Even some friends who have trained for many years will be obsessed with the generation of pump feeling. What's more, they think that if there is no sense of pumping, the training is not in place.
First, the origin of pump sense
Simply put, the muscles become bigger and harder after congestion, which makes people feel numb.
But in fact, the origin of pumping sensation is not as simple as congestion, and the generation of pumping sensation has nothing to do with congestion.
To put it bluntly, it is generally believed that pumping sensation is caused by a large amount of blood pouring into muscle cells after training. Unfortunately, this is a wrong understanding, so we have produced many wrong rumors.
Second, talk about some theories.
1, students who have taken biology classes will know the osmotic pressure of cells. A typical experiment is to soak a fresh fruit in water with very high salt concentration Before long, the whole fruit will dry up. This is because of the phenomenon of osmotic pressure.
The same is true of human cells. When we carry out a certain intensity of training, our muscle cells will produce a lot of lactic acid, and ATP (including lactic acid) will be hydrolyzed to produce H+ (hydrogen ion), which will make the osmotic pressure in our cells rise rapidly, and plasma and some cell fluids in the blood will enter our muscle cells at the same time, which will make our muscle cells expand and enlarge.
In other words, what actually enters our cells is not blood, but plasma and cell fluid in blood.
2. Does pumping bring nutrition to muscles?
The most typical pump sensing logic is:
Strength training pays attention to pump feeling. Adequate pumping feeling is not only a sign of muscle fiber tearing, but also can bring enough oxygen and nutrition to your muscles. When you finally pump all the blood into the muscle, the nutrients are the most abundant at this time, which is not suitable for training other parts and dispersing these nutrients.
This seems to be the most reasonable logic, which explains the importance of pump feeling in fitness combined with common sense phenomenon.
But! First of all, strength training does not pay attention to the sense of pumping. If you want to gain muscle, you should pay more attention to the theory of progressive overload. Secondly, we know that muscle cells swell only because they rush into some plasma and cell fluids, not real blood.
Secondly, even if all the blood rushes in, the ability of blood to provide nutrition is mainly due to the flow of blood. The faster the flow rate, the more oxygen will be delivered and provided, that is, the more nutrients will be available. Therefore, it is not that the more blood rushes into the target muscle, the more nutrients there are, but that the faster the blood flows, the greater the nutrients are.
Finally, because the liquid filled into the muscle is not blood, in fact, when we have a severe pumping feeling, it is difficult for blood to "flow" into the muscle because the muscle is too tight. At this time, what we need to do is to "stretch" to relax muscles, so that blood can better circulate between muscles and achieve better muscle gain effect. (So the result of stretching after practice is actually to increase muscles and let them grow)
Third, the direct relationship between pump feeling and muscle gain?
The answer is: there is no direct relationship. Muscle growth may occur when there is a sense of pumping, or it may occur when there is no sense of pumping. Therefore, it is completely wrong to judge whether you have practiced enough with a sense of pump.
You must choose a weight, and each group can do exactly 6- 12, which is within this range (although it is more accurate to measure with maximum strength, that is what it means).
So many people do groups below 6- 12, and the pump feeling is not very strong; But below 12-20, make sure you feel full of pumps. So indirectly, it can be seen that pumping sensation has nothing to do with muscle gain.
Conclusion: Pump sensation is not directly related to muscle gain.