changing muscle type

[josh-hill]

hi everyone. i hear there are several types of muscle fiber, mainly fast and slow twitch ones. i know that fast twitch are most useful for boxers and that doing explosive exercises or really heavy lifting are best for this, and that doing higher rep training for weights is more likely to make slow twitch muscles and lead to sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, not myofibrilar which is more important.

so training with low weight / high reps will lead to slow muscles and extra weight, which is bad. but at the same time im recovering from shoulder surgery and it might be useful for me to put on some muscle mass quickly, to help with recovery and stability.

so could i just put on some muslce now and change the type later? i know there are transitional fibers that can become slow or fast, but can you change them back once they have become one? and how can i loose sacoplasmic hypertrophy pre fight to loose weight? thanks

[F l i c k e r]

It's possible but I think you have it mixed up just a little bit. Slow twitch muscle, weighs relatively nothing but is pretty useless to boxers unless your a Margarito kind of boxer. And even he has completely changed his training routine for explosive muscle in recent exercises.

As a person who partially tore his rotor cuff, didn't need surgery but needed much rehab. I would suggest A LOT of stretching. Stretch, stretch and more stretch. That stretching will build some strength in the shoulder alone. Get all the rotation back in the shoulder before going for the strengthening part.

Then build that slow twitch muscle in the shoulder. Go to light weights. Low weight, reps till slight fatigue. The point where you feel just a slight bit of burn/pain. That's when you stop. I used 3 pound weights.

I don't know the exact name for exercises. But extended arm to the side, shoulder height with weight in hand. Then move your arm up and down about three inches up and down. Go till you feel a little burn, then stop. Count to three, then one armed military presses. Go till you feel a little burn, then stop. Then put the elbow tight to the side and extend just from the elbow to hand outwards and back in. Till slight burn. Lightly stretch, i did shoulder rolls. Finished.

That's just what I did. I did that for maybe a month, along with push ups from my knees and some plank work to the best of my ability. That's just before I got my shoulder back to respectable strength.

It's a tough road but I got all my strength and some back into my shoulder. 3 1/2 weeks into my circuit training right now. No pain or weakness, it's perfectly fine. That's just my experience and rehab method though. Not everyone will think the same.

Edit: I bolded pretty much the crux to what your looking for. The rest is just what I did. Some people like to know those things, so I included just in case.