HYPERTROPHY | Muscle hypertrophy involves an increase in size of skeletal muscle through a growth in size of its component cells — wikipedia
Packing muscle makes you look better shaped — like those warriors and superheroes from movies; like those ideal physique sculptures from the renaissance period— hence, there’s no surprise these so-called “gym rats” are crazy about building muscle! A huge chunk of the population thinks otherwise:
“Ah, I do not see any practical utility of adding more muscle to my body”
So, this begs the question —
Why should you objectively gain muscle other than for looks? OR like my friend Deepika’s even more general question:
“What are the advantages of being fit? Apart from having flat belly and a well shaped butt, how does being active physically help us — considering that most of us have very sedentary lifestyles?”
- Regular training, exposing yourself to the physical stress from the training, then recovering from it and then progressively increasing the stress has huge impacts on strengthening your immune system.
- The “fitness lifestyle” helps regulate hormonal levels in the body.
- Muscle building activities will improve your metabolism — lets you eat more.
- The process of Muscle building — activities combined with a good diet — helps prolong lifespan by reducing the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
- Reversing the effects of aging
Muscle building activities now will keep you fitter in your old-age. Muscular Atrophy (opposite of hypertrophy i.e. withering away of muscle) is a natural consequence of having a sedentary lifestyle because of your body’s “use it or lose it” policy. So unless you are having muscle building activities in your routine, you are constantly undergoing muscle loss. This means your metabolism and strength levels will slowly deteriorate. Very often, we see people saying statements like — “Oh, excess fat gain is a natural and inevitable consequence of getting older!”. WRONG! Most people become vulnerable to fat gain as they get older not by virtue of their age but because by this time, they have spent the last 30+ years with practically zero activity. It’s no surprise that their metabolism is down — a lot of their lean mass is gone. - One of the most common problems in middle-aged/older women is osteoporosis (porous bones). High intensity training strengthens not only your muscles but also your bones — hence, can counter the effects of osteoporosis. Elite weightlifters and powerlifters have consistently been found to have almost 15% higher bone density than the average population.
- Training and progressively getting better at performing elevates your mood — every micro-goal gives you a sense of achievement once it’s done.
Repeatedly performing well at the gym improves your confidence and seeps into almost every sphere your life. Training steels your mind, improves your will power and increases your pain threshold.
My silver tongued friend Ronak (a trainer) tells his clients: “Do you want to run and play with your grand-kids or be on a wheelchair?”
People make all sorts of excuses to avoid muscle gain!
- Bulk
Like I said in the past (in this write-up) — stop looking at those muscle magazines or media portrayals of how muscular men look. That muscular model, who you think is too bulky for your tastes, is probably on steroids. Oh, and you have that friend who went to the gym and blew up into a hunk? He’s fat. Tell him to get lean enough to have visible ab-definition i.e. lean enough — I can guarantee you he wouldn’t look so bulky. If your friend has found the answer to truly adding a lot of muscle (so much that he looks bulky in comparison to normal folk) within a few months of training, he must probably be having some secrets which the fitness industry should really know about! Being lean and bulky is NOT possible naturally.
WOMEN — It’s not hard to find women who believe that touching a barbell will instantly make them look manly with broad shoulders and muscular arms. One thing that people always seem to ignore is the difference in the testosterone levels between a man and a woman. Men have testosterone levels 50 times higher than that of women. Building and repairing muscle is one of the most important functions of testosterone — hence, the amount of muscle that a woman can put on (when compared to men) is limited. Also, the frame of a woman is pretty different from that of a man — narrower shoulder girdle, wider hip bones — this means, even if a woman gains muscle, she would be bottom heavy i.e. womanly. Adding lean mass to her frame will only make her more feminine and well shaped.
- Flexibility
There’s this popular (FAKE!) story about Arnold Schwarzenegger not being able to hold a mobile phone normally because, apparently, being too muscular has restricted his mobility. I understand where this notion of “building muscle will restrict your flexibility” comes from. We all know that one jacked guy who always complains about shoulders issues — even the way he moves his arms looks like great effort. I can assure you that his issues come NOT from having too much muscle but from having certain shoulder imbalances. He over-trained the front part of his shoulders (well, why not? That’s the only part visible in the mirror) far more than the rear part. For some bio-mechanical reasons (out of the scope of this write-up), it is this Muscular Imbalance that is causing his shoulder problems. A cricketer friend of mine, Bhuvendra, once told me that he would never do weight training because:
“Those shoulder muscles will restrict my motion while bowling”.
- Speed
Whenever someone says that building muscle will make them slow, I just let this video of Clarence Kennedy (a weightlifter who is 100 kg, 6 ft tall, more muscular than you will ever be in life) do all the talking.
The hard truth is…
The process of building muscle is very difficult — of course, there’s no surprise people make lame excuses to avoid it.
In the world of fitness, muscle is the most precious thing one can have. Not Stamina, not Leanness — those are super easy to have if you are decently athletic. But muscle gain — it will take years of hard + smart work before you start to have significantly more muscle than the average folk. I would go as far as saying this:
Among the average population there’s no one who doesn’t need MORE muscle.
