Although you might haul yourself out of bed each morning over to the gym to try to get some heavy,
muscle-building workouts in before you start the day, you might not be as motivated to go if you heard
that the amount of muscle fibers you have has been
determined since before you were born.
“The number may increase early in life, but it becomes set at puberty,” says C. David Geier Jr., M.D. and
director of sports medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, about the amount of muscle
fibers in your body.
Muscle tissue, composed of muscle fibers that are essentially fused myoblasts, lose the ability to
undergo mitosis, or cell division, as soon as the fusion of myoblasts is complete.
However, muscles can still “grow” by changing the fibers that are already present within the muscle
tissue. In other words, when you are looking to get stronger, bigger and more toned muscles, you are
increasing the girth and strength of individual fibers rather than manufacturing new tissue.
So
what does this mean for you and your workout? By more thoroughly understanding the
process which your muscles undergo as they get bigger, you will be able to find the
fastest way to
build muscle for your unique needs.
Repair Stimulates Growth
For anyone who has taken some time off from the gym and tries to go right back to their most intense
workout, the feeling of sore and weakened muscles is all too familiar.
But this kind of muscle pain is almost enjoyable if you keep in mind that the pain you are feeling is due
to hundreds, if not thousands of microscopic tears in your muscle fibers that are now being rebuilt to be
bigger and stronger.
As soon as your muscles experience these tiny tears as a result of intense exertion, the cells nearby
swoop in to trigger the formation of proteins at the site of the tear, boosting the size and power of that
individual muscle.
Hormones Play As Big a Role As Your Workouts Do
For most people, when they ponder the fastest way to build muscle, visions of sweat sessions in the gym
and protein shake cocktails come to mind. However, stimulating your body to increase muscle strength
and girth is much more elemental.
Hormones like testosterone can keep your energy levels high, helping you power through more intense
workouts. Human growth hormone is absolutely vital to trigger the repair and rebuilding process of
individual muscle fibers.
As you age, your body starts producing less and less of the essential growth hormone, causing your
workouts to be less and less effective as time wears on. But supplements that stimulate the production
and secretion of HGH can be an effective way to reverse this process. You can read more about some
of the most effective human growth hormone products and stimulation methods at
HGHMeds.org.
Different Workouts Target Fast-Twitch and Slow-Twitch Fibers
Whether you like it or not, the genes that you inherited from Mom and Dad are what determine
whether or not you have more fast-twitch or slow-twitch muscle fibers, and no amount of exercise is
going to change that ratio.
What you can change, however, is the amount of attention you give them, choosing to hone either fast
or slow twitch for a specific sport or just for an aesthetic look.
