Muscles

Let’s start at the beginning: what are muscles? Well, there are three types of muscle: Smooth, Cardiac, & Skeletal. Smooth muscle tissues are found in the organs such as the stomach, intestines, and so forth, helping move liquid and such throughout the body. Cardiac muscle tissues are, as one could expect, found in the heart. Cardiac muscles work involuntarily (duh), rhythmically (duh) and do not tire. Now, skeletal muscles are what you’re here for.

Skeletal muscles are attached to the bones, allowing us to move and counteract gravity with the help of our bones (to not be smears on the ground). Skeletal muscles are voluntary, requiring your nervous system to send signals to them from the brain to activate them, as opposed to cardiac muscles (your heart beats, regardless of whether or not you’re thinking about it). Each skeletal muscle has its own nerves, allowing you to move it, and its own blood vessels, allowing them to repair (we’ll get into that later).

Skeletal muscles, all 600+ of them, are complex. Think of a rope, consisting of many tiny, thin fibers which create and strengthen a rope. In regards to skeletal muscles, thousands of myofibrils combined form muscle fibers (muscle cells), many muscle fibers combined form fascicles and many muscle fascicles form muscle organs such as your deltoids. Don’t let the scary name . . . scare you.

Muscle Growth

The body is a marvelous thing. One of the body’s most amazing features, aside from its complexity, is its ability to heal. That’s right, although we aren’t exactly Wolverine or Deadpool (that’s a superhero reference; don’t be confused if you don’t get it), our bodies heal themselves. Everyone knows this, even if you’ve never thought about it. You aren’t sick right now, are you? But I bet you’ve been sick before. And if you are, you’ll eventually get over it if it’s something minor. The same goes for muscles: they heal.

Your goal is to force your muscles to heal. In order to do this, you must first destroy them. Let’s explain: this can relate to Darwinism – the survival of the fittest. Another beauty of the human body is its ability to adapt. The body does its best to adapt to new conditions, whether it’s learning how to combat the newest strain of the flu when exposed to it (flu shots) or something such as sweating to cool the body when the body is getting too hot (relevant). Muscles adapt to stress.

Whether it’s flexion (pulling) or extension (pushing), our muscles try to generate tension in order to push something, pull something, lift (which can be pushing or pulling, depending on the angle), or whatever it may be. Pick up a pen. Easy, right? Of course it is. The muscles in your arms and hands don’t need to generate too much tension to pick it up because it weighs very little. In fact, you probably only used one hand for that task, maybe just two fingers (one if you’re weird). But what if you picked up a cinder block? Well, it wouldn’t be as easy. Your muscles would need to generate far more tension to pick up that block of cement than the pen. For some of you, your muscles may not even be able to generate such tension, and thus you wouldn’t be able to lift it. This is why we workout.

By exposing our muscles to such stress, our muscle fibers are damaged. But fear not, our muscles heal. But our muscles don’t merely heal, they adapt. Eventually your muscles will return to 100% form, but when they heal, it’s with the intention of adapting to the stress that caused such damage. Let’s say you bench press 130 pounds, enough to cause damage to your muscles and make you sore. If you consistently bench press 130 pounds (the same amount of reps and sets), let’s say for a month, you will eventually feel no burn or soreness for such an activity? Why? Because your muscles will eventually adapt, through the process of damage and repair, to the point where it can easily sustain exerting such tension and no longer damage. Thus, you will plateau. Eventually you’ll stop seeing muscle growth and any increase in strength.

When our muscles repair, they become capable of exerting slightly more tension. This is why one of the keys to consistent muscle growth and strength training is progressively increasing stress (or load), in order to avoid plateauing. Our bodies have already adapted to everyday activities, thus why you aren’t sore after walking to the bathroom or holding your hands above your head for a minute or two as you use shampoo. This is where muscular hypertrophy comes into play. In order to encourage muscle growth, we must expose our muscles to a higher work load than they are used to, causing damage and then repair. The opposite, muscular atrophy, is when muscles shrink due to their lack of exposure to stress. What we strive for is a gradual, slow increase in this adaptation. It’s a slow process that demands patience and consistency. We need to take the stairs up to the top floor; there’s no elevator.

Microscopic damage to our muscles is the purpose of fitness. We work out for the damage. Equally as important, however, is the repair. The repairing of our muscles is a direct result of good nutrition and proper rest. Most of the repairs your muscles undergo occur while you sleep, therefore a good night’s rest every day is just as vital as the damage we cause. The less sleep you get, the harder it is for your body to repair your muscles. The other major factor is nutrition. In fact, you can forget about your goals if you don’t pay attention to your diet. Muscles will only grow if they have the necessary resources to do so.