Get to know Muscle Hypertrophy

Muscle hypertrophy causes increase in muscle size but more importantly it increases strengh.  Muscle hypertrophy is something you need to achieve and it can be achieved or stimulated in two ways.  Moreover the way you stimulate it will result in different outcomes, one will increase size and one will increase strength.

Stimuli 1 – Sarcoplasmic

Sarcoplasmic stimuli will increase the size of the muscle and be less focused in increasing strength.    This is usually done by doing 12-15 reps.  So if you’re looking to increase size train in the 12 -15 range, eat lots of food and you will increase size without gaining much strength.  This is great for burning fat and the beach body but if you also want to increase strength you need to add mayofibrillated training in there as well.

Stimuli 2 – Mayofibrillated

Mayofibrillated stimuli will increase strength and be less focused on increasing size.  This is usually done by doing 2-6 reps of your maximum weight.

Let’s put it all together-

At a very high level keep in mind it’s impossible to just stimulate Sarcoplasmic without Mayofibrillated and vice versa.  I think knowledge is power and what I gained from this research is that if I need to burn fat and increase muscle size I will focus my workouts  in the high rep range (Sarcoplasmic range).  If I’m looking to increase overall strength, I’ll incorporate more low rep, maxing out exercises (Mayofibrillated range).    My take away is that it’s great to have a mix but if I go three months with a workout plan that more focused towards Sarcoplasmic I’m going to change that so for the next three months I’ll focus more on Mayofibrillated.  I think that’s the best way to keep your body balanced and it also keeps me from getting bored of the workouts.    Now get out there and attempt to remember these big words…..