nutrition and performance book

16. How a muscle grows
How to stimulate muscle growth
There are 3 proven ways to increase muscle mass:
Progressive overload and time under tension (TUT)
Damaging the muscle fibres
Cellular fatigue (metabolic stress)
Let’s go over each one individually
Progressive overload and time under tension (TUT)
Progressive overload and time under tension (TUT) will increase both size and growth in muscle
tissue. You want to be progressively increasing the weights you lift over time. Making sure that the
weights go up. For instance, the heavier you can lift the more muscle mass you probably have, so
this is a good indication of both size and strength. Recording your results each training session will
help to track this. If the body continually adapts to the weight you’re lifting, then you must push it to
lift heavier over time. This will help to stimulate both muscle growth and strength whilst imporving
body composition. Please note that research has shown that when performing mechanical tension, it
is significantly more responsive to a full range of motion. So, avoid half reps and incomplete rep
ranges, as this will hinder results, as stated in the “form” section. If you become strong, your body
will look strong. Progressive overload could be one more rep or adding 1.25kg to the bar. It’s all
progress and counts greatly. Keeping the muscles under tension will force them to adapt by
increasing the ammout of motor units needed to physically lift the weight.
Damaging the muscle fibres
Damaging muscle fibres is simply the process or by-product of lifting weights under tension
othewrwise known as myofibrillar damage. During a workout, intense lifting causes microscopic
tears to form in the fibre and connective tissue of muscles. The body then reacts by releasing what
we call cytokines, an antinflamitory process designed to help repair damaged muscle tissue. That
combined with protein and naturally occuruing growth factors like insulin and testosterone will help
to create new muscle. These tears fatigue the muscles and accumulate in large numbers. With
proper rest and sufficient nutrients, the muscles are slowly rebuilt over the following days, but full
repair can take a week or more. The more this happens the more muscle tissue is repaired forming
new muscle. This process is predominantly happening during sleep. Hense its importance.
Cellular fatigue (metabolic stress)
Cellular fatigue is when you push the muscles to failure through repetitive motions which in turn
pushes muscle fibres to their metabolic limit. Cellular damage or metabolic stress occurs when there
is cell swelling around the muscle. You may have heard the term the “pump” a common phrase used
in bodybuilding. Basically, through contracting the muscle repeatedly through repetitions you are
forcing blood into the muscles being worked and literally mutating the muscle cells forcing them to
enlargen. You pump blood into the muscle then once the set is finished the blood will start to flow
back out freely, the venous return. Now, if we use a rest time that doesn’t allow full relaxation of the
muscle, when we start the next set some of that blood will still be in the muscle from the first set,
and so on and so on. Through the sets the muscle will grow larger and larger due to more blood
being forced in creating cellular fatigue. If we combine these three elements into our training
programs, we will undoubtedly see positive results in muscle growth.
48