Training the slow-twitch fibers?

success23

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Hello. This forum is all about oxidative phosphorylation and slow twitch fibers have a lot of mitochondria and rely on oxidative phosphorylation to get the job done so it makes sense to train them. What do you think? I will incorporate some slooooooow lifting from now on.
 

Sani

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Hello. This forum is all about oxidative phosphorylation and slow twitch fibers have a lot of mitochondria and rely on oxidative phosphorylation to get the job done so it makes sense to train them. What do you think? I will incorporate some slooooooow lifting from now on.
You're funny.
 

Eberhardt

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I know. So far i can;t find any benefit of slow twitch hypertrophy other than increase in muscle mass.
makes you have better muscular endurance but you probably already knew that.... also it is easier to reach the slow fibers by really high reps(like in the hundreds- think imitating physcial work) then actuall slow lifting) though they are slightly less explosive they are more slow to turn on then slow to contract
 

Sani

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There is no way you're gonna be able to keep that kind of training up for long because it's gonna get hella boring pretty god damn soon! I train mainly explosive 4-6 reps only and it's so fun. I hate high reps, I get bored and rather not train at all.
 

Eberhardt

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There is no way you're gonna be able to keep that kind of training up for long because it's gonna get hella boring pretty god damn soon! I train mainly explosive 4-6 reps only and it's so fun. I hate high reps, I get bored and rather not train at all.
We all have difference tolerances and preferences. I dont do that but I have no problems to do such things- but that does not constitute a devaluation of your character- just illustrating we are all different - I have other things I cant stand :)
 

Dr. B

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There is no way you're gonna be able to keep that kind of training up for long because it's gonna get hella boring pretty god damn soon! I train mainly explosive 4-6 reps only and it's so fun. I hate high reps, I get bored and rather not train at all.
makes you have better muscular endurance but you probably already knew that.... also it is easier to reach the slow fibers by really high reps(like in the hundreds- think imitating physcial work) then actuall slow lifting) though they are slightly less explosive they are more slow to turn on then slow to contract
Hello. This forum is all about oxidative phosphorylation and slow twitch fibers have a lot of mitochondria and rely on oxidative phosphorylation to get the job done so it makes sense to train them. What do you think? I will incorporate some slooooooow lifting from now on.
doesnt simply walking train them? also the longer you workout or the more reps you do, trains them. even 8 to 12 reps trains them. sprints may start off being fast twitch and slow twitch but if you keep doing sprints repeatedly, youll also be training slow twitch

you probably cant do 100% fast twitch only training, but the way to get as close to it as possible is to not run or walk at all, and to just do like single rep sets and extremely limited, low rep training. like the olympic powerlifters
 

Eberhardt

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doesnt simply walking train them? also the longer you workout or the more reps you do, trains them. even 8 to 12 reps trains them. sprints may start off being fast twitch and slow twitch but if you keep doing sprints repeatedly, youll also be training slow twitch

you probably cant do 100% fast twitch only training, but the way to get as close to it as possible is to not run or walk at all, and to just do like single rep sets and extremely limited, low rep training. like the olympic powerlifters
I sort of agree with you. I was considering saying from ten reps up but as you are correctly stating there will always be involvement of both type 1 and 2 and fast and slow switch. My example of the "hundreds" is to maximize slow over fast. I definately agree that single reps is the most fast switch.
The "problem" with running and also walking though far less so is that you involve the cardio-vascular system as well, and that might involve exhaustion, increased cortisol and lactic acid and long distance running actually decreases mitochondria as these effect overpower the benefits of the slow twitch activation.

I must say though that I am a big fan of walking and even do some running though not for over 30 minutes at the time and try to keep nosebreathing to minimize the downside - I chose the example of really high rep strength training as that is the only way - possibly with the extemption of walking (within reason) - I know of that does increase slow twitch WITHOUT causing to much stress from "breathless" exercise. I guess hating high rep in itself might compromise the positive health effects of it and be contra-indicative for doing such exercises due to the stress.

