Does More Soreness Result In More Muscle Growth?

A new study answers the age-old question about the relationship between muscle soreness and muscle growth.

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Today’s Health Upgrade

Fact or Fiction
Stop chasing soreness
Do you have healthy blood pressure?

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Nutrition
Fact Or Fiction: Does Blending Fruit Remove The Fiber?

Adding more fiber is one of the best changes you can make to your diet. An analysis of 58 clinical trials found that people who eat more fiber-loaded carbs have healthier cholesterol and body weight and reduce their risk of diabetes, cancer, stroke, and heart disease by up to 30 percent.

Unfortunately, research suggests that only 5 percent of people eat the recommended amount of fiber per day, which is 25 grams for women and 38 grams daily for men.

Adding fruits and vegetables to a smoothie is one of the easiest ways to sneak more fiber into your diet. But does the blending change how much fiber you digest?

Rest assured, blending fruits and vegetables does not destroy the fiber content. Although blending could adjust the structure, which might change how food is digested, you’ll still get all the benefits of fiber. (For the record, “juicing” a fruit differs from blending and can cause some fiber to be lost).

If you want a fiber boost, berries and passion fruit are loaded with fiber. You can also add chia or flaxseed, as well as psyllium husk, for an additional fiber boost to your favorite smoothie. Adding just one cup of raspberries and 1 tablespoon of psyllium husk to your smoothie would give you 15 grams and make it easier to hit your daily goal.

Training
Stop Chasing Soreness

Have you ever worked out, not felt sore, and then thought you needed to spend more time in the gym and do more exercises, reps, and sets until you hurt the next day? It’s time to retire that mindset.

New research (once again) found that soreness is not an indicator of muscle growth.

The study compared “advanced” training methods—drop sets and pre-exhausting a muscle—with traditional straight sets (where you do a set, rest, and repeat). The researchers made sure that each group lifted the same total volume. In other words, while the drop sets included more reps, because the weight was lighter, the total work completed (reps x sets x weight) was similar in all groups.

Even though some participants utilized the most exhausting and challenging techniques, there wasn’t any change in strength or muscle. However, the groups doing the drop sets experienced more overall fatigue and soreness.

The takeaway? There are many ways to build muscle and strength, and advanced techniques can be very effective if programmed correctly.

At some point, doing more reps might create more soreness, but that doesn’t mean you’re building more muscle. So you want to be mindful of “junk reps” that will increase fatigue, slow your recovery, and possibly cause your next workout to suffer.

A great program will have you push yourself near failure, give your body enough time for recovery (either between sets or workouts — or both), select the right exercises, and help you improve over time — instead of just feeling more exhausted.

Program design has many nuances, and no single amount of reps and sets will apply to everyone. It depends on exercise selection, training experience, reps, sets, rest periods, and load. But if you want a good range, research suggests that about 6 to 8 hard sets per muscle per workout is more than enough to maximize growth (you can do more or less depending on workout design and how often you exercise).

If you want to experience the difference of custom workouts designed by Arnold and his team of experts, check out The Pump app.

Image of The Week
Is Your Blood Pressure Healthy?

High blood pressure is a red flag for many health issues, but most people aren’t sure where their blood pressure stands.

Step 1: Get your blood pressure tested (you can even do it at home)

Step 2: Use this guide from cardiologist Dr. Danielle Belardo to help you find a healthy range, understand what causes high blood pressure, and the differences between primary and secondary hypertension.