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THE INGREDIENTS OF MUSCLE BUILDING INCLUDE BLOOD, OXYGEN,
HORMONES, CARBOHYDRATES, AND PROTEINS. MUSCLES CONSIST OF
BUNDLES OF FAST-TWITCH AND SLOW-TWITCH FIBERS. EXERCISE FAST-TWITCH
FIBERS TO BUILD STRENGTH AND MUSCLE SIZE. EXERCISE SLOW-TWITCH
FIBERS FOR ENDURANCE.
When you lift weights, you generate a stimulus within your
central nervous system. Your muscle fibers then receive nerve
impulses and the muscle contracts, or shortens. It is able
to do this because it has a supply of glycogen, a form of
stored carbohydrate, that it uses for energy. Your muscle
fibers convert chemical energy into mechanical energy, causing
the muscle to contract.
As you continue doing repetitions of an exercise, you see
the muscle growing bigger before your very eyes. This is the
pumped look that we all lust for in the gym; where your muscles
seem inflated and your veins bulge as if you had a sack of
serpents beneath your skin.
The pumped look occurs because the muscle has become engorged
with blood that is rushing to it via capillaries. The blood
carries with it the nutrients and oxygen needed for the growth
and repair of muscle fibers. The pumped look you have after
doing two or three sets of an exercise soon dissipates because
the initial rush of blood empties out into your system.
Muscles, like siblings in some families, always act
in opposite ways. If you do a curl, your biceps contracts;
but its opposite muscle, the triceps, relaxes. If you straighten
your elbow, you’ll extend or flex your triceps, but
the biceps will relax.
Genetics overpowers desire when it comes to how much muscle
you can pack on during a weight training program. We’ve
all seen the guy who does minimal workouts and looks like
he could compete on one of those gladiator shows, while another
man trains harder and still looks like an accountant. If you’re
one of the latter, don’t despair.
Yes, there are natural limits, but every body can build muscle.
Regardless of your body type, you can get bigger and stronger.
That applies to males and females and individuals of any age.
MIGHTY MORPHS
William Herbert Sheldon photographed 46,000 men and women
to come up with his widely cited system for classifying body
types. He identified 88 categories. To keep things simple,
he grouped them into three main categories:
• Endomorph. Generally round and short
in stature, guys in this group tend to have more fat cells
than those in the other two groups.
• Mesomorph. These muscular men tend
to add muscle easily and have wide shoulders, small waists,
and low levels of body fat. Think of a running back in football
or a competition bodybuilder as being this type.
• Ectomorph. These men are tall and
lanky, like NBA players. They have a tougher time adding muscle
bulk. One way for them to amass muscle faster while training
is to consume 600 more calories.
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Ectomorph |
Mesomorph |
Endomorph |
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Most of us have a combination of characteristics: We’re
part Endo, part Meso, and part Ecto but a bit more of one
than the others. The dominating characteristics determine
just how massive we will look, no matter how hard we work
out.
FAST-TWITCH, SLOW-TWITCH, WE ALL TWITCH
The scientists who study strength are more likely to talk
about the body’s slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle
fibers than they are to talk about body types. The muscle
fibers also are called Type I and Type II fibers, respectively.
As many as three-quarters of us have a ratio of these fibers
that falls between 60:40 and 40:60. Elite athletes, however,
are typically outside these parameters. Some sprinters, for
example, have been measured with 85 percent of their leg muscle
fibers being fast-twitch.
You should think of it as a continuum, with fast-twitch at
one end being the very powerful, rapidly contracting muscle
fibers that fatigue very quickly. At the other end are the
muscle fibers that don’t generate nearly as much force
but have much more endurance.
If you lift weights so heavy that you can only manage a few
repetitions, you recruit the fast-twitch fibers. That’s
because they are brought into play when the slow-twitch fibers
lack the force or power to finish the job. If you use lighter
weights and perform a higher number of repetitions, you tap
into the less powerful slow-twitch fibers.
If you typically lift nothing heavier than the TV remote in
your daily routine, your muscles will break down old cells
every 7 to 15 days. But if you lift weights or do other forms
of resistance exercise, that process is accelerated since
the exercise is causing microscopic tears in these fibers.
Given proper rest before the next workout, the muscle
fibers repair themselves and come back bigger and stronger
than before. That’s why you need to gradually increase
the load you lift in order to continue to see muscle growth.
Women usually don’t bulk up the way men do when they
lift weights, because they have fewer fast-twitch and slow-twitch
fibers. They also have less testosterone. As you’d expect,
then, men with high levels of testosterone see faster and
bigger muscle gains than guys with less of the hormone.
