muscle building process

How The muscle building process Works

Most people only look at the muscle building process on the surface. For them, it’s only important if they have muscles, or they don’t. They don’t consider the overall muscle building process.

The fact is that there are a lot of mechanics involved when you are exercising, as well as afterwards. It’s good to know why you have stiffness in your arms, and why it’s never possible to move your legs.

In this article, we will go over some of the more technical aspects of what happens during the full process of exercise and recovery.

Weight lifting can be broken down into two types of motion.

• Concentric Motion – This is the physical movement when you lift a weight up, as in a standard shoulder press.
• Eccentric Motion – This is the opposite motion. When you lower the bar back to the starting position.

When you injure your muscles during a workout, it’s possible that either motion can cause damage.

Here’s what happens:

• Concentric – During this motion, your body uses mostly metabolic activity, and of course, more of your muscle fibers are used. This depletes carbohydrates and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This increases the chances of muscle damage.
• Eccentric – Although less muscle fiber is used during these movements, the muscle fibers that are used take on more responsibility, and this can lead to microscopic tearing in the fibers.
• Calcium Problems – This can lead to calcium balance problems at the cellular level while exercising, and afterwards. This causes calcium to increase, which decreases the production of cellular energy.
• Free Radicals – Next, the body responds by producing extra fluid to help the damaged cells. This removes damaged tissue, but free radicals are produced that can cause future damage to the muscles.
• Depletion of Carbohydrates – Finally, the muscle energy recovery time takes longer, and it becomes more difficult for your body to store its carbohydrates.

Muscle Building Process – The Effects

The lack of muscle protein, muscle energy, and muscle calcium has profound effects. Your body loses muscle strength during exercises. For this reason, we need rest between hard workouts. However, one or two days are not enough. The body can take as long as seven to 14 days to fully recover.

It can take up to seven days for muscle swelling to subside. Fluid accumulates and causes stiffness and restricted movements. This stiffness and swelling can last up to five days.

Eating complex carbohydrates gives your body quick energy. However, it’s not important how many carbohydrates you eat; your muscle energy level will take at least 48 hours to recover after exercise.

Although this seems like your body is destroyed after workouts, the muscle building process is able to fully repair the muscle after one to two weeks later. Those two or three days rest that you’ve been hearing about from fitness trainers and bodybuilding books is not correct!

If you give your muscles the extra time to recover, they will grow much bigger, and you will avoid many common injuries.

Without the needed recovery time, your muscles will get weaker after each workout, and extreme load on your muscles with destroy new tissue. This means that it is not possible to properly replace the damaged tissue, and your muscles will not grow.

Muscle Building Process – Proper Weight Lifting Rest

Without a doubt, your body requires a minimum of seven days rest for each body part that you are training. This is an excellent starting point. However, realize that if you’re not getting the best muscle results, and you are still losing strength between workouts, you might want to rest those muscle parts another day or two, so they can heal properly.

Here are a few checks to know if your muscles are ready for another workout:

1) Your muscles should feel stronger than, or as strong as they were during the previous session.

2) The muscle soreness should have stopped.

3) Your muscles should have a full range of motion.

By following the above suggestions, you will have fewer injuries, your muscles will grow faster, and you are less likely to quit training. You only need to realize that some discomfort and pain in the muscles is normal. There is some truth to the quote: “No Pain. No Gain.”

Everyone knows that weight and resistance training increases your muscle size and makes you stronger. The more you train, the larger the muscle mass. The larger the muscle mass, the more strength your body has.

You’re gaining muscle mass by altering your muscle protein. You will gain the most muscle mass by giving your muscles enough rest (have you heard this before?).

Although, it can take your muscles up to two weeks to fully recover, you don’t want to wait this long before working a specific muscle part again. Start by giving your muscles at least seven days rest for each body part you have previously trained. During this time, you can work other body parts, too.

Even though you won’t be targeting the body parts you are resting, they will still get a little exercise indirectly when you train other parts.

Muscle Building Process – Detraining

Detraining involves lowering the amount of exercises and activity of your muscles. You can fully develop muscle strength and size by only training the same area once every one or two weeks by making each workout more intensive.

Other studies have shown that some people can increase muscle strength by following up intensive training with up to seven or eight days of low volume recovery.

It’s necessary to experiment to find out what is best for your body.

One thing is certain, fully rested muscles increases muscle strength and production. Therefore, you can rest assured that to support your muscle building process, your muscle parts need a minimum of one week to recover following an intensive workout.

Muscle Building Process – Recovery

Muscle stiffness, discomfort and swelling are all a part of weight training. They are all necessary for the muscle fibers to break down and rebuild to make room for bigger muscles.

There are several ways that you can help lessen these symptoms, and speed up recovery.

Massage – Do what all professional athletes do after pounding their bodies during a game. Get a massage. You don’t need to get a professional massage unless you can afford it. However, make sure your spouse, partner, roommate or friend understand a little bit about massage, and have them help give you a massage.

Light Exercise – Just because you are supposed to rest your muscles, is not an excuse to lie in bed. It’s still a good idea to walk, stretch, perform household chores, and participate in other physical activity during your recovery time.

Water Therapy – Your muscles can get massaged by a Jacuzzi, jet massage, or even through light swimming movements in a pool. Water provides resistance, but doesn’t put any added pressure on your muscles.

Wrap Your Muscles – By compressing your muscles, you can help them recover. This also helps in protecting them from extended usage during your daily routines. You should always be careful that your muscles are not too tightly wrapped to avoid any problems with proper blood circulation.

Hot and Cold Immersions – Many athletes have had success with hot and cold treatments. Immediately following a workout, they will take cold showers, followed by sitting in a sauna for as long as they can stand it. This is immediately followed by another cold shower. This process can be repeated as many times as you wish. If you don’t have a sauna, just replace this step with a hot shower.

Muscle Building Process – Conclusion

This article should give you a better understanding of how your muscles grow, and how it’s possible to allow them enough time to recover. Don’t make the mistake of allowing only a day or two of rest between working out each muscle group. If you do, you will only increase the risk of injuries, and your muscles will not have enough rest to grow at a rapid pace.

Each person is different, so you will need to experiment to find out what the minimum amount of days rest you will need. However, you should give your muscles at least seven days rest between workouts to achieve best results in the muscle building process.

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