Chasing The "Pump"

IT Burns so good

Filling your muscles with Blood

You literally get stronger by tricking your body to keep blood in your muscles (via contractions).

Your body interprets this as a threat, so it sends a bunch of resources to your muscles making them bigger and stronger, voila.

Why This Matters

It’s important to understand that all exercise is based around adaptation. With a weak stimulus or stressor your body is pretty much like “meh, whatever” and doesn’t really respond much. This is why doing the same thing over and over is ineffective. Your body has been there and done that.

So you must venture into the uncommon, to get better. Sometimes this means simply lifting heavier, or doing more reps.

Applying this

Can be done in a myriad of ways. An easy way to challenge the same muscle with multiple varying exercises in a row. For example, a bench press, followed by DB bench or pushups.

Since the muscle is already fatigued, continuing with a simpler exercise can reinforce your body continuing to recruit more muscle fibers, with less weight. It’s similar to when you see people do x amount of reps 50lbs, then 40lbs, then 30lbs, then 20lbs, over and over again to complete failure.

This is typically associated with some muscle soreness, which is a good indicator of adaptation when managed.