Theory
When you work a specific muscle with strength training exercises, you create microscopic tears in the muscle tissue. It's actually when you leave the gym, eat and sleep that the muscle tissue repairs itself and becomes stronger. The healing process can take anywhere from 24-48 or more hours. By waiting until the beginning of your next workout the following day, you have given the body the ability to replenish muscle glycogen and blood glucose levels through the nutrients you have consumed. Performing one exercise for each muscle worked superset 3 sets of 50-100 reps will help flush lactic acid and draw nutrient rich blood into the muscle that has been broken down. This will assist with the healing process. Drawing blood into the muscle will cause it to be "pumped up' training it to grow.
It's important to choose a weight that is light enough to not cause further breakdown of the muscle but heavy enough to create a drawing of blood to the muscle being worked. Similar to a massage, this will create blood flow to the specific area flushing waste products from the muscle as well. By performing this before your next workout, it will also loosen the muscles and joints as well as warm up the body for the workout to follow.
Benefits
- Activate enzymes which help the body to build and repair tissue
- Stretch fascia tissue
- Shocks the muscles
- Faster muscle and tendon recovery
- Increased muscle hypertrophy (growth).
- Increased conditioning due to increased oxygen demand from superset high reps
- loss of body fat due to increased caloric demand from supersets.
Execution
- Use light to modest weight
- Do not focus on the negative portion of the rep. The idea is to pump the weight.
- Eat quality protein and carbs before the workout.
- Perform 1-3 sets for the specific muscle(s) for 50-100 reps.
- It should only take 5-10 minutes to complete the feeder workout as the exercises will be supersetted.
- Stretch the muscles to increase range of motion and draw even more nutrient rich blood into the muscles.
- I recommend using exercises using a cable machine or rubber band.
Remember, the goal is prevent further breakdown of the muscle. We want to increase healing and rebuilding. Perform reps with a faster paced, controlled tempo to increase the blood demand in the muscle which will facilitate the feeding of the nutrient rich blood in the muscle. This should not be taxing to the body and should not take away from the muscles you will be working in the workout following.