Muscle Growth

[Guest guest]

We discussed the topic of training and muscle growth recently so I´m

adding some factors that are important for muscle hypertrophy.

1. Muscle grow depends of an equilibrium between the stimulus of

training and what happend after each workout, to give the body enough

time to recover.

2. Muscle grow depends of a balance between anabolism and catabolism,

or between protein synthesis and protein destruction. So training with

the appropiate intensity is very important, don´t train to hard or you

won´t be able to asimilate the intensity of training.

3. Each muscle has a different proportion of muscle fibres, ST and FT,

so one need to add some days of high aceleration training to recruit

the fibres with the highest threshold. Training to stimulate every tipe

of muscle fibre will result in a better and higher muscle grow as a

consequence of the develop of STs and FTs fibres.

4. FTs fibres are bigger than STs ones, so the planification of some

microcycles of high aceleration training is of great importance because

is going to led to better muscle grow.

5. Muscle hypertrophy do not occur only by the grow of muscle fibres,

but because of the grow of other tissues as well. Acording to

MacDougall et. al, the proportion of soft tissues in bodybuilders is

the same when compared with control sedentary subjets, meaning that

tissue hypertrophy is part of the process of muscle grow and that

collagenous and other non-contractile tissues´s hypertrophy occur at

the same time.

6. It is not enough to focus on muscle stimulation by muscle trainig,

because muscle grow depends mainly on the stimulation at the Central

Nevous System level. So muscle fatigue or even muscle pain and DOMS are

not allways related with muscle hypertrophy. One need to stimulate the

Central Nervous System appropiately by training at a high intensity,

between 75 and 85%, but it is not possible to mantain this level of

intensity for a prolonged period, so each workout has to last no more

than 60 minutes, otherwise you may not be training with the appropiate

intensity.

7. Some hormones like testosterone are important for muscle grow and

it is believed that, after warming up, testosterone levels are high for

about 45 or 60 minutes and then this level start to decline so this may

be another reasons to train no more than 60 minutes.

There are may be other factors regarding training and muscle grow, so

I would like to hear other´s opinion.

Reference: MacDougall JD, Sale DG, Alway SE, Sutton JR (1984)

" Muscle fiber number in biceos brachii in bodybuilders

and control subjetcs " . Journal of Applied Physiology

57: 1399-1403

Sebastian Scoles

Buenos Aires, Argentina