Muscular Hypertrophy and Your Workout

Muscular hypertrophy refers to growing your muscle cells. Read on to learn how to achieve muscle growth from exercise and diHypertrophy is an increase and growth of muscle cells. Hypertrophy refers to an increase in muscular size achieved through exercise. When you work out, if you want to tone or improve muscle definition, lifting weights is the most common way to increase hypertrophy.What is muscular hypertrophThere are two types of muscular hypertrophy:

myofibrillar: growth of muscle contraction pasarcoplasmic: increased muscle glycogen storaWhich type to focus on depends on your fitness goals. Myofibrillar training will help with strength and speed. Sarcoplasmic growth helps give your body more sustained energy for endurance athletic eventMuscular hypertrotypes Increases Activatmyofibrillar strength and speed contractor msarcoplasmic energy storage and endurance glycogen storageWhen weightlifting, you can perform many repetitions (reps) at a lower weight or lift a heavy weight for fewer reps. The way you lift will determine the way your muscles grow and change.

For example, you can develop muscle tone with a lighter weight, but it will require a high number of repetitions to improve efficiency of muscle fibers. Unless you perform a number of repetitions to the point of fatigue, with this workout style you won’t see a lot of muscle definitioOn the other hand, using a heavy weight is an effective way to stimulate growth and definition in muscle fibers. It’s also a more efficient way to work out if you are short on time.

How to build muscle and increase muscle sTo build muscle through weight lifting, you need to have both mechanical damage and metabolic fatigue. When you lift a heavy weight, the contractile proteins in the muscles must generate force to overturn the resistance provided by the weightIn turn, this can result in structural damage to the muscles. Mechanical damage to muscle proteins stimulates a repair response in the body. The damaged fibers in muscle proteins result in an increase in muscle size.

Mechanical fatigue occurs when the muscle fibers exhaust the available supply of ATP, an energy component that helps your muscles contract. They aren’t able to continue fueling muscular contractions or can no longer lift the weight properly. This can also lead to muscle gainBoth mechanical damage and metabolic fatigue are important for achieving muscular hypertrophYou don’t necessarily need to work your muscles to the point of what’s called “failure” — meaning you’re unable to follow through a repetition to get the results you wanOne study from 2010 found that for maximum gains, there needs to be significant metabolic stress on the muscles, plus a moderate degree of muscle tension.