Podcast 35

Muscle Burn Is Your Friend

. . .

SHOW NOTES

Amy Hudson and Brian Cygan explain why that feeling of your muscles burning is exactly what you want to feel every time you go to the gym. Learn why muscle burn is one of the best indications that you’re exercising at the right intensity and without it, you won’t get the fitness results you’re looking for.

• The intensity of an exercise is crucial to achieving the fitness results you want, and the feeling of muscle burn is a positive indication of that intensity.
• Effective exercise is simply a stimulus, where you stress the body in order for it to change for the better. Effective strength training needs to be intense enough to serve as that stimulus. Labored breathing, muscle burning, and a little discomfort are necessary elements of that kind of exercise.
• If you’re not experiencing some level of discomfort when exercising you are just going through the motions and aren’t putting in enough effort to see any real results.
• The fast-twitch muscle fibers are the ones that burn during exercise and they are the main focus of high-intensity exercise. The reason they burn is because they utilize the anaerobic subsystem of metabolism.
• Fast-twitch muscle fibers store sugar in the form of glycogen, and that’s what is consumed when exercising at an adequate intensity level. Muscle burn is a sign that you’re really tapping into the stored energy of your muscles, which is a good thing and you need to do to get stronger.
• Some people have more fast-twitch muscles than others and some muscle groups have more fast-twitch muscle fibers than others.
• Our natural response to the sensation of muscle burn is to be worried, but it’s okay to keep pushing through. The burn sensation is different from pain.
• As muscles fatigue near the end of a set, that’s when coaching and encouragement are vital.
• The brain is a prediction machine, and we have to intentionally override the survival mechanisms that tell us to stop exercising and preserve some energy in order to achieve the greatest results.
• People often look to muscle soreness as an indication that the workout was effective, but it doesn’t actually correlate to results later on. Muscle burn doesn’t necessarily lead to muscle soreness afterward.
• Eccentric training doesn’t burn as much as basic strength training, but it does produce more soreness later on. Delayed onset muscle soreness occurs more at the beginning of a new program and tends to reduce over time.
• The Exerbotics equipment gives Strength Coach clients an important advantage but showing progress over time instead of relying on sensations like muscle soreness.
• If your exercise isn’t delivering any changes to your body, then it’s not intense enough.