Buidling Muscles
Posted: Saturday, August 29, 2009
by Jason Kozma
Personal Trainer Los Angeles
A muscle must be subjected to a stimulus that compels it to adapt and grow. If there is no reason for a muscle to grow, no hypertrophy will occur. Muscles increase their strength and size when they are forced to contract at levels close to their maximum. Much more weight can be lifted with compound exercises than isolation movements. More weight, more overload and in turn more muscle. A compound exercise is a movement that involves more than one major muscle group. It involves a primary muscle and one or more secondary muscles. An example of a compound exercise would be the barbell squat. The primary muscles are the quadriceps and the secondary muscles are the gluteus and hamstring muscles.
Overload is the primary objective when muscle hypertrophy is the goal. Going through the motions will not produce results, you have to push your body to new limits in order to see increased development. Since heavy weight is the most influential stimulus for muscle growth, you must continue to strive for greater overload. Using light or moderate weights doesn't achieve the goal. Maximum overload is the only method that will force a muscle to grow. The degree of this overload ultimately determines the degree of muscle growth.
The only way to increase muscle growth is through overload. The burning sensation that training brings on is believed by most to be a sign of a successful growth promoting workout. Many seek it out and strive to achieve this burning sensation as an indicator to building muscle. That muscle "burn" is not an indicator of an optimum workout. This burn is caused by infusion of lactic acid, a byproduct of glycogen metabolism in muscle tissue. "Feeling the Burn" doesn't really build muscles. The burn is a good indicator of performing an exercise correctly and targeting the muscle properly. You can get a good "burn" by doing 20 repetitions. However, training at that rep range does not efficiently overload the muscle. The muscle "pump" you experience when training is a result of blood actually being "trapped" in the muscles being trained. It is certainly a good psychological boost during training and accompanies just about all resistance exercise. The pump will become greater as your muscles grow larger. Now while this muscle pump is not really a bad thing, it is not necessarily an indicator of optimum muscle overload. Higher reps at a lower weight will give you muscle "burn" but won't greatly increase muscle mass. Numerous studies have shown that high-resistance, low-repetition exercises are more effective than low resistance, high-repetition exercises in promoting muscle hypertrophy.
The last point to consider is that muscles appear to have a memory effect that is significantly influenced by the last set that you did. If you finish each exercise with a heavy set, your muscles remember this and adapt accordingly. Don't make the mistake of decreasing weight on the last set. This is detrimental to what you are trying to accomplish and will impede muscle growth. The muscle memory effect is an important physiological phenomenon and should be used to your advantage in gaining muscle size and strength.
--------
Jason Kozma is a professional Simi Valley Personal Trainer in Southern California. Jason and his High Performance Training Team are helping residents all over Southern California lose weight and get in the best shape of their lives. Find out more by visiting Los Angeles Personal Trainer
This Article has been viewed 51 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.