Just wanted to pinpoint that muscular endurance and cardio-vascular endurance are not the same, though experience tells they influence each other. I can for example do more pushups when I am in good cardiovascular shape. I have read btw that peat recomends bodyweight exercises, light dumbbell work and walking though I am not a very big fan of him as an exercise instructor lol. those things surely dont harm you
 

Dr. B

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I sort of agree with you. I was considering saying from ten reps up but as you are correctly stating there will always be involvement of both type 1 and 2 and fast and slow switch. My example of the "hundreds" is to maximize slow over fast. I definately agree that single reps is the most fast switch.
The "problem" with running and also walking though far less so is that you involve the cardio-vascular system as well, and that might involve exhaustion, increased cortisol and lactic acid and long distance running actually decreases mitochondria as these effect overpower the benefits of the slow twitch activation.

I must say though that I am a big fan of walking and even do some running though not for over 30 minutes at the time and try to keep nosebreathing to minimize the downside - I chose the example of really high rep strength training as that is the only way - possibly with the extemption of walking (within reason) - I know of that does increase slow twitch WITHOUT causing to much stress from "breathless" exercise. I guess hating high rep in itself might compromise the positive health effects of it and be contra-indicative for doing such exercises due to the stress.

Just wanted to pinpoint that muscular endurance and cardio-vascular endurance are not the same, though experience tells they influence each other. I can for example do more pushups when I am in good cardiovascular shape. I have read btw that peat recomends bodyweight exercises, light dumbbell work and walking though I am not a very big fan of him as an exercise instructor lol. those things surely dont harm you
the more reps you do the more it turns into a cardio workout. I mean at a certain point you could just stop using a dumbell entirely and just rep out the motions of a curl or bench press till you fatigue? lol. I think the rep range of 7 up till 18 reps is good for everything, muscular development, and both types muscle fibers. some exercises you can benefit from doing super high reps like 30-80 reps per set. like dumbell or barbell shrugs, as well as calf raises, forearm work...
 

Sani

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the more reps you do the more it turns into a cardio workout. I mean at a certain point you could just stop using a dumbell entirely and just rep out the motions of a curl or bench press till you fatigue? lol. I think the rep range of 7 up till 18 reps is good for everything, muscular development, and both types muscle fibers. some exercises you can benefit from doing super high reps like 30-80 reps per set. like dumbell or barbell shrugs, as well as calf raises, forearm work...
Yes, but you have to understand that when you do reps in 4-8 range you get maximum muscle fiber recruitment from the very first rep. With high reps like 18 reps, you only stimulate muscle growth from the last couple of reps and the first 15 reps were just waste of time.
 

Dr. B

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Yes, but you have to understand that when you do reps in 4-8 range you get maximum muscle fiber recruitment from the very first rep. With high reps like 18 reps, you only stimulate muscle growth from the last couple of reps and the first 15 reps were just waste of time.
why is that? going to failure is what counts? struggling to lift etc?
 

Eberhardt

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It does not turn into cardio by increasing reps. As I said its some overlap. I can illustrate it best by taking an exercise like a grip trainer. You will not get winded even by doing 1000 reps though you will be muscularly exhausted.
 

Sani

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It does not turn into cardio by increasing reps. As I said its some overlap. I can illustrate it best by taking an exercise like a grip trainer. You will not get winded even by doing 1000 reps though you will be muscularly exhausted.
Yes it does. Just try doing full squats high reps with light weight, it's pretty taxing to your respiratory system way before your legs even come close to muscular failure. When you do full squats in 4-6 rep range your legs reach muscular failure way before you start to feel out of breath.
 

Eberhardt

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Yes it does. Just try doing full squats high reps with light weight, it's pretty taxing to your respiratory system way before your legs even come close to muscular failure. When you do full squats in 4-6 rep range your legs reach muscular failure way before you start to feel out of breath.
This is just physiologically nonsensical. I am not claiming cardio does not exist. Cardio vascular taxation happens if the anaerobe capacity is exeeded. That happens most easily if you use multiple large misclegroups simultaneuslu, as with running, rowing or indeed squats. That two phemomenon can be made to occur simultaeneously, does not make them the same phenomenon. This is illustrated well by the example of griptraining. Maybe bicep curl is a more relateable example.

