From Nick Nilsson
Author and Publisher of BetterU News
http://www.fitness-ebooks.com

Now THIS is a question I get all the time and is definitely
worth an answer...should you train a muscle when it's still sore?
It's not quite as simple as yes or no (even though my short
answer is yes!). In fact, I've found you can get even BETTER
results by training when your muscles are sore.

And yes, it might be a bit controversial...you can decide from
my explanation if you think I'm full of "--it" or if it's worth
testing for yourself :). I know it doesn't work for everybody but
it might just work for you...

------------------------
BUT FIRST...

Before I get into the full rundown on that, I wanted to first
give you a quick heads-up on something...

My buddy Vince Del Monte is currently offering (because it's his
30th birthday) his complete "No Nonsense Muscle Building" and
"Six Pack Abs" DVD set on the cheap.


==> http://www.fitstep.com/goto/nononsense-dvd.htm


VERY good information on this DVD set and a TON of it. I've
known Vince for years and he puts out a lot of quality
information. This DVD set is a real "all you can eat" buffet's
worth of excellent stuff. He's got it on sale until Friday at
midnight (also when all the extra bonus stuff goes away).

MY BONUS FOR VINCE (and it's a good one...)

I've also thrown in one of my own bonuses for Vince as a
birthday gift to him... "Classified Muscle Building...Biceps,
Triceps and Forearms"

You see, about 16 years ago, I started writing down everything
(and I mean EVERYTHING) new that I was coming up with into a
bunch of notebooks...exercises, training techniques, etc. You
name it.

Well, over time, I actually typed out everything in those
notebooks and had them stored (and pretty much forgot about them)
on my computer. I dug those out of the vault and made a PDF out
of them and told Vince he could offer them as a bonus - only a
very few people have even seen this file.

When you get Vince's DVD set, you'll get this bonus book as
well. TONS of good stuff - no pictures, no videos, just
information. It'll keep you busy for a long time.

Check it all out here:


==> http://www.fitstep.com/goto/nononsense-dvd.htm


Now to training while sore...

----------------

Training With Muscle Soreness - Should You Do It? And Can It
Actually Help You Get BETTER Results?

It's safe to say that muscle soreness is something EVERY trainer
has experienced at some point in their career. Severity of muscle
soreness (known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS for
short) can range from mild discomfort when you move to the point
of being almost crippling (been there).

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is "should you
train when your muscles are still sore?" The answer is not quite
as simple as some people make it out to be, though. Many trainers
will tell you "if the muscle is still sore, don't train it." And,
in truth, for many people that's the safest answer.

But, in fact, by NOT training when you're sore, you could
actually be missing out on results AND slowing down your
recovery!

So what is muscle soreness? Muscle soreness is basically damage
to the muscle fibers as a result of training. Without going into
great detail on how it happens and how the recovery process
occurs (which is beyond the scope of this article), muscle
soreness is your body telling you that it's in need of repair.

Now how can it possibly be GOOD for you to train a muscle again
while it's still sore? Here's where we get into a contentious
area. After reading this, you may choose to agree with me or
disagree with me (if you've read my articles before, you know I'm
anything BUT conventional) but all I ask is that you consider my
arguments...

Now, if you've never trained a muscle hard two days in a row or
trained it while it was still quite sore, you're going to be in
for a shock at how unique a stimulus it can actually be. Sure
there are arguments against doing that, e.g. the muscle hasn't
fully recovered and you'll be tearing it down even more.

But consider this...from an adaptation standpoint, of the
following two scenarios, what would give your body the greater
stimulus for growth?

If you train the muscle hard once, you'll get a good growth
stimulus. Your body immediately starts sending nutrients to the
damaged area and starts rebuilding. When the muscle is fully
recovered and is no longer sore, you train the muscle again and
restart the process. This is the standard way of training and it
usually means directly training a muscle twice a week with at
least 2 or 3 days in between sessions for that specific muscle.

In the next scenario, you train the muscle hard then the next
day, train it hard again. Recovery is nowhere near complete and
the muscle is sore when you train it on the second day.

Here's the key...if you think about it, would the body see this
second scenario as a greater threat to its survival? Would the
body then ramp up its recovery processes to try and prepare for
the next challenge, which it (from its recent experience of being
hit with the same hard stimulus two days in a row) thinks is
coming again very soon?

