Posts Tagged ‘How does a muscle grow’

Let’s take a look at one of my favourite topics, relating to muscle growth and adaptation. As a personal trainer the basis of this topic is something I try to get across to all of my clients in order to understand why they train in a certain way. This is only a brief skip though a few relevant elements of benefit to you as multi-sport athletes, however discussions relating to this could be endless!

When you work a muscle the stimulus or force acting on it causes a breaking down of muscle proteins and forms tiny tears in the muscle fibre and connective tissue. During the rest period between workouts new proteins are built up and the connective tissues repaired. This causes the muscle fibres to grow back thicker and stronger. This increase in size is a result in an increase in the number of filaments within the muscle fibre bundle and an increase of muscle proteins. This increase of cross sectional muscle size is called hypertrophy.

Hypertrophy depends on many factors including the type of training, diet, rest periods and the genetics of the person in question.

When training a muscle or muscle group you should do so with the desired outcome in mind. There’s no point having huge biceps, lats, shoulders and chest if you’re attempting to be a competitive triathlete. As triathletes we should be looking to enhance the muscular endurance of our muscles rather than pure muscular strength. Muscular endurance is the ability or capacity of a muscle to repeat a movement continuously before it tires, whereas muscular strength is the force required by the muscle to overcome a resistance.

In order for a muscle to respond successfully, whether to achieve endurance benefits or gains in strength and/or size, the overload or resistance placed upon it has to continually challenge the muscle. As the muscle responds, it gets stronger and/or has better endurance, so if the overload remains the same the muscle will not be stimulated optimally. This is why the amount of resistance used or the duration of the exercise needs to be continually increased in order to provide a suitable overload for the muscle. This form of continual intensity change is classed as progressive overload.

With my personal training clients I always encourage change and alter exercise and/or duration they are completing every 10-12 week period. This means the muscles and body have to adapt and respond to a fresh set of requests and challenges.

When the brain has to learn a new task or skill, such as a new exercise, the nerve pathways that tell the muscle to contract need to be developed. Depending on the complexity of the movement, this motor unit development might require some practice. This is known as neuro-muscular adaptation.

When introducing new exercises into your workout routine, the number of exercises to incorporate, together with the frequency with which they are to be performed, will vary from person to person as we all have different goals, time restraints and fitness levels. As with any form of training, the most important thing is to blend new exercises into your current workout when you are ready, remember not to introduce too many too soon or increase the intensity of any drill before you are fully able to progress.

Happy Training!!

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