Soreness = SURE Sign of Growth
It's always been a question of mine: if you're NOT sore in the morning (DOMS), are you still building the same amount of muscle? I read an interesting article today in MD about an experiment on the weightload placed on lab rats:
When they cut all the muscles in the rats' legs *EXCEPT* the calves, obviously, all the weight was put on the calve muscle. Now I realize that obviously, one step would be one rep, but how many steps would you want to take if every single muscle in your leg was torn, except for the calves? Probably a minimal amount, enough to get food and water. Oddly enough, the calve muscles nearly double in size and strength. Was this power and size added because of extremely increased weight AND moderate reps? Or just extremely increased weight with few reps?
You can't measure how sore a rat's leg muscle is, but you can see the size and test for strength in it. As I mentioned, both increased. Why is this though? What exactly caused that massive strength and size? I'll use an easier to relate to example, and have you pick what you think would work best.
Which of the following set layouts of Bench Press would yield the most growth:
EXAMPLE #1
Set # | Weight | Reps
1 | 200 | 12
2 | 175 | 10
3 | 150 | 8
4 | 100 | 6
5 | 75 | 8~failure (by failure, I'm talking about such a MEAN pump, you can't continue, which means there will be a good chance of soreness/DOMS in the morning)
EXAMPLE #2
1 | 275 | 10
2 | 200 | 7
3 | 150 | 3-6
There are the layouts, which do you think would bring on the most gains in muscle mass?