What you should retain from this post:

• Pump (swelling of the muscle throughout the workout) doesn’t guarantee you will build muscle;
• Muscle soreness on the days after the workout aren’t a guarantee that you will build muscle;
• Despite not being absolute indicators of the efficacy of a workout, they both indicate that the sore muscle was recruited during the workout;
• Progressive overload is the best indicator of muscle development.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO MAINTAIN YOUR DIET WHILE TRAVELLING!

Most gym goers want to get shredded or pack on as much muscle as they can in the shortest time possible. So, what serves as an indicator of them achieving their results? Instantaneous feedback, meaning pumps & pains.

The same thing applies to people who step on the treadmill for 30 minutes and lose 1kg. They think they lost 1kg of fat. Well, you wish. Sorry, life ain’t that easy.

Another example? Okay, we’re pumping through the workout, 5 sets of bicep curls supersetted with 5 sets of skullcrushers. Let’s measure the guns. Whoa!!! My arms grew 3 cm since I started the workout!! C’mon bro…if it were like that you’d have 60cm arms by the end of the week.

Instantaneous feedback when studying the efficacy of a workout lead to wrong conclusions, because they are based on short term measures and adaptations, instead of long term ones. To better understand what it is, let us explain the most commonly used measures in most gyms.

What is the famous “pump” we’ve all heard great tales about?
Pump is what is commonly called to the swelling of the muscle post workout. That swelling is due to increased blood flow in that area. The trained muscle becomes harder and swollen, hereby becoming bigger. The amount of “pump” is dictated by a few different factors like:

• Less rest between sets;
• Higher number of reps in a set;
• Total workout volume.

To sum this up, the more sets, with more reps, for more exercises you do, in a determined time period, the more pump you’ll have in the trained muscle(s).

Sore muscle, also known as “delayed onset muscle soreness”

As we are sure you’ve noticed, the pump is an indicator that goes away pretty quickly. That’s probably why muscle soreness is an indicator that is quite used, due to the time it takes to go away, and allowing you to wash your hands normally again (after a chest & Biceps session for example). Contrary to the pump, soreness is due to factors like:

• The type of exercise;
• How used your body is to a certain effort;
• A person’s body composition. For example, we can say that normally a man is less sore after training calves than a woman. On the other hand, women are less prone to muscle soreness after training hamstrings than men.

Why are the pump and muscle soreness (immediate indicators) not good indicators on the efficacy of a workout?

The reason is very simple! The purpose of a workout isn’t to have you limping for a week, or getting you biceps as big as Coleman’s for 15 minutes. The purpose is progression. So, if we give a huge amount of stimulus to a certain muscle, and the next workout we come in and don’t give it a bit more than we did the previous workout, the muscle won’t have a reason to evolve. The pump might be there, as well as the soreness, but if your workouts aren’t progressive, after a few months you will conclude that you haven’t made any relevant muscle gains.

SEE ALSO: MACRO NUTRIENTS: WHAT ARE THEY? WHAT ARE THEY FOR?!

The Cure: Progressive Overload

If you progressively overload the muscles, throughout a realistic period of time (which is the fundamental basis of all of our workout programs), your body will evolve despite the amount of pump or soreness you feel the next day.

However, the pump and soreness can be good indicators that the muscle in question was recruited during your workout. Don’t you go and be sore from your Lats after doing a Tricep workout!! That would be hard. But still, many people don’t know how to use their Pectoral muscles. Because of that, they end up putting too much strain on the anterior Deltoid and the Triceps. This way, the target muscle isn’t correctly recruited. Another example is when squatting, some people only use their Legs, and leave the Glutes out of the equation. The pump and soreness, in these cases, will be a good indicator if you managed to work the target muscle or not!

Just to conclude, don’t focus on the pump and soreness to evaluate the efficacy of a workout. What really matters is if your performance has progressed.