In my last article,
“To
Gain Muscle Weight, Go For The Burn”, I began to detail why
most bodybuilding workout programs are
dead wrong in concentrating on the “numbers” game instead of
going off of the “feedback” your muscles are sending you as you
are training them.
If you didn’t get a chance to read it yet, please do so to better
understand what I’m going to continue to discuss in this article.
But one of the things I had written was that it is absolutely crucial,
if you’re looking to build muscle mass and gain weight, to
make sure that you’re causing certain
feedbacks within the muscle to occur while training.
There are several internal feedbacks that will let you know without a
doubt if you are training properly.
The first one I’ve been discussing has been
lactic acid formation (the so-called
“burning sensation”).
If you aren’t feeling this within the muscle,
you aren’t going to build as much weight or
muscle as your genetics will allow.
I want to go further into detail as to why lactic acid formation will
help you gain weight naturally…
As explained in the last article, lactic acid forms in the muscle when
fresh oxygen is not allowed to enter the muscle during a set.
This occurs when you use a high number of reps during every set, as the
pressure / pump begins to build up within that body part.
Now, that’s not all that happens with the formation of lactic acid.
The more lactic acid that forms (…in other words, the greater the
burning sensation and pain…),
the
greater the amount of growth hormone (HGH) and IGF-1 forms as a
response to that.
As you may already know, growth hormone and IGF-1 are
two of the main hormones that are
responsible for building muscle mass.
As a matter of fact, these are two of the main substances that many
bodybuilders and athletes inject to gain weight in the form of muscle
tissue.
In addition, when lactic acid forms in a muscle being trained, two
processes called
muscle satellite
cell proliferation and muscle satellite cell activation come into play
as a result.
These two processes are also
important
pieces of the muscle gaining process.
But wait, there’s more!
As a result of lactic acid formation and low levels of blood oxygen
within the muscle being trained,
all
muscle fibers are called into play to help out….slow-twitch,
fast-twitch, etc.
So, again,
ensuring that you are
triggering specific feedbacks from the trained muscle, such as
the burning feeling, aka
lactic acid
formation, is crucial in making sure that you are stimulating muscle
weight gain from your workout program.
As this article has pointed out, the
hormonal,
metabolic, and fibric responses to the increase of muscular lactic acid
and the lack of fresh oxygen in the area all play a huge role in
building a muscular physique.
