No pain, and slow gain

joejoem

When I first started working out I would leave the gym and not be able to lift the phone to my ear for the next two days. Nowadays I train, leave the gym and feel nothing, no pain, no discomfert, no nothing. Its really annoying. I am still gaining, slowly, and the results look well but I feel like Im pretending or something. I love the pain, its what makes you feel good the next day, like there is a reason for it. I up my weights every few weeks, I vary my excersises a little, but not a huge amountm this is why I assume I havent felt "the burn" in ages. I am switching gyms this month, and I was speaking to one of the trainers in the new one who said he would work out a new work out with me, I am hoping this will spice things up a little.

But is it normal not to get the pains after a certain stage? Should I be upping my weights further? (at the moment with the weights I use, I almost fail on the last rep of the last set) or should I just completley change the way I work out. Bear in mind nearly all the excersises I do are compounds.

Cheers

Dragan

It's totally normal, it's just a sign that your body is adapting to the stresses placed upon it. This is good as it means muscle growth. I suggest you start experimenting with things like super sets and drop sets and different training styles for some added benefit.

As for upping the weight, you should be trying to do this everyday dude!

Transform

Pain is not always a good indicator i would personally change to different exercises almost every session for variety.

Its more important to aim to increase your weights gradually anyway and i personally find the best way to do that is variety with weight, sets, reps etc

Remember its better to be able to train regualrly than not at all so build in easy weeks into your training e.g. 1 week of 6 should be a lighter week in terms of weight lifted

100gSoma

joejoe Im the same. the pain isn not there anymore but Im still doing the same or more work... your body is just use to it. If you took a month off and went back you'd feel the pain again. its normal. keep it going.

hardtrainer

As Dragan said, you should be aiming to up your weights each and every day you train. It's very easy to get complacent and feel like you're working out hard, but just how hard are you pushing yourself? You want to get the most from your workouts and that means constant progress, either more lifts or more weight, depending on your goals.

As for not feeling the pain afterwards anymore, that is normal in one sense, but it also tells you something, your body is adapting as has been mentioned. While that is good because it indicates muscle growth which you obviously want, it is also a sign that it's time to mix things up a bit, keep your muscles guessing. Remember that your body and in particular your muscles want to be the most efficient they can be, so once they get used to something they find a way to perform that with less strain, less energy, less tearing. This is obviously something we don't want to happen since we want to continue to grow.

My advice would be to change your workout, your current splits if you divide your muscle groups, also change you exercises in each workout, and mix them up, change the ordering around, this will keep your body guessing and keep it growing (and importantly, you'll know you've really worked the muscles the following day when you feel the pain).

BrianD3

I agree with the previous posters, this adaptation is normal. You should vary things around to challenge your body and prevent youself getting stale. I personally experiment with different compound movements/variations every few weeks. Eg 2 weeks ago I started doing 1 legged deadlifts with low weight. 1 week later I did a (two legged) deadlift session and felt a lot stronger and deadlifted around 8 kg more than I ever had before after being stuck at the same weight for quite a while. I also got DOMS and a major rush of endophins from doing the 1 legged deads.

If you experiment like this there are so many exercises, variations, regimes to do that you will never get stale. Even if you do weight training for the next 50 years.

SBob

If the pain gradually goes away should you start to increase your work outs per week? i.e. when i started there was no way i could work the same body part again in the same week,it would be too sore. Is it advisable to stick to the once a week for each body part or should you be looking at upping this?...

g'em

SBob wrote:

Is it advisable to stick to the once a week for each body part or should you be looking at upping this?...

stick to it, but lift heavier.

I take a break from training every 8-10 weeks for a week and do a complete overhaul of my program to keep everything fresh. After my week break at Christmas my muscles are now screaming in glorious agony even in my second week back in training. Changing your program every few weeks keeps the body guessing and stops you from getting bored. By week four I'll stop feelign the same burn in my muscles the day after the workout but when that happens I add an extra rep or two to some sets to make sure I'm working to fatigue.