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BodyBuilding: How Do Muscles Grow?

June 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Body Building

How do Muscles Grow?

If you don’t have any knowledge of carpentry, can you build a house?

Of course, you can’t.

More powerful than any weapon you will have is simple knowledge, and to accomplish anything satisfactorily, you need to have at least some rudimentary know-how of the task in question.

Your new mantra should be “Work smart; not hard.”.

Unfortunately, this mantra is completely overlooked by thousands of wannabe bodybuilders who throng gyms all over the country everyday, attempting to build muscle and lose fat.

Ask any of these gym rats “How do muscles grow?” You won’t get a satisfactory answer, just a blank stare. “They will look back at you with a blank stare.

Bodybuilding isn’t an art, it’s a science.

Now, don’t get worried; you don’t need a doctorate in biology to build big guns, but knowing the basics of how muscles grow will help you to efficiently meet your muscle building goals.

You must be asking by now “How do muscles grow?”.

Well, the process of muscle growth is complex and involves a large number of biological steps.

You don’t need to know it all as a bodybuilder, just the basic steps of muscle building.

Eager to know how muscles grow? Let’s take a look. Let us find out.

As you train, you should understand that every single action and process within your body has a single purpose: to keep you alive and healthy.

When it comes to Mother Nature, in fact, we humans have just one purpose: to pass on our DNA and procreate.

Yep, that’s all there is to it.

So, let’s cut to the chase and answer the question “how do muscles grow?”.

The human body as we know it is the result of millions of years of evolution, and to be able to ensure survival, it has created natural alarm systems that sound as a response to stress.

Think about how you feel hungry if you don’t eat, how you feel thirsty if you don’t drink, how you feel pain when something hurts you, and how you tan when you are exposed to the sun; these are all instances of the natural alarms going off.

Muscle building should be viewed similarly.

In scientific terms, the muscle building process is called “hypertrophy.”.

At the gym, you stress your muscles by lifting weights when you work out.

With every repetition you perform, your muscle comes closer to failure, which is the point when your muscles will “give out,” and you won’t be able to do any more repetitions, however hard you try.

As your muscles reach the point of failure, these reps create what are known as “micro-tears,” which are deeper and deeper inroads into the muscle fiber.

In simple terms, what you’re doing is actually breaking down muscle fibers by causing damage to the muscle.

When the body is damaged, the survival system will kick in, and the body will react by repairing the muscles.

The repair process starts when the stress ceases, or when you stop working out.

Since the body’s ultimate aim is to keep you alive and healthy, it will rebuild itself bigger and stronger to be able to protect itself against the same threat in the future.

Resistance training causes micro-tears, and the body’s natural evolutionary response is to repair the damaged tissue, which leads to increased size and strength.

For success in muscle building, this concept is essential to grasp, even though it may seem simple.

When you overuse the skin on your hands of feet, your body forms calluses on the skin; the entire muscle building process is very similar.

Muscle tissue is the equivalent of a callus for the body, and it keeps growing with constant use.

Finally, how do muscles grow?

For the process of muscle building to kick in, your body must perceive the weight you lift in the gym as a threat to survival, as a result of which it will initiate a process of adaptation designed to help it cope with this stress.

Let me say this once more: Your workout must be hard enough for your body to see it as a threat to its survival and ability to cope.

This is exactly the reason why an easygoing attitude in the gym will not get you any results.

The body will only perceive a threat when your workout is high in intensity.

How do muscles grow?

Now that you know the basics, it’s time to use your knowledge to fuel your muscles for massive growth; visit the following website to find out how.

By Don W. Demarco. Don writes a widely read muscle column every week. Claim your FREE Muscle Building Course For a button-popping chest vist Ultimate Men’s Workout For Huge Chest

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