re: Do you baws still get sore?

I'm right at 50, and there are no days my muscles don't hurt, and especially when I work out, for days...and everything is confused....

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Man I'm not a fitness genius so I hope people don't take my advice as science

I try to learn as much as possible though from some of y'all that are more experienced. If you have any articles showing why muscle confusion is bad I'd be all ears. I've seen good progress from the plan I've been following doing a ton of movements I've never done before.

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its not that muscle confusion is bad its that you are using the sacroplasmic hypertrophy and ineffeciency to drive gains, the gains are pretty much temporary to a certain degree. After 4-6 weeks your body is just getting more effecient at the movement so you are just really scratching the surface of the potential for long term permanent strength and muscle gains that comes from progression on a lift that you are extremely effecient at.

Btw the muscle can not be confused. Essentially you are changing to movements you are extremely ineffecient at over and over. There is nothing wrong with muscle confusion so long as you are building a base on the main lifts in the mean time.

Bret Contrasas put it like this:

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"I personally know of several natural bodybuilders who are jacked out of their minds from following high-volume bodypart splits while focusing on the mind-muscle connection, muscle confusion, instinctive training, and chasing the pump," says Contreras. "But I also know plenty of pencil-neck geeks who practice this philosophy and achieve absolutely no success due to the fact that they're using loads that my 13-year-old niece lifts."

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So if you build a really solid base and get a little bored and want to switch it up fine. If you want to use a variant of the main lifts, have at it, but you before you switch you should progress as far as possible on that lift until progression wihtout some crazy complicated method is just not possible any more or it becomes so slow that you are just spinning your wheels. Daunte Trudal and Johnny Pain have spoken about this and it is hte crux of the DC Training Program and all of the Greyskull programs. The guys Bret is talking about above that make huge progress instinctively add weight and/or reps. They already know to push themselves for more and more and more instinctively. Those that go in and do a program for 4 weeks never adding weight/reps then switch and repeat over and over again are the ones that look exactly the same year after year despite being in the gym for years. I was one of those guys for a long long time, I know he is right.

Sure goals will change over time and you should adjust your training to meet those goals but the main lifts and/por their variants should always stay in, same with the core body weight lifts like chins, pushups, dips....just have to continue to progress on these.


here is what rippetoe has to say on muscle confusion

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They lose sight of the fact that "muscle confusion" is a rather odd concept, and that doing dozens of different exercises actually prevents productive training for strength acquisition. This is the nuts and bolts difference between effective strength training and wasting time and potential. How many times have you seen the following?

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LINK
LINK
LINK

I appreciate the details

yea in true bodybuilding is how much damage can I cause to the muscle and still recover from.

powerbuilding is whats the least amount of damage I can cause the muscle to cause growth so I can recover as fast as possible to do it all over again ASAP.


and you should give more advice, you are a huge resource here. One day you should lay out the special keto diet you mentioned you use to get stage ready. I could prolly create a spreadsheet based off of the numbers you put out.

It's not a miserable type of soreness, but I feel I'm constantly sore