Download A closer look at what happens to your body when you train

A closer look at what happens to your body when you train
You will often hear myths floating around the gym such as, ‘oh, you must do high reps in
order to shape the muscle and make it more defined’, or ‘low reps will make you look fat
and ugly so you shouldn’t do those’. Myths such as these are exactly that, myths!
There is no backing behind making such claims and I am about to explain why.
The first thing you must understand is that the body simply does not care how ‘aesthetically’
(for lack of a better word) pleasing it looks. Its primary concern is survival.
In saying that we can start looking at disproving myths such as the ones I have mentioned
previously.
When you train (specifically with weights) your body adapts to a stimulus in order to
overcome it in the future. That stimulus must be changed in order for the body to continue
to adapt. Don’t mistake this for ‘confusing’ a muscle, because muscles aren’t stupid, you are
not going to confuse them.
What I mean by this is you must provide the muscle with some form of progressive overload
in order to have it continually adapt and grow. This may be accomplished by adding weight
to the bar, increasing the amount of reps performed with the same weight or even adding
more volume in the form of additional sets.
To summarize the above, you must provide your body with a stimulus which will provide
progressive overload in order for it to adapt, and ultimately, grow.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at the most optimal way of doing this and
whilst we’re at it lets disprove some common gym myths.
I’m going to focus mainly on two types of growth in the next few paragraphs; one being
myofibrillar hypertrophy and the other being sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.
In a nutshell a skeletal muscle consists of myofibrils (smallest component), muscle fibres (a
bundle on myofibrils encased in endomysium), fascicles (bundles of muscle fibres wrapped
by a permysium) and finally the muscle as an organ, wrapped by the epimysium.
1. Myofibrillar hypertrophy simply refers to the actual growth of the contractile
proteins within the muscle – actin and myosin. This is what most people strive for
when they lift weights. It is the increase in muscle fibre size, strength, cross-sectional
area and thus a larger muscle.
The ‘best’ way to achieve this type of hypertrophy is through progressive overload in
the 6-10 rep range. I put, best, in inverted commas, because although this rep range
will target myofibrillar hypertrophy to the greater degree, it will still occupy other
dynamics of growth such as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, however to a lesser degree.
A common misconception that arises when people read the above is that if they can
obtain the type of growth they want by training solely in that rep range, then why
would they include anything else? Well the reason is because of continued growth in
the long term. Although you may growth significantly larger by training in this rep
range in the short term, you will eventually plateau and cease to provide your body
with a significant stimulus from progressive overload and ultimately stop growing.
Enter powerlifting. Remember at the start of this article we said that a muscle
growth larger in the presence of progressive overload? Well what better way to
provide this, than with a style of training that will allow the greatest increase in
strength?
People automatically associate powerlifting (reps performed predominantly in the 16 rep range) with big fat men who just eat all day and look horrible. That image
couldn’t be further from the truth. Intelligently incorporating periods of low rep
training into your training week may just provide you will that new stimulus for
growth. Especially if you have hit a plateau and have get to try your hand with lower
rep work. In my experience it is these people who will benefit most from this style of
training.
Now im not saying just become a powerlifter, but you are likely missing out on some
growth by skipping it.
2. Next we’re going to look at sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. The sarcoplasm is essentially
the cytoplasm (A fluid matrix that surround the organelles) of the muscle. It contains
all the non-contractile elements of the cell and of particular importance are
glycosomes (granules of stored glycogen that supply glucose when the muscle cell is
active) and myoglobin (A reddish pigment that stores oxygen).
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy accompanies a large increase in sarcoplasmic volume,
however does not increase the actual size of the muscle tissue.
Often sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is simply disregarded as ‘cosmetic’ training, as it
provides little benefit to strength development. Although sarcoplasmic hypertrophy
shouldn’t dominate your workout, it may still be used within your training weak for
various purposes. For one it may increase the amount of glycogen your body is able
to store as well as provide a means of active recovery.
Training for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is done in the 15+ rep range, typically using a
significantly lighter weight.
So to break down the above myths,
1. High reps will NOT shape your muscle, nor will it make that muscle leaner by
removing the fat surrounding it. This is a concept known as spot reduction and again,
it just does not exist. The muscle grows in response to a stimulus and the shape of
the muscle as it grows larger is simply a matter of genetics.
2. The myth that low reps have no place in a training program is again the result of
people being misinformed. Often people will see someone training in one style and
assume that if they trained that way, then they will look the same. Powerlifters often
carry more bodyfat than most due to their sport. Having additional bodyfat can
impact very positively on your leverages during a lift, meaning you can get more
weight off the ground.
3. Another myth I didn’t mention earlier is the myth associated with training a muscle
group only once a week in fear of overtraining. This myth again comes from
misinformation passed down from the wrong people. This type of training approach
came about from athletes in the 70’s and 80’s who relied heavily on the use of AAS
(anabolic/androgenic steroids). As soon as you introduce these types of compounds,
you essentially change the ‘rules’, so to speak. If you are a natural athlete then an
optimal way to achieve the greatest rate of lean tissue is to stimulate a muscle every
3-4 days, which equates to approximately twice a week. I won’t go into depth as to
why this is a smarter way to train, as I think this article is getting a bit long, however I
will include it in my next article and go more in depth with it then.