As people age, they often exercise fewer of their fast-twitch
fibers and develop a predominance of slow-twitch fibers. They
probably could ward off much of this muscle fiber loss if
they lifted weights during their forties and beyond. It’s
not known, however, whether fast-twitch fibers can be regained
through weight training once they have been lost.
THE POWER OF THE PUMP
Researchers such as Dr. Lemon once thought that your potential
for muscle development was pretty much predetermined by the
number of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers you were
born with. That thinking has changed.
There is more opportunity to manipulate muscle development
than was once thought. We all have the potential to develop
more of either type of fiber through specific exercises.
If, however, you have lots of endurance-enhancing slow-twitch
fibers that are ideal for running a marathon, you probably
won’t be able to make yourself into a world-class sprinter
by concentrating on weight training exercises that tax fast-twitch
fibers. It won’t happen because you can’t overcome
the fact that the best sprinters got a head start genetically
by having unusually high number of fast-twitch muscle fibers.
You could make yourself into a much more respectable sprinter,
though.
Similarly, if you were born with a high percentage of fast-twitch
fibers, you aren’t likely to convert them all to slow-twitch
via weight training or any other type of training.
THE FIBER QUESTION
Okay, back to the basics. Exercising a muscle causes tiny
tears in the muscle fibers. As the muscle fibers heal, they
come back bigger than before. That’s how you accomplish
muscle growth. But some scientists think that once a muscle
fiber reaches a certain size, it splits, and that increases
the number of fibers that you have available and makes room
for even more muscle growth. This splitting process is known
as hyperplasia.
We are all born with a different number of muscle fibers.
A guy with, say, 25 percent more fibers than you has the potential
to develop bigger muscles because he has more of these growth-inducing
cells to recruit during his weight training. So if you could
train some of your fibers to the point where they split, you
in theory would increase your muscle-building potential.
Trouble is, it’s not clear yet whether this really happens
in humans. Studies on cats and rodents seem to show that they
can increase their number of muscle fibers through weight
training. You want a strong cat, buy it a miniature barbell
set. You want a strong you, keep up with your lifting program
and keep the faith. This fiber-splitting theory may actually
pan out. It’s a research question that is difficult
to answer in humans because you have to remove and destroy
the muscle, and you don’t get many volunteers to do
that.
THE MUSCLE IS THE MESSAGE
Neuromuscular response means that as you start to pump iron,
this new activity is telegraphed to your spinal cord and brain
via nerves. The nerves tell the muscle being exercised that
it must contract, and the muscle follows these orders like
a good soldier. Only then can the muscle relax. And only then
will your muscle fibers respond to the stimulus of lifting
weights.
Once it does, within just a couple of weight training sessions
your nerves begin to communicate more efficiently with your
muscle fibers, bringing more of them into play. This is half
the formula for getting stronger.
The other half is creating more muscle mass, and this takes
longer, typically a few weeks. That’s because your body
needs to synthesize the proteins that are used in muscle contractions.
And that takes time.
So let’s say that you’ve just started your workout
plan and you can do only six repetitions of an exercise with
a particular weight. A couple of days later, you can do eight
repetitions, and by the end of the week, you can do nine.
Yet you look no different. Why? Your nervous system is already
communicating better with your muscles—hence the increased
number of repetitions—but you can’t see the results
of this increased strength because your body hasn’t
yet synthesized the proteins that are needed for those muscle
contractions.
Within 3 weeks of starting your training program,
you will likely feel significant strength gains.
Yes, it happens that quickly. You’ll find that dragging
loaded trashcans to the street has suddenly gotten easier.
You’ll find yourself sprinting up two flights of stairs
where before one might have been your limit. You’ll
notice that you’re stronger. But it may be a few more
weeks before you actually see the changes in your body
Of course, you need to train properly to get results. If you
are lifting weights at 40 to 50 percent of your maximum capability,
you will trigger the neuromuscular response but you may still
look like Pee-Wee Herman. This is because you’re not
asking that muscle to do anything above and beyond what it
could do on a normal basis.
So you might try adding more weight to some of your exercise
routines. The danger, of course, is in overdoing it. In the
early going, you’ll probably be sore because sometimes
it’s a trial-and-error method. You don’t know
what you can do and can’t do.
It’s a balancing act. If you feel no soreness and see
no muscle growth over a period of a few weeks, chances are
that you need to add weight. But if you’re feeling pain,
not soreness, after workouts, you need to go lighter.
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