Blood allocation and supersets

Seanz

New Member
This may be a laughable question to some of you, but I'm bored, so naturally my mind wanders.
Disclaimer... I have only been a gym rat for a few years, and have always loved the philosophy of keeping shit simple. Eat lift sleep grow. But I want to focus heavy on calves and this question popped into mind, along with the realization that I may have to start getting a little more scientific with things to progress .

I know blood in the muscle is the goal. That's where all the good stuff comes from, and allows the muscle to be fueled and grow.
Having said that I have a question regarding blood volume/allocation while doing supersets with muscle on each opposite ends of the body.

Example; chest day!!! Yay! Superset with calf raises... meh.

Does the blood I'm forcing to my calves take away from my Chest? Is this counter productive? Or does the heart work so miraculously that it finds a way to compensate both without taking away from another?

How does this work? [emoji1]
 
There's always blood in the muscle but regardless, that's not really the ultimate goal. If you're looking for hypertrophy then the goal is mechanical work and there are many methods to accomplish that.
 
Your body is designed to deliver blood where it's needed most, which is why full-body workouts can be effective if done right.

Look up occlusion/blood flow restriction training (BFR) if you want to learn more about restricting or isolating blood flow to certain muscle groups during a muscle-specific workout. I've never tried it, but am pretty sure I've read a peer-reviewed study on it somewhere before, so it sounds like it has some validity.
 
To be clear, I don't believe that all it takes is to force blood into a muscle, but rather understand (limited) how important it's roll is.

Kinetic. Thanks for the info. I know what I'm reading tonight.
 
Calves need lots of weight and Tut.
Look at the calves of male dancers - they don't weigh much but have huge calves from being on their toes all the time practicing....

Another example at the other end... Have you ever noticed how massive the calves are on seriously obese people?
Just from walking around and moving while carrying all that bodyweight..

I like to use a moderate weight and go for time... I'll do donkey calf raises with a two seconds stretch, two second contraction, and go until I cant anymore.

Usually just hit start on my stopwatch and see where I get... Then try and beat it by 15 seconds next workout.

The only thing is this can make a single set take 10 minutes or more, but it blows those poor little cows up lol
 

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