“I don’t feel the burn anymore! Should I do more sets or switch exercises up to confuse the muscle into burning again?”
Anyone who pursues bodybuilding for the sake of increasing mass, at some point experienced the burning sensation throughout the target muscle(s) whilst performing his sets within an anaerobic lactic range of repetitions (I wrote “a range” since the ranges vary pending on the muscle fibrous composition and predominance at question).
Most beginning trainees will ‘feel the burn’ throughout pretty much every set and every workout they do. As those trainees progress, those sensations will start to limit themselves to the first few sets of the muscle target of the workout and then no more (It might be of value to point out that the more frequency involved in a rountine per given muscle, said muscle will become more and more adapted and the limitation of sensation will be hastened).
Now, what exactly is ‘the burn’?
Let’s start by restating the purpose of non-performance non-purist non-powerlifting bodybuilders. Meaning, those whose sole purpose is increasing in mass. This group’s purpose is to increase the sarcoplasmic (cross-section muscular width) volume of their muscle. This requires the sarcomere cells to rupture and repair themselves, becoming bigger in circumference and holding more cytoplasm, building a more tangled, more compound cytoskeleton and so on. Basically, physically bigger cells.
Rupture occurs through an increase in the acidity levels of the outer environment, rather than the inner change in pH (acidity) levels, and this is where the confusion lies.
The burning feeling during anaerobic lactic types of effort doesn’t come from the excess lactic acid that builds up outside the cell environment. It occurs due to the excess of free hydrogen ions expelled from the citric acid cycles (The cycles which resynthesize phosphagenic energy yielding molecules- ATP and PCr within the cell mitochondria). Since this is a process of “No-Air” (=Anaero), there are little to no oxygen molecules to bind to the free H+ ions and carry them out of the cell in the form of water (H2O), as normally done in aerobic efforts.
So, this is the pH change done inside the muscle. However, pH changes done outside the muscle are mainly lactic acid build ups. The build up doesn’t manifest in a burning sensation here, but in the form of fatigue (Inability to continue moving through the pathe of travel for an additional repetition), and this is what any trainee needs to focus on: Reaching failure or near failure in terms of repetition range, rather than focusing your attention on whether or not you feel the burning sensation.
“So why am I becoming less and less prone to continuous ‘Free hydrogen ionization build ups’? Why do I become less prone to have my muscles burn?” -This happens due to several reasons, namely neuroadaptation, increasing in said muscular cells cytoskeleton and cytoplasm, which enables for a larger build up of hydrogen ions, increase in bloodflow which promotes a greater presence of oxygen inside the cells (regardless of the “No-Air” effort you’re doing right now, you still breathe regularly and the aerobic energy system works endlessly until the day you die) and more.
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