Introduction
In any esoteric study that you undertake, there’s an understanding of one going through cycles of regression and progression, breakdown and build-up. It’s a universal law that either subtly or very strongly affects out lives that interwoven between the strands of our lives that are controlled alternatively by causality and fate.
Our body is governed by the same rules that are a direct result of causality through exercise which facilitates a process of build-up and breakdown. The greatest example of them all is the muscle recovery process, which clearly shows us how muscle recovery and rebuilding works.
Muscle Hypertrophy
So how does one acquire stronger muscles? (Read: hot body while being in prime health)
Exercise, right?
Following the right diet as well, right?
Right.
Well, at this point you might say… so, that’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Hold your horses (especially if you’re the gambling types)!
Our body consists of muscles namely skeletal, smooth and cardiac.
Of these three types of muscles, the skeletal muscles (tendon-to-bone type of muscle) are the ones that you focus on through weight training, integral to our body’s functions of locomotion and in maintaining body posture and of course, looking good.
So, before we go into depth as to what happens when you work out using ‘strength training’ methods, you should understand how implements used in weight lifting exercises actually work on your muscles.
For example, if you are working on the biceps muscle, one repetition of the exercise in question (also known as a contraction) helps you in learning to use the muscle. And this is advantage number one leading to observable gains in strength of the muscle within the first few days. This gain in strength is attributed to a phenomenon otherwise known as ‘hypertrophy’.
So, what is hypertrophy?
From a surface level, it is the increase in mass or girth of a particular muscle through external stimuli, and in this case, through exercise.
At a biological level, even before you notice this increase, a breakdown or damage of muscle tissue occurs to which the whole process of muscle recovery responds to the external stimuli (strength training in this case) by building itself up so that it increases in strength by the biological increase in size of muscle fibers also known as muscle hypertrophy.
The reinforcement process involves increasing the size of muscle fiber that causes cells to expand while putting pressure on the nerves and arteries. This expansion pushes against the compartment each of these cells are ‘housed’ in, and the enlargement of each cell forces its compartment to increase in size as well, thus inducing pain. However, if you focus on exercises that focus on concentric muscle contractions rather than eccentric muscle contraction, you can increase your muscle size without having to endure the aftermath of DOMS, as we would have experienced it at one time or the other.
In Closing
As muscle recovery takes way more than two days as assumed normally, it is imperative to understand that giving the body rest is vital to building a good muscular body. Most experts say that until the muscle recovery process is complete, one should not get back into training again. For it is better to take another day off rather than get back into training leading to muscle damage that is irreparable and just plain harmful to physical fitness process.
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This is a great Guide to Fitness and muscle building