On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Philip Thrift wrote:

> Do you get the same degree of pump in all the muscles in a
> single-session whole-body as if you just concentrated on one part that
> session? I don't.

I have no way to quantify "degree of pump," nor am I even sure
that I know what it is.  Is it just that *feeling* that one has
after a workout?  Then I'd have to say that it depends on the
workout.  Some leave me feeling more "pumped" than others.  But I
don't know what that feeling has to do with muscle gain, loss, or
retention, which I *can* quantify.

> >The fact is, I haven't lost muscle in years, even
> >with occasional lapses of no strength training at all.  So, loss
> >of LBM is not an issue;
>
> That is very odd.

I don't see why it's odd.  There seems to be a growing body of
literature suggesting that occasional high-intensity stimulation
of muscles is enough to produce an adaptation response, which
will build muscle in an untrained person, and should suffice to
maintain it.  My workouts are definitely high-intensity.  Every
muscle group gets pushed to complete failure.  And I am
definitely not losing LBM.

> I am marginally building muscle or maybe rebuilding muscle; maybe that's
> enough. I would have a problem bench pressing Monday and doing
> something like racketball the next - I would think my muscles would
> shrink.

Why would racketball cause your muscles to shrink?  I don't
follow this at all.

On the face of it, it seems to me that if I am working out in
such a way that my main concern when I'm not working out is to
minimize my activity levels to keep my muscles from shrinking,
then something is wrong.  I may be wrong, but I like to think
that strength training would make me *more* capable of engaging
in and benefiting from other forms of exercise, not less so.

Todd Moody
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