Muscle Strength

Muscle strength is dependent on three separate yet intertwined factors: physiological strength, neurological strength, and mechanical strength.

Physiological strength is the size of the muscle, and this can be increased through training, usually weight training. By working your muscles intensively past the point where they can comfortable continue lifting a given weight, you damage the muscle fibres, creating what is known as microtrauma. This stimulates a transformation reaction in the body, which regenerates the damaged muscle tissue bigger and stronger than before. Note that no extra muscle fibres are created, the muscle cells themselves simply get larger.

Consistently reaching the optimum point at which microtrauma happens can only result when you keep pushing yourself harder. If your training slips into a comfort zone then you will quickly see your gains in muscle mass diminishing. Similarly, if you do not provide your body with sufficient nutrients to support an intensive training and recovery regime, you will not achieve maximum muscle gain. If you plan to increase your strength, you need to eat plenty of complex carbohydrates, protein and good fat (essential fatty acids).

Muscle cannot grow without these three ingredients, and a deficiency in just one can short-circuit the whole process. If you have trouble eating balanced meals, meal replacements in the form of shakes and bars are very convenient. These are specially formulated to provide all the nutrients needed to support muscle growth and make the most of your training.

Training hard and eating right is not all there is to it however. We have already established that you need to keep pushing your muscles harder in order to stimulate a transformation reaction. This part of the process is largely mental, the belief that you can pull out one more rep when you need to, that is what keeps lean muscle mass gain on track. Many bodybuilders find that keeping track of their workouts in the form of a journal helps them to overcome psychological barriers by reinforcing the progress they hve already made, showing real gains and inspiring confidence that those gains can keep happening.

They also provide a great base on which to plan your next workout. Planning workouts is crucial if you want to keep that muscle growing. If you wander into the gym without a plan, you are going nowhere fast. If you walk in there knowing exactly which exercises you are going to do, and what your targets are, you will be much more focussed and more likely to meet your goals and keep that progress on track.

Mechanical strength is the leverage you give yourself when lifting a particular weight, and you can learn to optimize your mechanical strength best by working out with free weights. These teach the importance of what bodybuilders call good form - using the target muscle group to lift a particular weight and not enlisting the help of a complimentary group to make the lift easier. For example, listing a dumbbell with your arm, without the use of your shoulder or abdominal muscles. Having good form is the only way to keep pushing your muscles harder and getting that growth to happen, because if you are not testing individual muscles, they just will not get any stronger, and you will be wasting your time.

There are other ways to increase your muscle strength during times of intensive effort (such as a workout), the most popular being the supplement Creatine. Creatine is an organic acid naturally found in muscle tissue, and it is consumed in the release of energy through ATP synthesis. When you train hard, Creatine stocks are depleted. But supplementing your diet with Creatine has been proven by study after study to not only increase muscle size and gain, mental alertness and concentration, but even to increase muscle strength during the lifts, enabling you to reach those high points that stimulate transformation reactions and build that lean muscle.

Combining these three different aspects of muscle strength is the only way increase your lean body mass gain, and therefore increase your own size and strength. If you neglect one aspect, the others will suffer, and you will not get the progress you are looking for, which is perhaps why many people start working out and then give up after seeing no gains. Bodybuilding is as much about working out smart as it is working out hard, and by doing your homework you are already ahead of the game. Just follow these simple pointers and you will be on your way to a fitter, stronger body in no time at all.

Muscle Strength