Hypertrophy: Maximum Strength or Maximum Mass?
August 1, 2012 by admin
Filed under Strength Workouts
Article by Eric Rotherman
Hypertrophy: Maximum Strength or Maximum Mass? – Health – Fitness
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Hypertrophy is the process responsible for muscle growth. This is a process that all strength athletes are very interested in, both bodybuilders and weight trainers in general. However there are two types of hypertrophy and these two growth processes both achieve very different results. To maximize your training you need to understand what the two different types of muscle hypertrophy are.
Myofibrillar hypertrophy is the process which increases the strength of the muscle, but only minimally grows the actual physical size of the muscle. If you are a competitive weight lifter this is the process you are most likely going to to be primarily concerned with. To encourage this sort of hypertrophy you will need to be getting a good intake of proteins, so that the exercise of lifting weights can increase the amount of actin and myosin in your muscles. These are the proteins in your muscle which account for a lot of your physical strength. To encourage growth further limit the repetitions you do in each exercise to between 2-6 reps per set. This means that you can work with heavier weights and really concentrate on lifting heavy, instead of using up your energy on lighter weights.
If you are a bodybuilder on the other hand you want your muscles to increase in size and strength is a secondary consideration. The type of hypertrophy you are looking for is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and has little or no affect on the actual strength of the muscle. In actual fact you are going to get both types of hypertrophy from your workouts. But in order to concentrate your efforts on sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, so that you can increase muscle mass, you will need to perform around 8 – 12 repetitions per set. Try not to go to heavy as this will cause your muscles to tighten and produces hard rather than growing muscles. Also if you do more than 12 reps per set you will find yourself producing strong and hard muscles, but they won’t be getting the size you want. This is because high reps tend to produce muscles aimed at endurance sport rather than sculptural body bulking.
Another important point is that muscles need rest. In fact muscles do their actual growing when they at rest. So make sure you allow plenty of time between workouts to rest. Each muscle group should have about 48 hours rest time between dedicated workouts. Hence the need to cycle your workouts around so you hit different muscle groups in different workouts. Happy muscle growing!
About the Author
Eric Rotherman
Check out my web pages on how to maximize muscle development and sorting your Muscle Building Diet for more information.
Use and distribution of this article is subject to our Publisher Guidelines
whereby the original author’s information and copyright must be included.
Eric Rotherman
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Eric Rotherman
Check out my web pages on how to maximize muscle development and sorting your Muscle Building Diet for more information.
Use and distribution of this article is subject to our Publisher Guidelines
whereby the original author’s information and copyright must be included.