There are many possible topics to discuss about the effects of both full body exercises and cardio benefits (and drawbacks), but this thread was specified as addressing slow twitch specifically. Since some people are adverse to "breathless excercise", and specially for the sake of specificity I did not use methods that also include cardiovascular training as examples. But if one prefers this of course could be combined with cardio.

On a sidenote I can do around 50 rep squats with about my bodyweight added to a bar and still not get winded, though horribly sore and tired
 

Dr. B

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It does not turn into cardio by increasing reps. As I said its some overlap. I can illustrate it best by taking an exercise like a grip trainer. You will not get winded even by doing 1000 reps though you will be muscularly exhausted.
everything is always a mix, even running likely builds up your calf and quad muscles, just the act of running, just not to the extent of lifting with legs.
if you can do 1000 reps of something, that may be comparable to simply doing the motion.
like you may be able to do 1000 reps of bicep curl, without any added weight. just doing the motion. the percentage of cardio becomes higher. or at least, youre working more on muscular endurance at that point. actually should still help build up muscles in the arm, like boxing.
 

Eberhardt

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everything is always a mix, even running likely builds up your calf and quad muscles, just the act of running, just not to the extent of lifting with legs.
if you can do 1000 reps of something, that may be comparable to simply doing the motion.
like you may be able to do 1000 reps of bicep curl, without any added weight. just doing the motion. the percentage of cardio becomes higher. or at least, youre working more on muscular endurance at that point. actually should still help build up muscles in the arm, like boxing.
everything isnt a mix. not if you are talking training. to train an ability you have to challenge the body somwhat. If you are doing pinkyfingerrehabs you will not train a single iota of cardio-vascular ability. Running builds your muscle to a certain point, as if you compare it to sedentary but you can not get huge muscles by long distance running f.ex. At a certain point - according to research maybe already at the 150 rep point but the exact sciense of this is debatable so I dont think its that clearcut- you are only improving workcapacity, chaning lactic acid production, building blood supply, mitochondria etc. Actually long ditance running decreases mitochondrial density but you get the point. Boxing is a little bit different because evenn if the muscles boxers have mainly dont come from the boxing itself but the supplementary training, boxing also involves hard punches and plyometrics. Speed of movement is one way to activate fast twitch muscles also as it takes much more force to move an object fast then quick (or to axellerate it to be more precise). But the idea of "doing the motion is not really relevant - I mean it also depends on how much fat you have, how much muscle even (muscles are heavier then fat), clothing, shoes etc. SO the idea of bodyweight only/going through the motions is more of a pragmatic aproach. Nothing wrong with it. BUT its very easy to get to muscular endurance training not cardio even with bodyweight . toe-raises would be an excellent example. You can probably get to a couple of thousand if you have strong calfs - they will be burning but you will not be winded. . Sorry if this all seems like I just want to disagree- its just that from experience the different mechanisms are not well understood by most people.

That said I agree that you end up just training endurance. my main point is just that cardio and endurance are related but separate functions even though they often overlap. (but not always). By the way I wonder how this slowtwitch/ more mitochondria works out. I might also be missing the point myself here as I am focusing on endurance more then building big slow twitch muscles. What exactly does the research on increased mitochondrial density in slow twitch say? was it trainable?? was it related to size? certain atheltic capabilites ?
 

