Fast Muscle Mass - Examining New Lean Muscle Growth & Sarcomeres
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A recent study, showed that muscle gains come quickly when a person starts weight training. Most exercise physiology
texts say that initial gains are usually in strength rather than muscle size. Your brain develops more efficient
communication with your muscles, or, to put it in scientific terms, you develop neuromuscular efficiency As the brain
and muscles work in tandem to recruit muscle fibers, changes occur, such as increased muscle protein synthesis, that
result in muscle size gains. According to the texts, though, that doesn't occur until after an average of two to
three months of regular training.
Recently, however, researchers found that college students who did leg extensions were able to add muscle to their
front thighs in as little as two to four weeks, far faster than previously believed. The authors cite the rapid response
of anabolic hormones induced by the training.
A new study expands and confirms those findings and suggests that exercise intensity is the major factor responsible
for rapid initial muscle gains. Seven healthy young men trained for 35 days doing leg extensions on a special
flywheel-based machine. The design of the machine made ft gravity-independent, which maximizes both the raising (concentric)
and lowering of the weight (eccentric) during the exercise. Maximum stress was applied to the exercised muscles.
Past studies may have overlooked early signs of muscle growth because the equipment used was incapable of examining the
muscle changes occurring at a molecular level. For example, more recent investigations of muscle growth show that
satellite cells, or progenitor muscle stem cells involved in the hypertrophy and repair processes after exercise or
trauma, begin to proliferate within four days of a single weight workout. Muscle protein synthesis increases 60 percent
within 41/2 hours of a workout featuring both concentric and eccentric muscle contractions-the usual style of bodybuilding
training.
The men training on the leg extension-flywheel apparatus showed a rate of front-thigh muscle growth of 3.5 to 5.2 percent
after only 20 days. That translates to a 0.2 percent increase per day. Maximum muscle strength rose by 38 percent by the
end of the training period. Since the cross-sectional area of the front thighs (an indicator of muscle increase) increased
by 7 percent, the strength gain largely came from neuromuscular changes, confirming long-held findings.
On the other hand, the gains in muscle size surpassed previous expectations of the time required to acquire gains. The
maximum voluntary muscle contraction improved significantly in only 10 days, detectable before any size increase. That
points to increased muscle efficiency.
At the molecular level the training rapidly led to production of intramuscular growth factors, mainly insulinlike growth
factor 1 and its cleavage form, mecbano-growth factor. The upgraded production of IGF-1 signals a biochemical cascade
resulting in increased muscle protein synthesis, which in turn leads to muscle hypertrophy, or growth. The authors think
that the flywheel design of the machine maximized every rep done by the subjects, and it was the maximal effort that
promoted the IGF-1 response.
Another interesting finding was that a muscle's internal architecture changes with the onset of exercise. The purpose of
the change is to prepare the muscle for growth. Structures in muscle called sarcomeres are lined up in an orderly pattern
conducive to muscle growth. As it happened, the flywheel apparatus provided more stretch-which facilitates the lineup of
sarcomeres within muscle-than usual machines.
While the authors suggest that some of these changes occurred because of the unusual design of the machine, the principles
could be applied to any type of resistance training. For example, since the machine imparts more muscle damage due to a
potent emphasis on both raising and lowering the weight, that aspect should also be emphasized in any exercise. The stretch
aspect can be duplicated by using a full range of exercise motion, including a pre-stretch at the start of every rep. Again,
that lines up the muscle sarcomeres, not only leading to a stronger muscle contraction but also acting as a precursor of the
muscle architectural changes that precede actual muscle growth.
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