Flex your bicep right now. Go on! Every time you make that movement you’re actively contracting many thousands of small muscle fibers.
Now then, each fiber has a muscle cell and they all have ‘links’ that are known as sarcomeres. When our brain tells it to move a chain reaction begins and this is when muscle growth happens.
Curious to know more about what happens on a biological level for muscles to grow? Come on…
Muscle growth
So when your muscles grow and that initial chain reaction happens, something called myosin filaments is added to each muscle fiber. Over time, the cell gets bigger and thus stronger.
However, your muscles can’t do it alone. It needs three other things. Protein, vitamin, and mineral supplementation – including discussing with a healthcare practitioner ways of finding a reliable place for buying steroids in Canada – and something called mTOR.
mTOR stands for ‘mammalian target of rapamycin’ hence it’s easier to use the shorter version. This is a complex form of protein that tells your body when and how much muscle you need to build.
So, when you start weight training you wake up mTOR and this is known as muscle protein synthesis.
It’s not that easy!
Wait. It’s not as simple as that though. Unfortunately, muscle protein synthesis has something that likes to wait in the wings to cause trouble and that’s muscle protein breakdown. This can counteract your efforts.
When the two forces are well balanced and you’re exercising normally and eating to maintain body weight you won’t gain or lose muscle. If you have a positive protein balance any surplus can go straight to your muscle cells. However, if you’re in negative protein balance muscle protein synthesis gets the upper hand and you’ll lose muscle. This is often referred to as being anabolic. It’s when you lose your gains and it’s not ideal.
Hey, come back – it gets more interesting…
There is, as always, a bit more to it than that. Your body is never fully catabolic or anabolic, and it’s more likely that you will have some kind of muscle breakdown and synthesis happening at every stage of life.
Regular exercise that we often think is good for us to gain muscle can actually end up being both anabolic and catabolic at the same time! Who knew? At the heart of it all, what really matters is your average results when training comes out as positive muscle gains instead of negative.
It’s how you train and eat in the long run that will determine your outcome. Not anything you do in the shorter term.
Slow and steady wins the muscle growth race
It might seem too complicated or that it takes too much effort – but it really is true, on a biological level, for muscles to grow, slow and steady is best. Eat healthy, train well, and take the right supplements. Don’t think that one week of gulping protein shakes and hoofing eggs whilst going heavy on weight training will make you a rockstar muscle king! It’s unlikely to help in the long run. Take your time, go steady and the results will show themselves sooner than you think – but realize it’ll be months and not weeks.