In my experience, this absolutely happens. The body's response
to training is a very simple "stimulus-response" system, but your
body is also fully capable of sending more resources where more
resources are perceived as being needed.

When you eat, your body sends more blood to the digestive
system. Your brain doesn't tell it to do that, it just happens.
When you get hot, your body produces perspiration. The same thing
happens with training. For example, when you train your biceps,
your body sends blood and nutrients to the biceps for recovery.
It doesn't send it to the calves if the calves haven't been
worked.

If you train your biceps hard two days in a row, your body sees
this as a big threat to the biceps and will ramp up recovery
processes to specifically protect the biceps. If the biceps are
still sore... VERY big threat! THEN you allow the biceps to
recover. The two days of training has built much greater recovery
momentum, getting more results out of your training.

Here's yet another advantage to training a muscle when it's
still sore...even if you don't train it hard, you will still be
sending blood (and therefore nutrients) to that muscle, helping
it to recover faster than if you didn't train it at all. So even
if you're not up for a hard workout for a sore muscle, even
giving it some light to moderate work will still help with
recovery.

So I've talked about training a muscle two days in a row...what
about when you're scheduled to train it a couple of days later
and it's still sore at that point? The same concepts apply - your
body will STILL perceive that as a greater threat and increase
recovery.

The only times I would NOT recommend training when sore is if
the soreness causes you to use poor form in your exercises or if
the soreness is so bad that it makes the exercises too painful to
do.

For instance, if you just did deadlifts for the first time in
your life and the next day, you have a VERY hard time sitting
down without falling down into the seat, you may want to wait a
bit before doing deadlifts again. Your form will change because
of the pain and it could lead to injury.

But if your muscles are a bit stiff or sore, go ahead and train
them. Your body will ramp up your recovery processes in
response.

How do I know training the body with this frequency can be
effective? I'll give the best example I know (WARNING - if you're
a proponent of high-intensity, very infrequent training, this
will make you shiver in your boots!). This is NOT a program I
would recommend lightly to anyone because at this time, being on
vacation from work, I was basically only eating, sleeping and
training...no stress, no extraneous activity.

This was one of the most extraordinary programs I ever put
myself on, not only in terms of workload but results as well. It
involved doing total body workouts twice a day, six days a week.
This meant 12 total-body workouts per week, increasing the
workload every week.

I used partial training, negative training, low reps and high
reps. For the entire first week, I was EXTREMELY sore but I stuck
with it and trained everything twice a day, no matter how sore I
was.

After 3 weeks of this training, I backed off, still doing 12
training sessions per week but splitting the body in half - I was
still working my whole body every single day and doing partials
and negatives.

During the back-off phase, my recovery processes were
practically unstoppable! NOTHING I did could make me sore (and
believe me, I tried!) and my strength and muscle mass shot way
up.

Conventional wisdom would believe I would be completely totaled
at the end of a program like this, overtrained, small and weak.
My results? In 6 weeks, I went from 208 lbs in bodyweight to 228
lbs. And as an example in strength gain, I went from a 295 bench
press for 1 rep to 350 lbs for 1 rep.

Just fyi, I've posted the exact program I used to achieve this
on my membership site:

http://www.powerfultrainingsecrets.com

This is a VERY extreme example of training through muscle
soreness and using maximum workout frequency. But the take-home
lesson from it is this: you CAN get great results by training
even when you're sore! Your body will react to the stress and
ramp up recovery in response.

One quick tip: if you want to decrease post-workout soreness,
try taking 500 mg of Vitamin C about an hour before your workout.
This helps protect against muscle soreness.

So that's my thought! And if I remember correctly, I believe
Vince actually agrees with me on this topic and is a proponent of
training through soreness as long as it's not debilitating.

I'll be posting a link to this on my Facebook page so if you're
my friend on there, you'll see it and can hit me back with your
thoughts. If you're not my friend yet, what are you waiting for? :)
Friend me up!

http://www.facebook.com/nicknilsson

And here's the link again for his big DVD deal, if you want to
check out Vince's DVD deal:

http://www.fitstep.com/goto/nononsense-dvd.htm