Mr. Cooper69-
"Vasoconstrictors of skeletal muscle tissue would be counterproductive preworkout. Thankfully, there are no such products on the supplement market that can achieve this to a significant enough degree"
Rodja-
"You're vastly overestimating how much actual construction occurs from stims."
I respect both of your points and input.
I’ll share a couple of things and then let this thread go on it’s way.
With virtually everything related to bodybuilding, diet, cycles, workouts, etc. I try to remember that what works for me and what I feel, benefit or react to, may be unique and different. As it is with many of you.
For example: How many people have varying responses to creatine, tribbulus, yohimbe, etc.? We could probably pick any popular supplement and still find users with varying responses, all the way to opposite ends of the spectrum. There are some stims I respond to and some that I don’t. There are also many natty test boosters that I don’t respond to. But of course that doesn’t mean that some may not benefit greatly.
On the same note, it’s true that some may respond more or less to constriction and dilation products than others. I know people who are respected and accomplished in the field who respond positively to dilators and negatively to constrictors. I also know people don’t. I also know people who could care less and perhaps have not even given it any considerable thought. I’ve also found that I respond much more favorably to dilators. Do I have scientific evidence or studies to prove that? No. But I’ve experienced it, as have others. There are probably also people on this board who might find that they respond positively to a vasodilator product like ‘Enhanced’ as opposed to a more constrictive product.
I’ve also noticed that the time I’ve spent on constrictors has been less productive. Now I’m not wrong or misinformed to say that. However, I would be wrong, misinformed and ignorant to say that everyone on this board would respond identically. As you would also be wrong to say that no person could ever respond in such a way that I’m describing.
OHlympia -
"There is a significant benefit to vasodilation during workouts. Bottom line = more blood to the muscle."
I definitely understand what your saying.
Do pumps equal more muscle?
We’ll, I guess the answer is no. But in that case, I guess food doesn’t exactly equal more muscle either. I understand that there is a lot more to hypertrophy than just pumps. But pumps resulting in blood and oxygen flow to the muscles is still extremely important. I’m not a scientist or a doctor, but I’d like to share a thought or two on pumps as it relates to my personal experience.
Me and the guys I used to train with had a saying back in the day – You Grow Into Your Pumps.
This essentially meant that if your arms were 17” cold and 18” pumped – you were on your way up. It may not be long before you reached 17 ¼” cold and soon after 17 ½”. But sometimes guys have had trouble obtaining good pumps. We also found it to be true that if your arms were 17” cold and only 17 ¼” pumped – it could take what would seem like forever to actually reach 17 ¼” cold.
I found this to be true through my years in the gym (now it’s a Man Cave gym). I started in my teens with maybe 15” arms. Heck, they could’ve even been in the 14’s. Now, 15+ years later my arms are around 18.5” cold. 18.5” might seem ok to some, but in reality 3.5” in 15+ years is not very impressive. Thats largely because I had numerous years of training and experimenting with different styles of training that weren’t as effective as others. I also experimented with different supplements. I realized that during some of the less effective periods I was using supplements that were vasoconstrictive in nature. I sometimes went long periods of time continuing a program that did not yield superior or effective pumps because that was not my sole focus. Unfortunately, measurements didn’t change much during those periods, even though progress may have been made in terms of strength.
To me, it’s kind of like bulking and pushing weight on the scale. If your not eating enough during the day to add weight to the scale, don’t expect the scale to magically move up. Pounds don’t materialize out of thin air.
So, while there is a lot more to the hypertrophy process that just pumps, I believe it’s also hard to build muscle without them.
