4 Factors that Increase Muscle Growth Rate

Factors that Increase Muscle Growth Rate: Whether or not bodybuilding Muscles, we have over 600 of them. They make up between 1/3 and 1/2 of our body weight, and along with connective tissue. They bind us together, hold us up, and help us move. Whether or not bodybuilding is your hobby, muscles need your constant attention because the way you treat them on a daily basis determines whether they will wither or grow.

Say you’re standing in front of a door, ready to pull it open. Your brain and muscles are perfectly poised to help you achieve this goal. First, your brain sends a signal to motor neurons inside your arm. When they receive this message, they fire,causing muscles to contract and relax. Which pull on the bones in your arm and generate the needed movement.

The bigger the challenge becomes, the bigger the brain’s signal grows, and the more motor units it rallies to help you achieve your task. But what if the door is made of solid iron? At this point, your arm muscles alone won’t be able to generate enough tension to pull it open, so your brain appeals to other muscles for help.

You plant your feet, tighten your belly, and tense your back, generating enough force to yank the door open. Your nervous system has just leveraged the resources you already have, other muscles to meet the demand.

While all this is happening your muscle fibers undergo another kind of cellular change. As you expose them to stress, they experience microscopic damage which is a good thing. In response, the injured cells release inflammatory molecules called cytokines that activate the immune system to repair the injury. This is when the muscle-building magic happens.

4 Factors that Increase Muscle Growth Rate

Muscle Tension

The minute circular damage – microtrauma – that triggers muscle repair and growth happens both during the negative and positive portion of an exercise.

Negative: Stretching (negative) phase, comma, contracted muscles lengthen to their stretch positions when they are forcefully moved by the weight.

Positive: During the contraction (positive) phase, the weight makes it difficult for the muscle to once again contract. The force exerted to move the weight is what causes the microtrauma.

The greater the damage to the muscle tissue, the more your body will need to repair itself. The resulting cycle of damage and repair eventually makes muscles bigger and stronger as they adapt to progressively greater demands. Since our bodies have already adapted to most everyday activities. Those generally don’t produce enough stress to stimulate new muscle growth.

In fact, if you don’t continuously expose your muscles to some resistance, they will shrink, a process known as muscular atrophied. In contrast, exposing the muscle to a high-degree of tension, especially while the muscle is lengthening, also called an eccentric contraction. This generates effective conditions for new growth.

Time spent under tension

Size of weight is not the only thing that matters. Period. How long that weight is used is also critically, important to muscle growth.

Often times people will use lighter weights to begin with because it’s easier to increase to a much heavier weight, comma, but if the weight used is too light, then during the contraction phase, the force needed will be too small to trigger a signal for muscle repair and growth.

Research has shown that the compromise between time spent under tension and absolute negative/ positive tension, seems to be reached by working out at a 70% to 80% of maximal strength.

Feeling the burn

Muscle burn is the result of a rise in acidity that happens within the muscle tissue as a result of the breakdown of ATP, which is the usable energy molecule in your muscles. So, as the ATP is broken down during the set, muscle acidity rises, and you feel that burning sensation in your muscle tissue.

The exertion during a strenuous workout out causes your muscles to need more oxygen.

During aerobic exercise like weightlifting, your muscles need energy faster than your body can adequately provide oxygen. So your body ramps up its acquisition of energy from glucose, a process called glycolysis.

The pain forces you to stop, to prevent injury and to force a period of recovery.

Hyperemia or “Muscle Pump”

When you continue doing multiple repetitions, your muscles rapidly fill with blood and your muscle fibers presses together tightly, as more nutrition are bought in and waste products like lactic acid and carbon dioxide are removed.

During the proper training, muscles can receive up to FOUR TIMES their normal amount of blood.

Conclusion:

The body responds to the demands you place on it.If you tear your muscles up, eat right, rest and repeat, you’ll create the conditions to make your muscles as big and strong as possible. It is with muscles as it is with life. Meaningful growth requires challenge and stress.

Reference:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5299520/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285070/