Increase in muscle size is called hypertrophy. How does a muscle’s size increase? There are two types of hypertrophy: transcient and chronic. The first one refers to the muscle pump you experience after completing a set of exercise. It is the result of fluid accumulation, or edema, that is lost from the blood plasma and lasts only for a short time.
Chronic hypertrophy is the consequence of long-term resistance training which changes the structure of the muscle. There is a lot of controversy about the theories that try to explain the exact mechanism of muscle growth. One theory suggests that hypertrophy takes place due to the increase in the number of muscle fibers (fiber hyperplasia), another presumption holds that the number of fibers does not change, but the size of existing individual fibers grows (fiber hypertrophy) in response to overloading the muscle with resistance such as weight training.
Resistance training will increase the muscle size (hypertrophy). Muscle growth depends on the type of the muscle fibers activated and the pattern of recruitment. Muscle growth is due to one or more of the following adaptions:
- Increased contractile proteins (actin & myosin)
- Increased number of and size of myofibrils per muscle fibre
- Increased amounts of connective, tendinous & ligamentous tissues
- Increased enzymes and stored nutrients
All skeletal muscle fibres are not alike in structure or function. For example, skeletal muscle fibres vary in colour depending on their content of myoglobin (myoglobin stores oxygen until needed by mitochondria). Skeletal muscle fibres contract with different velocities, depending on their ability to split Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). Faster contracting fibres have greater ability to split ATP. In addition, skeletal muscle fibres vary with respect to the metabolic processes they use to generate ATP. They also differ in terms of the onset of fatigue. On the basis of various structural and functional characteristics, skeletal muscle fibres are classified into three types: Type I fibres, Type II B fibres and type II A fibres.
[...] As for the weights; thanks to a Christmas present from my friend T, I’m now lifting twice the weight I was before. These are free weight exercises and I’m doing multiple reps focusing on two different muscle groups. The first, on muscles that are unaffected by my level of injury; and the second, on muscles that are — the biceps and triceps respectively. The increased weight and adjusted repetitions should help with definition. [...]
SOG knives…
Interesting ideas… I wonder how the Hollywood media would portray this?…