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Okay I am going to have to do this in pieces because I am at work so please try not to respond till I have edited in all the information that I need to write. thanks
Okay first things first, fiber type testing will give a "general" makeup of your bodies fiber types. It will not give you an "exact" readout on what your muscles are. It will be used to give you a way to give direction to your workouts and understand why certain muscles grow faster or slower.
I will go over the basic fiber types. There are many sub-types and combonations but we won't make it complicated. You have fast-twitch fibers first. They have a high growth potential but they also fatigue the fastest and low endurance. Slow twitch have less growth potential, high endurance potential and fatigue slower than fast-twitch. Then there is the intermeddiate that have properties of both.
Knowing this is important. Some people don't realize these facts which leads them in wrong directions sometimes when they are frustrated with their progress. For instance if your chest is mostly fast-twitch and you train it too much then you will not see a good amount of growth. we can see from the fast twitch descrpition that these type of fibers fatigue fast. so they need to be worked out intensly and briefly to optimally grow. this means sets between 40-50 seconds and 1-3 sets TOTAL for optimum growth (of course reaching the "optimum" level of training requires meticulous training logs and adjusting your training according to the record you keep. And it is just the opposite for slow-twitch. you will need longer sets (60-120 secs per set and maybe 2-5 sets again depending on your specifc need) to achieve optimum growth but you won't see dramatic growth in the first place if you are mostly slow twitch. knowing this can keep the trainee less frustrated if they know what to expect in the first place.
The first step (and this is the one that people hate but is very necessary for any accurate results to be had) is to take off TWO WEEKS OF TRAINING. completely...do nothing...no weight training and no extended cardio. Walks after dinner would be fine or walking your dog or something like that. The purpose of this is to give your body a chance to normalize itself. If you do the fiber type testing when you are in any state of being overtrained the results will be skewed and not accurate. So don't worry you won't shrink or wither away if you take two weeks off of training. Also you must have at least 6 months of weight training experience otherwise your results will be skewed as well because your body goes through such rapid growth when first introduced to training. and one of the last important points is that you should only work at most two muscles per session of testing (usually a major and minor together such as chest and biceps). if you do too many muscle groups in a day then it also skew the results. there should be at least 2 days in between each session to make sure you are not fatigued from one session to the next.
only isolation exercises should be used for the test as well. flyes for chest, laterals for shoulders, pullovers for back, one arm pushdowns for triceps, one arm curls for biceps, leg extensions for quads, leg curls for hamstrings, calf raises for calves. I think you get the point. LOL
Here is a description on how the set should be done. You will need a stop watch to do all these tests. it is nice to have a partner to time it for you. Your sets should all be around 1:00 to 1:30 minutes long. otherwise it will not be accurate. If your set is less than the time or more than the time you will have to repeat it in a week to give that muscle time to recover so your results stay accurate. Each set should begin with a deliberate flexion of your muscle. there should be no jerking, bouncing, or momentum involved in the lift other wise it will not be accurate. depending on how long range of motion is the time from the bottom to the top of the motion should be around 3-5 seconds. there should be a 1/2 pause at the top and bottom of the movement. when you reach muscular failure (where you can't move the wait by your own volition-REMEMBER no momentum should be involved) hold that for 1-2 seconds to make sure you can't get anymore out of your muscle slower lower the weight to the bottom position and stop the clock.
OKAY and now to the actual method: I will use my chest as an example. I choose a weight that I can do for about 1:00 minute. Using the above procedure I do my first set of flyes. lets pretend I achieved a time of 1:03 for the set. at this point you reset the watch and you rest 3 minutes. then you will repeat the set with the same exact weight. lets pretend I achieve only :59 seconds for that. at this point you need to do some math do see what % drop in time you had. from this easy one we can see that I retained about 90% or more of my time in the set which would conclude that muscle being mostly slow-twitch (I would also like to point out that it is possible to gain time on the second set with a completely slow-twitch muscle). lets pretend that on my second set my time went down to about 30 seconds, this would conclude that you lost over 50% of your time on the second set giving the conclusion that the muscle is mostly a fast-twitch. usually a drop of 60-75% will conclude more of a mixed fiber type. so that will be recorded and then it will be repeated over about a two week period for all of your muscle groups.
