Muscle Building Workouts, Having A Pump Does Not Mean You Are Gaining Muscle

October 1, 2010 by: Ricardo D Argence

If you’ve been working out for a while, I’m sure you will understand what I will talk about. It sometimes happens that, after some really heavy sets of your routine, you start to have a really amazing feeling. Your muscles feels tight and engorged with blood. And when you look in the mirror they look full and vascular. What you get is nothing but a “pump”. And as I told you, if you have ever had one, you’ll agree with me it’s really, really great (or maybe you agree with Arnold who said it’s like having an orgasm).

A “Pump” is nothing but the tight, blood-congested feeling in a muscle after it has been intensely trained. Muscle pump is caused by a rapid influx of blood into the muscles to remove fatigue toxins and replace supplies of fuel and oxygen. But it doesn’t matter how great you feel, if the goal you’re trying to reach is to build muscle.

A pump is in no way indicative of a successful workout. It doesn’t mean it’s bad for you to achieve one during your session, it’s simply a natural result of intense weight training. But if you focus your workout in getting a pump instead of muscle gain, you are making a huge mistake, and it will tax you.

Which is better, the pump or the feeling of totally exhausting your muscles to the point of failure when it is nearly impossible to pick up a pencil? Good question because I can promise that one is asked a lot. People love the feeling of being pumped and the blood flowing through their muscles. “Dude, this will give you a crazy pump!”, a guy in the gym tells to another one in the gym, thinking there’s no better way to make their muscles grow.

A pump is simply the result of extra blood within the muscle tissue. Think of it this way: if I took a pair of 10 pound dumbbells and performed 300 reps of a bench press movement, I would achieve an incredible pump. If muscle pumps meant muscle growth, then super light weight, ultra high rep programs would be the most effective way to grow. Any serious lifter with half a brain knows that this simply is not the case.

Take your workout records (in terms of weight and reps) from the previous week and compare it to the current week. Did you improve? Were you able to either increase the resistance slightly on each exercise, or perform an extra rep or two? If so, you had a successful workout, regardless of how much blood you were able to pump into your muscle tissue.

Building muscle mass and strength is all about training with 100% intensity on every given set and then striving to improve from week to week. If you are able to consistently achieve this, your muscle size and strength will increase faster than you ever thought possible, with or without a pump.

Don’t waste your time, effort and money on B.S. “Miracle Programs” that don’t deliver results! Learn the honest truth revealed by a real weight lifting expert and at last start noticing the gains you deserve. You can also read our Weight Lifting Exercises and articles.

Share

Add A Comment

*
Security Code: