Jockery

Part of going back to the gym is knowing that now and again you will wind up sore the next day. Especially if you go down the path to muscle failure. I forget which Weider principle this is -- and surely is it one of them, 'cause there is the Weider Everything Else I Forgot to Mention By Specific Name Principle -- a joke only appreciated by iron pumpers who've read the Joe Weider bodybuilding zines.


Basically, the exercise about which I am talking involves doing descending reps of something until you can't do any more. 


Take chins, for instance. Suppose you can do a dozen reps in good form. 


So do that.


Wait a few seconds, catch your breath, then do another set. Chances are, you won't get twelve reps, but you might get nine or ten. 


Wait a few seconds, then do another set, as many as you can.


Keep on doing this until you get to the point where you can't do a single rep. Where you can't do anything but hang there twitching.


You're done. Move along. 


I don't do this often, since it cranks up the lactic acids and cooks me real good for the next day or two, but now and then, the madness takes me ...


(It's not, as you might think, the most exhausting pumping exercise -- eccentric reps are. These involve a training partner who helps you hoist more weight than you can on your own, which you then lower. You can lower more weight than you can lift. Doing this doesn't take long to achieve the burn, and it's the molten lava kind of burn. This is one you do infrequently. Maybe every twenty years or so ...)


Here's the thing: Last trip to the gym, I decided to do sets of descending reps to failure in a couple of exercises. Which I did.


However, even though I was exhausted, come the next day, I wasn't sore. No muscle aches, no lactic acid build-up enough so I noticed. 


I'm not sure what this means. If it's a good witch or a bad witch ...


(By the by, that's not a Photoshopped picture. The guy -- sometimes called The Man Whose Arms Exploded -- is Gregg Valentino, a fellow who injected steroids every place he could reach, along with God knows what else, and who nearly killed himself doing it. Gives new meaning to the term freakish when applied to bodybuilders ...)