Hot answers tagged muscle-mass
15
The main role of the arms in sprinting is to stabilize the torso and provide drive forward, especially in the start (Which is critical in 100/200m races).
This stabilization allows power to be transferred through the center of mass in an efficient fashion. Since you've got to be able to oppose a significant driving force from the hips and legs, you need ...
14
Certainly there is a correlation between muscle mass and strength, but there is more to the story. Two reasons why muscle mass and strength may not be completely congruous are:
Muscle fiber density
Muscle utilization
Density:
Your muscles are composed of four different types of fibers (slow-twitch, and three forms of fast-twitch). These fibers have ...
10
Unless you've been using steroids and/or have a history of heart conditions in your family, I don't believe that having a lot of muscles is a risk factor for heart problems.
You gain muscles by working out, so while you were building up your muscles, you also built up your heart!
Simply put, unless you notice any limiting factors during working out (like ...
9
There are two key concepts to understand when trying to get stronger:
Overload. The disruption of homeostasis, where the body must adapt and hypercompensate in order to handle that demand in the future.
Recovery. The rest, nutrients, and calories your body needs to support hypercompensation.
So yes, you do need to continue to increase weight in order ...
9
The first really strange thing about your results is your squat number. It is unnatural to be able to curl more than you can squat, and that's putting it mildly. Squats are probably the most important single benchmark of general strength and if you can't get your squat to go up at 20kg, you should just focus on unlocking that piece of the puzzle.
To be ...
8
Your body is adapting itself to the lower demands you are placing on it. There are two basic types of adaptation that your body can go through when lifting weights:
Myofibrillar hypertrophy--this increases the number of protein pairs per muscle cell. In very basic terms, the more protein pairs the more work that muscle cell can do. More myofibrillar ...
8
Look closer, sprinters have muscular everything...
People tend to lump all different types of running into one category but it's more complicated than that.
Marathon runners run long distances, within an aerobic heart range (ex 133 < 152 bpm for a 30yr male), maximizing distance by decreasing load as much as possible. Typically, if you do a dedicated ...
7
Many lifters, particularly novices, need to focus at least some of their attention on hypertrophy and mass gain in order to have a sufficient muscle mass to make strong. I'm not sure if it's appropriate for intermediates and beyond. I'm also not sure if this would call for a sarcoplasmic hypertrophy phase (in which I imagine one would focus on 10-12 rep ...
7
You could do what I did and work a season commercial fishing. I shipped out at 135lbs (61kg) and finished the season at 165lbs (74kg). A steady diet of King Salmon and lots of hard work did me wonders.
I'm much shorter (1.7m) but I've always been "wiry". If you're a slow-gainer like me you need to realize (and make peace with the fact) that you are going to ...
6
You help muscle growth all over your body by using heavy compound lifts. The two exercises that provide the biggest bang for your buck are full depth squats (to parallel) and deadlifts. These exercises target:
Calves
Hamstrings
Quadriceps
Gluteous
Upper and lower back
Abs
adductors and abductors (squats)
forearms (grip on the deadlifts)
biceps ...
6
Myofibrillar and Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy do not lend themselves to being a black and white "it's either one or the other" result. Depending on your initial muscle mass levels, you may put on mass which will be sustained simply because it's muscle you should have had to begin with. In that case, putting on mass would not mean it's sarcoplasmic. Nor does ...
6
While there are many different ways to approach this question, I think the best approach is from a very high-level as it gives you the proper foundation upon which you can build your exercise routine.
An easy way you can understand how muscles are built is by applying Selye's Theory of the General Adaptive Syndrome. The process can be broken down into three ...
5
Your best bet is to split it into even doses throughout the day. Your body will make good use of it. Now, if you have some before bed, it won't hurt. Essentially, at night when you sleep, two types of adaptations will happen (assuming you have disrupted homeostasis):
Starting when you hit REM sleep, your testosterone levels will peak and remain at that ...
5
Overweight is generally defined as having more body fat than is optimally healthy. - Wikipedia
Being over recommended weight is not equivalent with being obese. It is important that you maintain some body fat (the U.S. military requires 3% to the best of my knowledge) in order to be healthy.
The bad news is that just a few extra pounds of fat can ...
5
OK, I am spitting out the law right now so listen up.
Homeostasis: your bodies base level of fitness.
Disruption of homeostasis: a stimulus of the fitness base level
Supercompensation: Adjustment to a higher level of fitness in anticipation of the next training session.
There are a few reasons why our muscles refuse to supercompensate after a bout of ...
