Working as a secretary/file clerk and doing repetitive stuff like filing and data entry for hours at a time, my back and shoulders get tremendously sore. My question is, why don’t the muscles in my back and shoulders get big and strong from all the use, instead of getting sore and gimpy? I thought muscles got stronger from use.
You’re not doing the correct repetative motions with weight-bearing?
You’re testosterone challenged?
What you’re describing is more geared towards endurance than strength. And in order to get strength from any activity, you have to be careful not to overuse your muscles.
If you want shoulder and back exercises, check out www.exrx.net. For lower back exercises, look in the “waist” section.
What do you mean by “overuse”? Isn’t one of the main principles of strength training to “over use” and challenge a muscle to the extent it responds by building additional muscle?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. So why do my muscles just tighten up and get sore instead of getting all big and strong?
Because your muscles use up the CNS available, and cause undo stress on surrounding tissues. If you built up to the activity level gradually, allowing your body to adapt to it, soreness would probably not be an issue.
When a weightlifter does too many exercises on a particular muscle it can cause damage to it, or supporting muscles. For example in a Benchpress, if you push your Chest, or Back muscles too far and wear them out, you could pull or tear a muscle, or even mess up your shoulders or injure your triceps.
What Epimetheus said. Additionally, you’re not really overusing muscles in the same way when you lift–consider that most weightlifters do fewer than 12 reps per set, and pretty rarely do more than seven sets (and if they’re doing seven sets, they’re building up the weight gradually, or doing only five or six reps). It’s not the same at all.