Most guys who workout with weights will tell you that they’re trying to ‘build’ muscle. On the surface this seems like a perfectly legitimate and normal claim, but the closer you look at the mechanism of muscle growth you’ll see that we don’t really ‘build’ muscle but rather we ‘grow’ or ‘inflate’ muscles.
Muscles are always in a transient state. The size of a muscle is always dependent on the external stresses that are forced on it, and specifically exercise.
After that there are some nutritional factors, genetic and drugs that can change the size of a muscle.
In each case the size of the muscle is a transient state that can be predicted based on the genetic, nutritional, drug, and mechanical influences.
In today’s audio lesson we’ll discuss what is really going on when we say we’re trying to ‘build’ muscle. Hopefully we’ll end up with a bit of a clearer image of what working out really does to our muscles.
John
(Download Transcription: “Muscle Growth“)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
{ 11 comments }
Hey John, I have a question for you about the building vs inflating idea. One of the concepts I’ve come across in my own reading is that there is more than one kind of hypertrophy. There’s one that increases the fluid portion of the muscle cell and the components stored there (sarcoplasmic), and another that increases the actual contractile components (myofibrillar).
It seems to me that sarcoplamsic hypertrophy works well with the inflating concept of muscle growth, but the myofibrillar hypertrophy is about increasing the actual contractile apparatus, and that sounds more like building.
What are your thoughts on that?
John,
Yeah I understand what you’re saying and I’m sure both processes actually happen, but the actual change in material is still transient, and it still only accounts for approx 15% of the total cell volume.
JB
Hey -
Three tings:
1) it’s podcast day whooooooooooooooo!
2) What about changes in the cross lying density of the muscle tissue? Cat’s muscle creates a ‘spiral’ rather than lying flat – could weight training alter the ‘sequence’ of fibre contraction (eg: white then red or both types together, etc – ie: the blurred line between fibre type (you know – fruit and crunchy whole wheat) and neurological efficiency being less clear cut than previously thought?
3) Check how ripped and AI’ed Downey Junior is in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ – inspirational def’ of shirt off big.
looking forward to the new book – in shape and out of control is my middle name, but it’s helped finding your very good selves.
John,
I have a question.
I understand the concept that the muscle is being ‘inflated’ due to different stresses. There are endless discussions and articles in forums and magazines on how and what works best and why for ‘building muscle’.
One thing that is often mentioned – never as the direct cause but usually as a side note of personal preference – is something that you did not mention in the podcast, which is the pump.
It would make sense to me that the more blood you force into an area, the more the fibers get stretched out and maybe it takes so long to ‘build’ muscle because it’s such an odd and horribly indirect way of causing plastic deformation in the muscle tissue. (Is plastic deformation even possible in muscle tissue? Is it some combination of plastic and elastic? Who knows!!!!)
And I’ve always wondered just how does using heavy weights cause muscles to grow bigger. Everyone knows you need heavy weights but I’ve never heard anyone explain why aside from “Dude, it makes your muscles adapt and grow, dude”. But isn’t it true that the heavier the weights are (to a point), the more blood is shuttled to that area.
The one problem I see with this theory is that (I think) stretching for connective tissue should be done every day whereas everyone knows you’re not supposed to do strength training on the same muscle groups two consecutive days.
Anyways sorry for rambling. Maybe you could touch on the pump at some point in the future?
Thanks as always for the podcasts.
Later,
Mac
Mac,
Great point and I will cover this in a future podcast.
JB
Why haven’t you made a transcription of the podcast in PDF file, available for download?
The adonis workouts should be changed to: Burn, Burn and inflate, and “really inflate”. lol.
Touche Lachlan…touche…
John,
The building muscle misconception isn’t that bad compared to this. I just had my sons friend ask me what the best way to turn fat in to muscle was. I had to explain that fat does not actually turn in to muscle, that fat is fat and muscle is muscle.
Thankfully, he explained to me that I didn’t know what I was talking about because some kid in his third period study hall turned 15 lbs. of fat in to muscle!
I guess I stand corrected. Who knew that this study hall hero knew so much? I wish that kid would start a blog so I could learn all of the real secrets!
Kelly,
There really isn’t much of a response for that one. I used to be a strength and conditioning coach for a varsity womens team and one of our players asked me how to lose weight and I replied ‘eat less’. She took offense to my answer. I also gave the girls free access to Eat Stop Eat and some of the girls on the team who were currently in their biology undergrad decided that Eat Stop Eat was dangerous and that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Kid’s just seem arrogant these days. It’s sad because the education system is getting worse and the students are learning less, but at the same time they THINK they’re getting a good education and they’re becoming more arrogant.
JB
Hey there, when looking at your site i see some kind of weird codes all over the page, in case it’s important I just thought I’d let you know it says this with all sorts of other stuff after it: Message : Exception of type ‘System.Web.HttpUnhandledException’ was thrown.
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