all mind you, most tend to overwork their &quot;guns&quot; and even though they will grow it may not be optimal for the average Joe (Not you Joe
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). Secondly the overworked arms may interfere with your abiltiy to adequately load other muscle groups.

As far as hypertrophy, and only hypertrophy is concerned, compounds or isolation makes no difference, the principles of growth remain the same.

If just plain ole mass is your concern then compounds may be more beneficial as they load several synergists simultaneously therefore stimulating several muscles at once. If needing to concentrate, or bring up, just a specific muscle then isolation is better as all the tension can be localized to a single muscle. Either case doesn't change the principle of progressive loading or cause a need to change rep ranges, IE high reps for small isolated movements vs low reps for large compounds. The only difference this conveys is how the muscle will adapt, metabolically (force retention) or structurally (force generation).
 
Dan has a great point.

I will use myself for example. I have done 1 set for my arms since being on hst...sometimes 2 if I have plenty of time.

Now I use to do 16 to 20 sets for bicep. They were big...yet even at lot bodyfat not defined at all.

Started hst and cut back volume..they are bigger...with baseball looking biceps.

They are somewhat bigger since being on hst...but more than anything....they cosmetically look way more defined an shape.

Long story short I was overtraining the hell out of them.
 
I know what compounds are Dan. ;) Thanks though, good reply. I just tend to get a little mentally fried when I start thinking about this too much. I'll just stick with what has been working now.
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I wonder if I should run HST next, 5x5 again, Lyle's routine, or something other. Hm...
 
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(Tom Treutlein @ Jun. 05 2006,21:36)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I know what compounds are Dan. ;) Thanks though, good reply. I just tend to get a little mentally fried when I start thinking about this too much. I'll just stick with what has been working now.  
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I wonder if I should run HST next, 5x5 again, Lyle's routine, or something other. Hm...</div>
I know you do Tom
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I wasn't directing that specifically at you, just in general so everyone is clear, remember we have other readers here as well, some may not be as worldly as you
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I think any of those would be a good choice.
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Yeah, they all would be - I'm just not sure which route I wanna go.

I'm cutting on UD2.0 right now, Joe.
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I actually may go the way of the UD2.0 Mass Variant - could work nicely. Slow bulking with pigging out (more or less) on the weekends. I don't like cutting, so I really don't wanna do it again any time soon.

Perhaps I'll try the slow bulk for the Summer, and then once Winter rolls around, if I'm unhappy with the progress, I'll jump on the bandwagon again and bulk more seriously - sweatshirts work wonders.
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