5
I've heard/read here and elsewhere that I shouldn't be doing cardio if my ultimate goal is to gain weight.
Some limited cardio can be good while weight training. Cardio helps with increasing O2 circulation, strengthens your heart, and increases endurance. However, what cardio doesn't do much of is put stress on your muscles to initiate growth. Running ...
4
When we interview Get Fit Guy, Ben Greenfield for the blog, he mentioned a an ultrasound device which he describes more in his podcast (around the 45-minute mark) with the creator of the BodyMetrix.
Intelamterix makes a product called BodyMetrix that can accurately scan your body fat percentage and track your fat loss and muscle gain. The way the BodyMetrix ...
4
My soccer coach has always taught to do dynamic stretches before workouts and static stretching afterward. If you do static stretching before you work out you actually are at risk in straining your muscles too much, but if you do it afterward it helps work out the lactic acid in your muscles so they become stronger and if you leave the lactic acid in you it ...
4
I think we need to distinguish between different goals here.
If muscle mass in general is what you want to maximize, compound exercises help you work as many muscles as possible with a single exercise. This is why they are recommended: Most people want to build all their muscles, not just one or two in particular.
If biceps mass is what you want, and you ...
4
Push-ups are insufficient to stimulate large-scale growth, since they simply don't provide enough resistance. Your diet is insufficient to sustain large-scale growth, by dint of the fact that you remain undersized. Fixing these two issues should resolve the problem.
1. Stimulate Growth
Either buy a barbell and a power rack, or join a gym that has one. Get ...
4
A bigger muscle does not necessarily mean a stronger muscle.
There are two concepts centered around hypertropy. Training for hypertrophy(sarcoplasmic), and the hypertrophy that naturally happens when you lift. Sarcoplasmic and Myofibrillar hypertrophy are not mutually exclusive. When you train for power you will have a little Sacroplasmic and when you train ...
4
The only way to truly gain height (Assuming that you have stopped growing. An x-ray of your growth plates is the only way to determine that, although at age 30 it is extremely likely.) is for very expensive, painful and long recovery surgery.
Basically they saw your bone in half, use a frame to suspend the bones a bit apart from each other and let the bone ...
4
There's more than one type of muscle mass, and training different rep ranges emphasize one over the other:
Rep ranges 1-3: emphasizes myophibrilar hypertrophy (i.e. more protein pairs that actually perform muscle contractions)
Rep ranges 4-6: balanced hypertrophy range (i.e. both myophibrilar hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy)
Rep ranges 7-15: ...
3
There is a big difference in lifting for aesthetics and lifting for strength. While I don't think anyone will argue that lifting with the purpose of becoming stronger is better served by compound movements, people lifting for aesthetic purposes don't necessarily agree.
I think we can all agree that you need an aspect of strength to perform bodybuilding ...
3
Low reps with high weights don't add mass because the duration of the exercise is kept short. As a result it is an anaerobic exercise that utilizes the ATP-CP energy system and never enters the glycolytic energy system. The breakdown of ATP-CP creates the energy and Oxygen isn't used.
If one rests long enough for this system to recharge (about 3-5 ...
3
Take a look at this question for an indirect answer to your question. Basically, muscle size and strength do not always go hand in hand. Strength is the ability to do work--and you will never get stronger if you never increase weights. However, you can get bigger when you increase the volume of work with lower weights.
Also note, that beginners tend to ...
3
Sorry to crush your idea here, but there is no such thing as lengthening exercises.
The only way to get a bit more height, is to sleep. After sleep your spine is relaxed and you will be around 1cm taller, this effect wears off over the day and does not affect the legs, only the upper body.
I am no aesthetics expert so my advice would simply be to train ...
3
I'm not sure if you are an ectomorph, but whether you are eating enough or not is the question. If you are not gaining any weight the answer is no. Do you eat 6 times a day? 3 major and minor meals? Even ectomorphs do well on a high calorie diet. To gain weight you should always be on a calorie surplus diet. Do you consume enough protein? If you are a ...
3
You can still put on mass without lifting to failure every time. I will say though, you get out of exercise what you put into it. If you are constantly adding 2, 3, 5kgs often, you are doing something right. I am a big fan of perfect form over sloppier form to get up a little more weight. Note: I am not a power lifter.
Try doing some "negatives" your last ...
3
All the complicated science, Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome, super compensation curves, etc. point to one simple fact: unless you are doing more, you won't get bigger. If you only ever spend 15 minutes at a time under the sun, you are only going to get so tan.
It would be better to restate the question like this:
How can I can I increase size ...
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