How long after Carpel Tunnel Surgery should you wait before starting to lift again?
Carpel tunnel repair jobs don’t come with lifetime guarantees. This is why much thought needs to be given to the decision of whether to have the operation done or not. The problem itself isn’t solved, but the symptoms are often alleviated by this procedure. There is no guarantee that the symptoms won’t return after you start using your hands again.
Whether an open or endoscopic surgery method is chosen will affect recovery times, as much more tissue damage is sustained with the former technique.
You will probably leave heavy free weight lifting for at least 6 weeks post-op, the longer you leave it, the less risk of sustaining further damage. Your doctor may be careful and prudently suggest a 3-month period. But then, you’ll have to deal with another problem, the muscle atrophy resulting from a longer layoff.
My advice would be to start back slowly with your resistance training using the machines available to you rather than jump right into free weights. Machines, while having some downsides, but allow a more controlled lifting experience, as that surgery will initially leave your wrist in an unstable configuration for quite a while.
As mentioned, the surgery is not magic. Basically, what it does is cut your carpel ligament and probably some tissue to enlarge a space and release some pressure on a nerve.
Remember, that tendon was there for a reason and sniping it doesn’t make your wrist more robust. So, choose wisely.
Can You Alter The Shape Of Your Face By Building UP The Muscles There?
Oh, there are lots & lots of face, jaw and neck muscles that will definitely affect what your face might look like.
The main muscles of concern are going to be the sternocleidomastoid, the platysma and the muscles of the zygomatic arch area.
But, it is not just these underlying muscles that affect your particular look, but also bone structure, subcutaneous fat and epidermal tissue integrity.
Photos of Tom Platz notwithstanding (the classic moon face, mostly due to water retention from heavy hormonal use and certain adrenal conditions like Cushing’s), there is a pretty fair scope under your control for building up muscles without costly and perhaps unlucky visits to your local plastic surgeon that can potentially alter the shape of your face.F
Which Protein Powder Does The Body Use Best: WHEY or CASEIN?
When you ask a question like this, what you are probably interested in is Biological Value (BV) of the protein source. However, there is also a whole slew of other formulae to assess various other protein attributes.[1]
The two applicable measurements of BV that are currently in vogue are:
- Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)[2] ;
- Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS)[3]
Neither of these rating systems directly addresses questions of either the rate of absorption or the efficacy of the protein source (how effective the protein source is in actually building muscle), but we certainly can make inferences from the information that they do supply.
What they both attempting to measure is to what extent the body (including its microbiome, if the PDCAAS method is used) has absorbed a protein source, i.e the initial amount minus how much of the initial protein mass is leftover to be excreted.
The answer to this query will also be the answer to the question you have posed here.
The quick answer to this is:
WHEY > CASIEN
Whey is digested to a fuller extent than Casein.
Footnotes
As Covid-19 continues, many people are purchasing home exercise equipment, how will gyms survive?
The vast majority of home gym sales are impulse buys. After a week or a month, the customer realises that he or she has wasted money, is bored and is not much fitter than when they started.
The customer soon decides that if he or she wants to get fit, a gym is where it’s at.
Now, as far as COVid-19 is concerned, here’s where I get a tad controversial:
Authorities will soon come to their senses and realise that the vast majority of the population feels that ”quality of life matters.” To sacrifice one’s well-being, personal freedoms, health (including mental health) and autonomy to avoid the chance of infection isn’t viable, it just won’t work as a long term proposition.
No matter how many terrifying ”COViD is the NEW NORM” reports the media bombards us with…it isn’t. No matter what group of politicians vying for power decides people are sheep and can easily be frightened out of their freedoms, it won’t be…at least, not for any significant length of time.
As long as gyms take reasonable precaution, maintain good hygiene, adopt to necessary governmental demands, provide customer satisfaction and so on….
Gyms are not about to disappear any time soon.
People need them.
Uh-Uh…Not this week.
Is it bad to take a cold shower or jump into cold water right after training to reduce DOMS?