Dr. B

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everything isnt a mix. not if you are talking training. to train an ability you have to challenge the body somwhat. If you are doing pinkyfingerrehabs you will not train a single iota of cardio-vascular ability. Running builds your muscle to a certain point, as if you compare it to sedentary but you can not get huge muscles by long distance running f.ex. At a certain point - according to research maybe already at the 150 rep point but the exact sciense of this is debatable so I dont think its that clearcut- you are only improving workcapacity, chaning lactic acid production, building blood supply, mitochondria etc. Actually long ditance running decreases mitochondrial density but you get the point. Boxing is a little bit different because evenn if the muscles boxers have mainly dont come from the boxing itself but the supplementary training, boxing also involves hard punches and plyometrics. Speed of movement is one way to activate fast twitch muscles also as it takes much more force to move an object fast then quick (or to axellerate it to be more precise). But the idea of "doing the motion is not really relevant - I mean it also depends on how much fat you have, how much muscle even (muscles are heavier then fat), clothing, shoes etc. SO the idea of bodyweight only/going through the motions is more of a pragmatic aproach. Nothing wrong with it. BUT its very easy to get to muscular endurance training not cardio even with bodyweight . toe-raises would be an excellent example. You can probably get to a couple of thousand if you have strong calfs - they will be burning but you will not be winded. . Sorry if this all seems like I just want to disagree- its just that from experience the different mechanisms are not well understood by most people.

That said I agree that you end up just training endurance. my main point is just that cardio and endurance are related but separate functions even though they often overlap. (but not always). By the way I wonder how this slowtwitch/ more mitochondria works out. I might also be missing the point myself here as I am focusing on endurance more then building big slow twitch muscles. What exactly does the research on increased mitochondrial density in slow twitch say? was it trainable?? was it related to size? certain atheltic capabilites ?

yeah but youll always be using both slow twitch and fast twitch fibers, its just the percentage decreases. if you're just walking at a normal pace, youre maybe doing like 90% or more slow twitch, or 95% or more. if you're lifting weight for a singular rep, it might be mostly fast twitch, like 99% fast twitch.
if youre doing workouts, like multiple sets and reps of weight lifting, or multiple sets of sprinting, then you will be hitting a mix of slow twitch and fast twitch fibres. sure, you can keep the reps lower, or take breaks between each sprint, but even when you're doing that, you will still be hitting both fast and slow twitch fibres on the exercise. if you do for instance, 30 seconds of sprinting, the first set you do, it may be mostly fast twitch getting trained, but once you do the next set, youll implement more slow twitch fibres. with lifting, the first couple reps you do might be fast twitch, but if youre doing multiple sets and reps you will start training more slow twitch fibers as well.

slow twitch is apparently for slower paced more endurance activities, fast twitch is for quick bursts of energy, short term energy.
 

OccamzRazer

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Hello. This forum is all about oxidative phosphorylation and slow twitch fibers have a lot of mitochondria and rely on oxidative phosphorylation to get the job done so it makes sense to train them. What do you think? I will incorporate some slooooooow lifting from now on.
Long hikes, bike rides at a low cadence, etc
 

Eberhardt

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yeah but youll always be using both slow twitch and fast twitch fibers, its just the percentage decreases. if you're just walking at a normal pace, youre maybe doing like 90% or more slow twitch, or 95% or more. if you're lifting weight for a singular rep, it might be mostly fast twitch, like 99% fast twitch.
if youre doing workouts, like multiple sets and reps of weight lifting, or multiple sets of sprinting, then you will be hitting a mix of slow twitch and fast twitch fibres. sure, you can keep the reps lower, or take breaks between each sprint, but even when you're doing that, you will still be hitting both fast and slow twitch fibres on the exercise. if you do for instance, 30 seconds of sprinting, the first set you do, it may be mostly fast twitch getting trained, but once you do the next set, youll implement more slow twitch fibres. with lifting, the first couple reps you do might be fast twitch, but if youre doing multiple sets and reps you will start training more slow twitch fibers as well.

slow twitch is apparently for slower paced more endurance activities, fast twitch is for quick bursts of energy, short term energy.
Since I have been "arguing" a bit about the subject I will say that I agree to all of the above, more or less (rather more) :) I hope someone can present any research on the actual increase of mitochondria in slow twitch. Do they increase when you train them? do they increase with the size of the muscle? Are they just generally more mitochondrially active then short twitch? this question is though not specifically too you @Mr.Bollox
 

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