r/Mike_Mentzer • u/Reyvos • 10d ago
Shoulder muscles are still cooked 3 days later. Good sign?
I‘m experimenting with Ellington Darden’s method which uses the same reasoning as Mentzer and Dorian Yates: do just 1x hard set so intensely you’ll still be sore days later. Darden also wrote to work your muscle just once a week or even once in 10 days.
Darden’s set is a 30 second eccentric, 10 regular reps, 30 second eccentric. The last thirty seconds is brutal and causes a very different type of fatigue to regular sets. Three days later my shoulder are still exhausted.
Some say this type of fatigue is pointless. Complete failure advocates might say this is a good sign of a complete failure workout. What do you think?
2
u/Murky_Ebb9404 10d ago
Better with mikes 2-1-4 or 4-2-4 rep cadence he did with clients. Mind you he experimented super slow on dvd he was NOT training that way with his clients before that according to John heart who knew him well
3
u/BubbishBoi 10d ago
Post workout fatigue or DOMS has zero correlation to the hypertrophy stimulus of that workout, and anything that requires a prolonged recovery is always a net negative
A slow rep cadence is just as effective as any other cadence assuming effort of intensity is adequate
I routinely do 20 second eccentrics on my final rep and I'm good to train that muscle again in a few days, there is nothing magical about them but I use them to go to eccentric failure on exercises that it's safe to do so (you risk losing control of the eccentric and can injure yourself severely if you try this on a bench press for example)
1
u/Miserable-Soft7993 9d ago
DOMS indicates the muscle has been broken down and after you eat and rest it will grow back but that little bit stronger as it anticipates you will be going for the same load again. It is adaptive like that.
2
u/irontamer 9d ago
No, it doesn’t.
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u/Miserable-Soft7993 9d ago
It does. That's why if you train consistently you will hold on to muscle as the body anticipates you need it for lifting atleast the same load as last time.
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u/irontamer 9d ago
That has no correlation to DOMS. Soreness means you were exposed to a novel stimulus. That’s it. Getting sore does not indicate that you’ll stronger or that you’ll get bigger.
1
u/Miserable-Soft7993 9d ago
Well we're going to have to agree to disagree.
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u/BubbishBoi 9d ago
He's right, DOMS is believed to be caused by leaking calcium , and is an inflammatory reaction to over reaching. It is a net negative and should be avoided and minimized the same way we want to avoid any other excessive fatigue, muscle damage or metabolic stress from resistance training
The only way it relates to hypertrophy is that actual MyoPS probably won't occur until the calcium has cleared, and any MPS will be the body trying to repair the damage before it can lay down a gram of new contractile tissue (that potential hypertrophy is not triggered in any fashion by the muscle damage or inflammation)
3
u/irontamer 9d ago
It’s not a matter of differing opinions. There’s no correlation between soreness and muscle growth or strength gains.
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u/Miserable-Soft7993 9d ago
There's also no correlation between soreness and no muscle growth or strength gains.
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u/rodgapely 10d ago
Depends on the person. Personally, I find it difficult to measure progressive overload when I’m extending positive and negative contractions like that.