To reduce Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness? Well, you wouldn’t think so but looking at this link from Live Science provides a difference of opinion. True, this article discusses the negative effects of ice baths after resistance & strength training only-but it is reasonable to assume that you are going to need to tread carefully when considering taking post-training anti-inflammatory measures of any kind, either through supplementation, drugs or cryotherapeutic actions, if you want the body to adapt by getting stronger & bigger.
Ice baths and cold showers may be exhilarating and reduce post-training pain, but probably at a cost.
There is the real possibility of interfering with actions of the precursor catabolic processes necessary to stimulate subsequent anabolic, muscle-building processes, processes which depend heavily upon inflammation to initiate.
Unfortunately, it looks as if no free lunches are being provided here. Most probably you are going to be required to pay with some pain and inflammation dues to avoid singing those hypertrophy blues.
How long will muscle memory and strength last if you take time off from training (say 3-6 months)?
The concept of ”Muscle Memory” or neuromuscular conditioning, is basically a form of efficiency developed through practice and repetition similar to any other physical competency.
It is sometimes treated with a kind of superstitious awe as a form of voodoo, presenting some variety of magical property that perhaps will allow the practitioner to go away on a journey to a distant land whose people have never heard of a dumbbell, not lift for years, come back and in a matter of weeks or days get back to their old hulk ways.
The answer to the question of ”how long muscle memory lasts” is that:
It lasts for a while.
How long a while depends on a variety of things including how long you have trained, your age, your physical activity level (other than weightlifting), health and nutrition status (protein intake/injury/surgery), genetics and so on. Strength is only one aspect of muscle memory, hypertrophy, lifting efficiency, power, endurance, etc. are also important components which also go comprise this concept.
A ballpark estimate of mine will be that in 3–6 months of not-training (or detraining), for the majority of people who have trained less than 5 years, very little, if any muscle memory will be in evidence when training is resumed.
Where the hell did I put all that muscle? I know that I stashed it somewhere.
I find myself wanting to eat lots of cheese every single day. Is this normal and what do I do about the unhealthy saturated fats in cheese?
As a matter of fact, I am a cheese addict from way back.
At one sitting, I can easily eat 1/2 Kilo of this highly addictive food.
Interestingly, cheese contains casomorphins, chemicals very akin to, yes you guessed it, opioids. In fact, research suggests that many of the casomorphins are more potent than morphine[1]
Finally, a reason for our cheese lust! We are addicts!
Now, on to the question of:
is this addiction good or bad for us?
Experimental data suggests ambivalence here.
There may be both a ”yes” and ”no” answer to this question.
I suspect the answer will ultimately be along similar lines addressing the potential health benefits of alcohol consumption.
It is probably going depend on the exigencies dictated by your genetic predisposition (some of us can handle saturated fats better than others) and the sheer quantity of this tasty substance that you consume.
Footnotes
Say hello to my little friends.
Should you only take creatine on the days you lift?
It’s human nature to suppose that there is a formula or a mandatory procedure for things. Or a strong intuitive feeling that perhaps a magick spell with special magick sounding words spelt in a particular way in the traditional form will work better than just higgidly-piggidly-making-it-up-as-you-go-merrily-along.
But sometimes, it’s all irrelevant; it just doesn’t matter either way. Or, if it does, it may only increase the efficacy by so small an amount, that it isn’t even worth the candle.
Creatine is one of these supplements that appears to lend itself to this laissez-faire attitude.
Even taking it with caffeine, which diminishes effectiveness by around 5% or so, really doesn’t matter enough for us to stress over. 95% is quite good enough and is more than compensated for by the positive effects of that pretraining cup of coffee.
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I began using creatine when it became commercially available in 1990s. Started using it with clients not long thereafter. At the time it was expensive at around £200 per kilo, you can now purchase pharmaceutical grade wholesale for about 1/10 that.
Over the years, I have found that it probably doesn’t matter, after physiological saturation is achieved, how you use it, on training or none-training days, any excess will be excreted by the body. A few may find it beneficial to use prior to training for psychological (placebo) benefits.
