[THE HEALTHY GOAN – 47]
All too often, I have noticed when somebody joins the gym for the first time that they go about doing marathon workouts, pick random exercises and just use very poor form as they go about their work. A trained eye can easily spot the chaos and cringe in their training plans and form. Today, I going to help you understand the goals of your training and ultimately enable you to use that knowledge to build your own workout plan.
WHY GYM
First and foremost, why should you join the gym? The gym is a convenient place where you can progressively overload your muscles so that they adapt and get stronger. It is easy to do it at the gym due to the availability of plates, dumbbells and machines with small increments in weights.
So, why is it that we do movements like let’s say a bench press? It is solely that it is proven by science that these particular movements recruit maximum amounts of muscle through the range of its motion. Your goal in the gym is to work your muscles through the range of motion and cause micro tears in your muscle fibres. This small damage to the muscle fibres prompts the muscle to adapt and get bigger and also build new fibres.
Be mindful that you do not need to be sore after your training sessions. But it is inevitable that if you have worked out for the first time you will experience a degree of muscle soreness. Just remember that the degree of muscle soreness is not representative of the quality of training.
FORM
When you first join the gym your primary concern is to develop lifting form. Form is the manner in which you perform your exercise movement. This lifting form is specific to you. This is because every single individual is built differently. People vary in structural attributes such as torso size, limb length and joint insertions.
However, the basic principles remain constant for everybody so as to prevent injury. For example, you don’t want to be flaring your elbows during a bench press or using your back for momentum while doing a bicep curl.
Your primary focus cannot be of building muscle but of learning the movements. Perfecting your chosen movement will allow the muscle to adapt and get stronger. Muscle size is a by- product of the muscle getting stronger. You will be hard pressed to find a muscular person who is not strong as well.
EXPECTATIONS
Which brings us to the point of expectations. I have all too often seen people, especially younger individuals, with highly over inflated expectations of progress in their muscle building journey. I have heard of young athletes wanting to put on even more than 20 kilograms of muscle in a year. Let us be very clear that the only way you are going to achieve those numbers is if you have grown in height, gotten fat or your scale is faulty.
Even by using illegal performance enhancing substances, you will be hard pressed to reach these numbers. At this point, I would like this to serve as a warning as well. Illegal performance enhancing substances are much more common in your local gym than you would expect. But remember, when we lift we are doing it for health and let us not indulge in anything which might take it away. Remember these substances are illegal for a reason.
MUSCLE POTENTIAL
The primary driver of muscle growth potential is genetics. Some people can just build muscle better than others. I am going to stay shy of delving into muscle fibre type and distribution for the sake of simplicity of this article. Just think of it this way. Some people are born with an artistic talent and some are not. It is similar with muscle building genetics.
Other factors which influence the rate of muscle growth include your natural hormone levels, age, nutrition, if you are getting back into training after a long lay-off and of course, quality of training. Women cannot expect to build large amounts of muscle as they do not have the hormones necessary to support muscle mass.
Remember this, the rate of muscle growth is ridiculously slow. The rate of muscle growth is greatest when you are new to training and reduces the longer you train. Muscle grows as mentioned earlier as a response to the stimulus you provide it. This does not mean that if you train for a longer duration of time on a given day, that the muscle will grow faster. Muscles grow as a result of getting stronger and you can only grow muscle and get stronger at a very slow rate.
Before we move into the next chapter of this series, next week, the take away I would like you to have is, to be realistic about your expectations and train to get proper form. Form that is specific to you.
(Dr Rohan Fonseca is a clinician and proprietor of Dr Fonseca’s Pathology Laboratory and Clinics, Panaji. A health and fitness enthusiast, he has started “drrohanfonseca”, a lifestyle and weight management clinic. Find him on youtube.com/drrohanfonseca)
