What Causes Muscle Growth?
by Rick
Mitchell
zone3
In order for muscles to grow, three things are required:
1.
Stimulus - exercise is needed to make the muscles work, use energy and
cause microscopic damage to the fibers.
2. Nutrition - after
intense exercise the muscles need to replenish their stores of
fuel.
3. Rest - it is during the rest or recovery phase that the
muscles repair the microscopic damage and grow.
Muscle size
increases due to hypertrophic adaptation and an increase in the cross
section area of individual muscle fibers. Intensive exercise impacts more
on the strength influencing fast twitch type II fibers, therefore the
increase in muscle size is accompanied by greater strength.
This
will deplete the muscle's energy stores and cause microscopic damage to
the muscle tissue. During recovery, these stores of glycogen and
phosphocreatine will replenish from carbohydrates and creatine ingested as
food or supplements. Amino acids supplied in the diet will trigger the
protein synthesis that repairs the damaged muscle and lead to the creation
of bigger muscle fibers.
To achieve continuous improvement you will
need to keep reaching for higher levels of training intensity otherwise
the improvement process will grind to a halt. Fortunately, this is
relatively easy to plan for provided certain basic principles and rules
are clearly followed. Subsequent articles in this series will examine
these principles in detail.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Mitchell is the creator of the bodybuildingadvisor.com website
that provides guidance and information to athletes at all levels of
bodybuilding experience. Go to Bodybuilding
Advice to learn more about the issues covered in this
article.
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