As far as the question ”does it work” most people will fall into the following categories: responder, less sensitive responder and non (or very low) responder. A very small percentage of potential users may suffer from digestive issues when using it.
Only the most responsive users will be sensitive to the scheduling of its use, the other two categories, planing will be less of a matter for concern.
Since it is relatively cheap, safe and widely available, a loading phase (say 10–20g daily for 5/7 days) followed by a 5g/day or two-on-day-off dosage pattern, regardless of your activity level.
This simple procedure seems to work out fine for just about everyone.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO GAIN MUSCLE USING A HIGH SET/REP RANGE?
Yes.
What the optimal training range with regard to sets and reps is (i.e. whether you respond more to heavy weight, lower volume or lighter weight, higher volume) depends on your genetics.
I’ve been training for over 40 years now. After the first year or so, I realised that anything less than 15 reps/set & 10–20 sets per body part didn’t work or make much sense to me. I didn’t get bigger or stronger with heavy, low rep work. All I got was injuries, frustration and bouts of tendonitis.
True, at first I had a little trouble with some of my mates, who loved to lift heavy and were a little disgusted with my ‘’pansy-assed attitude’’. Now, after most of them have hit middle- age, it is hard to find them in the gym any more.
Where are my mates? Why are they no longer in the gym? Where did they all go?
They are no longer in the gym presumably because they have been permanently injured out, or they have lost the necessary motivation.
As they got older, it got harder. They just couldn’t lift as heavily, as easily, or as pain-free, as they once did….and so, they quit.
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In recent years, genetic testing has become affordable. Now, whether you think it is quite there as useful scientific reality or not, is another matter. I happen to think it is. I think that, as long as it is interpreted properly, it is well worth the time, effort and cost…providing that you take the resulting data with a grain (or more) of salt.
A couple of years ago, I had some genetic testing done and used several providers to double and triple check the outcomes. Results came back with data which generally had a high degree of agreement, indicating that I had a peculiar lack of the genes associated with strength, power, tendon integrity and fast-twitch muscle fibres. On the other hand, I was pretty richly supplied with genes relating to slow-twitch fibre volume, endurance, high IGF levels, nerve modularity, capacity for hyperplasia and other interesting qualities that might indicate a stronger endurance/aerobic orientation rather than strength and power orientation. Odd for a bodybuilder, nevertheless true for me.
Which, of course, many years of experience, trial and error and doing-it-the-hard-way had already taught me.
The way you train depends on who you are.
Myostatin Inhibits Muscle Growth. How Much Creatine Is Needed To Kill Myostatin?
An intriguing question.
However, one assuming a direct correlation between Myostatin Suppression and Creatine supplementation. Surprisingly, with all the interest generated concerning this matter, there is still little proof of it.
I would like to believe that a cheap, relatively safe, readily available supplement like CRE is an effective MYO suppressor. One can only assume that the lack of research concerning the creatine monohydrate (it’s most effective form) and Myostatin Connection is due to the lack of financial incentive to those concerned like Big Pharma.
So, the continuing surprise here is that there has, as yet, not been a credible study proving a direct causal relationship between CRE & MYO, one that is based exclusively on the use of CRE, without the simultaneous use of resistance training. Popularly cited research published back in 2009 can be found here: Effects of oral creatine and resistance training on serum myostatin and GASP-1 .
Even a more recent meta-analysis fails to relate direct causation of MYO inhibition by CRE: Effect of creatine supplementation during resistance training.
So, although it has been continually proven that CRE has a direct effect on muscle mass (in combination with resistance training), the actual mechanisms involved are still unclear and needing some sound elucidation.
My guess is that genetic factors will heavily influence the extent to which CRE inhibits MYO, once that elusive relationship has been well established.
To finally get an answer out to your question, let me first provide the following disclaimer:
As there is yet to be found in the literature concrete evidence that CRE inhibits MYO, it is only a speculative assumption that there is, in fact, a dosage related mechanism in play.