Hypertrophy — how our muscle cells grow

Most of us would like a little more muscle for extra strength, shape or simply for better economy of movement. Or in other words, to have more strength and energy so that whatever we have to do in our daily grind does not wear us out. We want a little steam left to do the fun things in life with the ones we care about.

When our muscle cells expand (hypertrophy) through increased stretch and tension, they become stronger, firmer, and have added space inside them to hold more muscle energy (glycogen). 

Hypertrophy is the way our muscle counters and adapts to new stress placed on the muscle, and is also why something that used to be hard to do becomes much easier when done consistently and over a period of time, especially when we gradually increase resistance.

Recovery is crucial to the muscle and strength building process. When muscle cells get put under a stress they’re not used to, it causes micro tears in the muscle. This is what we need nutrition, rest, and recovery time for: to allow our body the time it takes to patch up these muscle cells with amino acids from the proteins in our diet. When our body repairs these muscle cells with this amino acid patch paint, what we have is a microscopically stronger expanded muscle cell.

It’s important to increase endurance building over a period of time, due to the breakdown process that happens to the muscle proteins in our body. Broken-down protein has to be removed (a lot like the waste around a construction site) and if there is too much in a short period of time, it can cause things to get clogged up, in this case, an overload on your kidneys. 

I read recently about a lady’s trainer that pushed her way too hard on her first workout. The next morning her urine was the color of Dr Pepper. She was an insurance agent, and with the type of job she had, her body was probably not close to being prepared for the type of workout her trainer put her through. 

Once your muscle has recovered, (usually within 1-2 days) it is ready to be worked again, either to keep it at its current strength and size, or you can slightly increase the stress to increase strength and muscle size. This depends on your fitness goals. The size of the muscle group worked, and intensity of the workout can have a bearing on the amount of recovery time needed.

One of the largest contributing factors to the loss of stamina, strength and performance and the overall aging process is atrophy — the shrinking of our muscles. Whether skeletal muscle or the muscles that make up our vital organs, the main 2 factors to atrophy is our diet and inactivity.

Our body adapts to inactivity by shrinking muscle and vital organs, but our body also adapts to gradual increases of stress by strengthening muscle through hypertrophy.

Let’s live a hypertrophy lifestyle so that our quality of life will not atrophy!