Archive for January, 2010
Bodybuilding Workouts, Having a Pump Does Not Mean You Are Gaining Muscle
Picture this scenario: you’ve been working in the gym for half an hour and after a really hard set of your routine on the bench your chest feels tight and engorged with blood. It feels great, healthy, powerful. “Pump”, is how they call that feeling. If you have ever had the feeling, then you know great it feels. Arnold said it’s like having sex (i’m not really sure if it’s good in THAT level, but yes, it’s an amazing feeling).
A “Pump” is nothing but the tight, blood-congested feeling in a muscle after it has been intensely trained. Muscle pump is caused by a rapid influx of blood into the muscles to remove fatigue toxins and replace supplies of fuel and oxygen. But it doesn’t matter how great you feel, if the goal you’re trying to reach is to build muscle.
A pump is in no way indicative of a successful workout. It doesn’t mean it’s bad for you to achieve one during your session, it’s simply a natural result of intense weight training. But if you focus your workout in getting a pump instead of muscle gain, you are making a huge mistake, and it will tax you.
Maybe you have heard them (maybe you are one of them), those guys telling “my friend, this will give you a crazy pump!”, and, ok, maybe you’ll achieve your pump, and it will feel like heaven. But once again I tell to you: if you paid that membership and go every day to the gym to have big muscles, great muscles, if you want them look like stone, that pump is not the best way to get them.
A pump is just the blood flowing to the area. You can get a good pump without working all that hard. Giving your body no reason to grow. But you can get the greatest pump, and it doesn’t mean your muscles will grow the most. If muscle pumps meant muscle growth, then super light weight, ultra high rep programs would be the most effective way to grow. And I think you’ll agree with me when I say that will never work. So, how can I know if i’m in the right way? It’s nothing complex.
This is the way it should be: if you keep a record of your workouts and week after week you are increasing the weight you lift, if you can perform some extra reps, you are in your way to that huge muscles you desire, even if you were far to achieve a pump. Remember that pump blood into your muscle tissue is not the goal.
Building muscle mass and strength is all about training with 100% intensity on every given set and then striving to improve from week to week. If you are able to consistently achieve this, your muscle size and strength will increase faster than you ever thought possible, with or without a pump.
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