Okay I guess I finished this faster than I thought. I hope I covered everything. I will post what you should actually do with these results when I get a chance.
Okay first things first, fiber type testing will give a "general" makeup of your bodies fiber types. It will not give you an "exact" readout on what your muscles are. It will be used to give you a way to give direction to your workouts and understand why certain muscles grow faster or slower.
I will go over the basic fiber types. There are many sub-types and combonations but we won't make it complicated. You have fast-twitch fibers first. They have a high growth potential but they also fatigue the fastest and low endurance. Slow twitch have less growth potential, high endurance potential and fatigue slower than fast-twitch. Then there is the intermeddiate that have properties of both.
Knowing this is important. Some people don't realize these facts which leads them in wrong directions sometimes when they are frustrated with their progress. For instance if your chest is mostly fast-twitch and you train it too much then you will not see a good amount of growth. we can see from the fast twitch descrpition that these type of fibers fatigue fast. so they need to be worked out intensly and briefly to optimally grow. this means sets between 40-50 seconds and 1-3 sets TOTAL for optimum growth (of course reaching the "optimum" level of training requires meticulous training logs and adjusting your training according to the record you keep. And it is just the opposite for slow-twitch. you will need longer sets (60-120 secs per set and maybe 2-5 sets again depending on your specifc need) to achieve optimum growth but you won't see dramatic growth in the first place if you are mostly slow twitch. knowing this can keep the trainee less frustrated if they know what to expect in the first place.
The first step (and this is the one that people hate but is very necessary for any accurate results to be had) is to take off TWO WEEKS OF TRAINING. completely...do nothing...no weight training and no extended cardio. Walks after dinner would be fine or walking your dog or something like that. The purpose of this is to give your body a chance to normalize itself. If you do the fiber type testing when you are in any state of being overtrained the results will be skewed and not accurate. So don't worry you won't shrink or wither away if you take two weeks off of training. Also you must have at least 6 months of weight training experience otherwise your results will be skewed as well because your body goes through such rapid growth when first introduced to training. and one of the last important points is that you should only work at most two muscles per session of testing (usually a major and minor together such as chest and biceps). if you do too many muscle groups in a day then it also skew the results. there should be at least 2 days in between each session to make sure you are not fatigued from one session to the next.
only isolation exercises should be used for the test as well. flyes for chest, laterals for shoulders, pullovers for back, one arm pushdowns for triceps, one arm curls for biceps, leg extensions for quads, leg curls for hamstrings, calf raises for calves. I think you get the point. LOL
Here is a description on how the set should be done. You will need a stop watch to do all these tests. it is nice to have a partner to time it for you. Your sets should all be around 1:00 to 1:30 minutes long. otherwise it will not be accurate. If your set is less than the time or more than the time you will have to repeat it in a week to give that muscle time to recover so your results stay accurate. Each set should begin with a deliberate flexion of your muscle. there should be no jerking, bouncing, or momentum involved in the lift other wise it will not be accurate. depending on how long range of motion is the time from the bottom to the top of the motion should be around 3-5 seconds. there should be a 1/2 pause at the top and bottom of the movement. when you reach muscular failure (where you can't move the wait by your own volition-REMEMBER no momentum should be involved) hold that for 1-2 seconds to make sure you can't get anymore out of your muscle slower lower the weight to the bottom position and stop the clock.
OKAY and now to the actual method: I will use my chest as an example. I choose a weight that I can do for about 1:00 minute. Using the above procedure I do my first set of flyes. lets pretend I achieved a time of 1:03 for the set. at this point you reset the watch and you rest 3 minutes. then you will repeat the set with the same exact weight. lets pretend I achieve only :59 seconds for that. at this point you need to do some math do see what % drop in time you had. from this easy one we can see that I retained about 90% or more of my time in the set which would conclude that muscle being mostly slow-twitch (I would also like to point out that it is possible to gain time on the second set with a completely slow-twitch muscle). lets pretend that on my second set my time went down to about 30 seconds, this would conclude that you lost over 50% of your time on the second set giving the conclusion that the muscle is mostly a fast-twitch. usually a drop of 60-75% will conclude more of a mixed fiber type. so that will be recorded and then it will be repeated over about a two week period for all of your muscle groups.
Okay I guess I finished this faster than I thought. I hope I covered everything. I will post what you should actually do with these results when I get a chance.
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