Muscle training is better with more weights
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A recent meta-review concluded that while you need to add more weights to develop strength, you don’t really need to scale as high when building your beach body.
We all know that for a lot of us going to gym can’t seem to get our facts straight. Is it 5 sets of 12 reps of dead lifts or 5 sets of 3 reps at more than 60% of your body weight?
Once again, science has some evidence to bring to your next gym arguments, in the real world and on the internet. A recent review, which has been released from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, claims that strength training gives you more results when you do high-load resistance training. Making your muscles bigger, however, can be done through high-load or low-load resistance training. The study refers to this process as muscular hypertrophy, in that your body’s muscle fibers will thicken.
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While this develops pleasing aesthetics, muscular hypertrophy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re building strength (although when you do one, you usually get the other). When an organ undergoes hypertrophy, the cells enlarge, rather than multiply. The reason why it doesn’t develop it doesn’t necessarily develop strength is for a couple of reasons.
The first reason is more likely that if you were only hypertrophying your organ, then there wouldn’t be more cells, just larger ones. Without more cells, the organ isn’t as dense and may not be able to function properly. Hypertrophy generally happens when there’s a lot of needed nutrients, fluids and other chemicals available to the cell, after the cell undergoes intense stress. This is generally the wears and tears that muscle cells go through.
The second reason is that strength training builds neuromuscular junctions. That is, more connections between your neurons and muscles are formed. With more signals going to your muscles, your muscle is more stimulated. The rise in stimulation leads to more efficient use of your muscles. It explains why Terry Crews can do this.
The report gathered 21 studies that held four criteria listed on the abstract of the study itself.
Photo Credit: Victor
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