Muscle Building
The majority of people do never really lose muscle nor gain muscles, they simply stay the same and a lot of people are fine with that. However, if you’re interested in muscle building it is good to understand what it is that triggers the body to create larger muscles.
For this to happen you have to expose your body to stress. This means, to let it experience conditions that it isn’t used to. When you do this, your body begins to adapt to the new conditions and find ways to be able to handle them in the best way.
To give an example; if you try to hold your breath for say, 30 seconds, your body will be able to do this quite easily. But you probably wouldn’t be able to hold it for, say 3 minutes. To get to this stage you have to, over a period of time, expose is, and train it, to be able to hold the breath for longer and longer periods of time. Your body will naturally find ways to make it possible to hold the breath for longer time and it will become easier and easier. However, if you want to be able to hold it for 3 minutes, you have to consistently increase the time and also do it repetitive times.
It works exactly the same way with muscle building. If you want to reach a level where your body has adapted to the conditions of being able to lift weights that are 5 times heavier than what you are lifting now, you have to consistently increase the weights you are lifting repetitive times. You have to step by step give it higher levels of stress and in this way force it to grow more muscle tissue. If you don’t increase the amount of weights you’re lifting, you’ll never gain more muscles. You’ll simply stay at the same level.
The amount of muscle mass you’ll have on your body is directly related to how heavy the weights you’re lifting are. You can see it as different levels, and if you continue do the same weights, you’ll find that it gets easier and easier with time. However, you won’t gain more muscles mass.
So the number one rule, and I will mention it again to remind you, is; Always make sure that you’re increasing the weights and that you’re lifting heavier and heavier weights consistently. In this way, you will trigger your muscles to grow.
When you’re exposing your body to the stress that weight lifting means, it will respond with an experience of fatigue and tiredness. This is a natural response and simply means that your body tries to move back to its previous level. However, with the experience imprinted in the cells, it does at the same time prepare itself to be able to meet the same stress with more ease, if it would happen again. This means that next time at the gym, after letting your body recover properly, you’ll be able to perform at an even higher level than you did last time.
I remember how I one year ago adapted my body to training. I was not changing exercises, muscles I train etc. Terrible when I think about it now. Back then I didn’t know why I didn’t build muscle but today I know. Luckily for me, today I always try to find new ways for stressing my body more and more.