When it comes to gaining large muscles and perfect physique, bodybuilding or heavy exercises and a nutritious diet is the most effective strategy to achieve desired results in a short duration. On the surface, stimulating muscle growth is easy: just lift the damn weight! This will work as long as you're progressively But it's still interesting to understand the factors that can contribute to making your muscles grow. The stimulation of muscle growth through weightlifting takes place by a specific process known as Hypertrophy. Weightlifting causes tiny or micro-tears in muscle fibers. As a result, the body shows a response to repair this damage and stimulate muscle growth. The Hypertrophy process mainly includes the following steps; Muscle damage: Lifting heavy weights and performing intense workouts cause small damage to muscle fibers. This tearing is a norm during intense workout routines and does not cause any side effects to the bodybuilder's health. Inflammation: in response to muscle damage, the body shows an inflammatory reaction to damaged parts which is crucial for the repairing process. Protein synthesis: the next step involved in muscle growth by weightlifting is the stimulation of the protein synthesis process. During this process, the body produces new protein strands primarily known as myofibrils to repair the damaged muscle fibers. Muscle growth: as a result of consistent workouts and weightlifting the bodybuilders' muscles start thinking and stronger. It ultimately results in large muscle growth. Along with intense workout, the use of bulking steroids can help you to achieve desired muscle growth in a short duration. When buying from reliable steroid stores like UGFreak, these synthetic compounds provide users with unlimited benefits with protection from muscle fatigue and joint pain due to heavy weight lifting. We know that lifting weights builds muscle, but why? Here are the main factors contributing to stimulating 1) Intramuscular Tension: This refers to how hard a muscle must A high level of intramuscular tension can influence muscle growth because it leads to a high rate of protein degradation (more tension = faster muscle damage). In that regard, see tension as a punch: the harder you punch someone, the more damage it'll do. However, the more you put into a punch, the fewer swings you can take at your opponent. It's impossible to effectively throw 60 uppercuts in one round of boxing, but it is possible to throw that many jabs. It's the same thing with weights: the more tension you produce, the less time you can sustain that tension. So while a high level of tension will cause rapid muscle damage, if it's too high (e.g. But still, high tension will stimulate muscle growth. It also has another interesting impact: the recruitment of the 2) Time Under Tension: If a high intramuscular tension represents an uppercut, a long time under tension is kinda' of like hitting your opponent 60-80 times in a round. The more often you hit your adversary, the more potential damage you can cause. If a set lasts longer, the time spent causing muscle damage is more important and thus can lead to more growth stimulation. The problem is that there's an inverse relationship between the magnitude of the tension and the time that it can be sustained: if you shoot for a very long set, you won't be able to do the set So while you might spend a lot of seconds working at causing muscle damage, you're not causing a lot of damage per Just like with tension – increasing the time under tension of a set will lead to more growth stimulation, but only if the tension level stays relatively high. 3) Blood Vessel Occlusion, Metabolite Accumulation, Hormonal Output: You might have heard of "kaatsu" training (ever seen those weirdos with inflatable cuffs on their arms?) Studies have shown that despite the light weights being used, the muscle growth response is as big as lifting heavy weights (80% and more). The reason is the blood occlusion, which has been shown The lack of oxygen (hypoxic state) and increase in acidity have also been shown to increase the recruitment of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Oxygen restriction Finally, exercise with restricted oxygen/blood entry in the trained muscle also leads to the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which increase muscle satellite cell activation and The good news is that you don't have to use kaatsu training (which can be risky) to create this oxygen/blood flow restriction A recent study compared several training protocols' effects on However, they also found that performing sets without blocking blood flow, but using a 3-0-3 tempo and never allowing the muscles to relax during the set (always flexing as hard as possible during every inch of every rep) with 50-60% of the maximum performed to failure, led to oxygen levels of 23-24%. Lactate, hGH, and IGF-1 levels were also the same as with kaatsu training. The moral of the story is that constant tension exercises can build size and strength despite using relatively light weights even if muscle damage is fairly low. However, if the muscle is So, we could say that muscle growth can be stimulated Heavy lifting (4-6 reps), which promotes a high rate of mechanical damage/protein degradation. Relatively high reps (up to 12-15 for the upper body and 15-20 for the lower body), promote a high mechanical degradation due to the combination of moderate time under tension and intramuscular tension magnitude. Constant tension sets. To do these properly, you must flex the target muscle hard during every inch of every rep. You can never allow the muscles to relax. This means no rest between reps either. This method is best kept for isolation exercises. You could take advantage of all three methods by designing your program according to this template: Exercise 1: Heavy lift (4-6 reps) using a basic, multi-joint exercise Exercise 2: Moderate rep movement (8-10) using another multi-joint exercise Exercise 3: High rep movement (12-15) using a secondary exercise Exercise 4: Constant tension movement (3-0-3 tempo, 50-60% of maximum, 8-12 reps) using an isolation exercise A chest workout might look something like this: A. Flat barbell bench press 4-5 x 4-6 reps 120-180 seconds of rest B. Incline dumbbell press 3 x 8-10 reps, 90-120 seconds of rest C. Converging chest press 3 x 12-15 reps 60-90 seconds of rest D. Squeeze press (pressing the dumbbells together as you simultaneously lift them) 3 x 8-12 using a 3-0-3 tempo 45 seconds of rest it's clear that muscle is stubborn; that it often resists our best efforts to push it into growth, but perseverance, a little smarts and varying strategies will win the battle and the war too.
increasing the demand placed on the muscle over time (either by adding more weight, doing more reps at a given weight, doing more sets, increasing density, etc.). How Weightlifting Stimulates Muscle Growth?
Factors Involved In Muscles Growth
growth:
be contracted during the performance of an exercise. As such, it's directly correlated with the amount of force you have to produce. More force equals great intramuscular tension.
1-3 maximal reps) the time spent causing damage to the muscle might not be long enough to elicit a maximal growth response.
high-threshold motor units (fast-twitch fibers). The more force
(tension) you produce, the more HTMUs you'll recruit.
under a lot of tension.
second. You can bitch-slap an opponent a thousand times, but it won't knock him out!
It's a training method that relies on lifting light weights (20-30% of your maximum for 15-30 reps) while wearing a special cuff that's tightened up around the proximal end of a limb to restrict blood
flow to the muscle.
to create a deprived oxygen state (since blood flow to the muscle is limited, so is oxygen transport). This leads to an accumulation of lactate which increases the production of both hGH (growth
hormone) and IGF-1.
to the muscle increases fast-twitch recruitment, firing rate, and
spike amplitude.
proliferation (two key phenomena involved in muscle growth
process).
to the muscle. Sustained muscle tension (as in never allowing a muscle to relax during a set) can make muscle hypoxic even without external occlusion.
oxygen levels during the execution of an exercise. With kaatsu training, oxygen levels were at around 22% of the rested/normal state, compared to 32-35% for normal, heavy training – a
difference that can explain the efficacy of kaatsu training.
allowed to relax during the set, oxygen and blood will flow into the muscle and you won't reach optimal benefits.
by:CONCLUSION