Muscle growth, it is something that a large part of training people want to achieve in the gym, but what exactly is muscle growth?
A muscle can grow in 2 ways, hypertrophy and hyperplasia.
Hypertrophy means that your current muscle fiber becomes larger. More contractile units are added, simply put, these are the proteins that make up the muscle. You could also compare it to blowing up a balloon. Hyperplasia means that new muscle fibers are added, but this does not occur often, in a normal human body we often speak of hypertrophy.
There are 3 processes/elements that influence muscle growth, these are:
– mechanical tension
– metabolic stress
– muscle damage
Mechanical tension is actually the amount of force that a muscle generates, this is equal to the amount of tension that the muscle experiences, so the heavier it becomes for your body, the more mechanical tension there is.
Metabolic stress can actually be translated as acidification, the more you acidify during a set, the greater the metabolic stress.
After training you have muscle damage, which later becomes muscle pain (yes, after training your muscle is actually damaged and less strong than before). Rest is therefore an important aspect of training and also for building or recovering muscles.
Let us come to the first fact or fable:
Most muscle growth is caused by a lot of muscle damage.
This used to be assumed, but new research shows that with a lot of muscle damage, proteins are mainly used for recovery and not for muscle building. So you can say that you don't want to create too much muscle damage, so train hard but not too hard (make sure that your last rep is never the last one, you should always be able to do 1 or 2 reps).
Muscle growth occurs when the stimulus is heavy enough for your body and new proteins must be produced to be able to shift the weight. Muscle growth occurs during mechanical tension and that is why we see mechanical tension as the most important factor.
Fact: your muscles can grow with any weight on a barbell
Nowadays it is stated that muscle growth takes place in the last 5 qualitative reps. This means that you should do 30 reps with a light weight until muscle failure and with a very heavy weight only 5 reps. This would both have an equal influence on muscle growth. So, if a set is performed to muscle failure, the weight is not important, but remember that this is purely about muscle growth and not what is best for your muscle or health.
1 minute of rest between sets is enough
From new research we can conclude that a minimum of 2 minutes of rest between sets leads to more muscle growth. So make sure you take your time between sets. Even if you are in a hurry.
You should start by training large muscle groups.
When looking at muscle growth, the most important rule is that you start your training with the muscle group that receives the most attention (which needs to grow the most), so that it is the most important at that moment. This may mean that you start with a tricep exercise if this is a priority. In general, training is done from large to small muscle groups. For example, a squat requires more force than a bicep curl and you would technically prefer to do it sooner. Now we are only talking about muscle growth here.
Greater movement has more influence on muscle growth
This is not true. Ultimately, a smaller movement has just as much influence on muscle growth, but the difference is that a larger range of motion causes more muscle growth in the length, while a shorter movement in the width of the muscle.
Finally, I would like to make it clear that, looking at muscle growth, good technique during the exercises is perhaps the most important thing. If you move a lot of weight with many different muscles while you only want to load 1 muscle, you understand that muscle growth is ultimately less per muscle (group).
So always keep an eye on your performance and always ask for help if necessary!
Gio Bobbe
Enforce Master Trainer
gio@enforce.nl
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