Bodybuilding and strength training is a fun sport that increases your strength, ability to do daily living activities, improves your self-esteem and increases your potential for weight loss. Those muscles you are building during your weight workouts are burning calories all day, even while you’re sleeping!
So, how does your body build new muscle? And what can you do to encourage more muscle and less fat in the body?
In the first place, the body doesn’t really grow new muscle tissue. Instead, what happens is that each muscle cell you already have will get bigger and stronger. However, there has been some research to refute this long held belief – although it hasn’t been duplicated. Russian sports scientists have claimed to find hyperplasia – or the splitting and growth of more muscle fibers – in the shoulders of swimmers under training that is high speed with low resistance.
Muscle cells are different from other cells in the body in that they have more than one nucleus. The nucleus of the cell is where the mitochondria are kept [the powerhouses of energy that run the cells] and where the genetic information is kept. As your muscles grow in size, so do the number of mitochondria, which can realistically account for up to 30% in the increased muscle size.
However, strength is not always equal to size. The power behind a muscle contraction is dependent upon the number of motor neurons used, the strength of the impulse sent, the size of the muscle, and the coordination between muscles and within the muscle being used. This is why some powerlifters are smaller in size than bodybuilders but can lift significantly higher amounts of weight.
The workout you do will trigger the kind of growth you achieve.
After a workout in which you stretched and stressed muscle groups, the body will repair or replace damaged muscle fibers. Muscle fibers can be fused together to form new strands called myofibrils. These are thicker strands and account for the visible muscle growth, or hypertrophy. It is important to note that this repair and growth doesn’t happen during your workout but rather after, during rest and refueling.
The growth and repair appear to be activated by satellite cells that add more nuclei to the muscle cells and contribute to the growth of the myofibrils. The activation of these satellite cells could be the difference between those who can grow muscles easily and those who don’t.
In order to encourage the growth of muscle cells your body must undergo tension or resistance, have small tears from the increasing weight load and feeling the burn during your strength training. Each of these factors will contribute to the overall growth potential of a muscle group because they will activate muscle growth.
Each of these factors can be achieved using a medium number of repetitions in a set with the maximum amount of weight you can use. This requires the most fuel supply to the cells and increases the amount of protein broken down during the program. The rebound in energy stores in glycogen and protein building will result in increased muscle growth.
During your program there are seven specific mistakes you can make to reduce the amount of muscle built. They are smoking and drinking, starving your muscles of protein and carbohydrates, becoming dehydrated, eating sugar, skipping out on a program that includes multijoint exercises and a lack of sleep. Each of these issues can reduce your potential for developing larger and stronger muscles.
Resources:
Built Lean: How Do muscles Grow
http://www.builtlean.com/2013/09/17/muscles-grow/
BodyBuilding: What Makes Muscles Grow
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/issa7.htm
Mueller Center: How Do Your Muscles Grow
http://www.muellercenter.rpi.edu/musclegrowth.php
University of New Mexico: How Do Muscles Grow
http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/musclesgrowLK.html
Mens Health: 7 Muscle Building Mistakes to Avoid
http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/eliminate_workout_saboteurs/
Human Kinetics: Learn how muscles build up strength
http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/learn-how-muscles-build-up-strength
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