01 Feb Muscle growth Part 2

There are steps to increase muscle growth if you are passionate about building bigger muscles. To continue reading, see part 1 of the blog here. There are three important areas to address when thinking about the role of mechanical tension in muscle growth:

(1) the nature of active and passive mechanical tension

(2) the role of external resistance

(3) the effects of fatigue.

Active and passive mechanical tension 

Muscles can experience mechanical tension when passively stretched or when they are actively contracting. When they are actively contracting, they can produce force either while shortening, lengthening, or remaining at a constant length. In all cases, the amount of mechanical tension has been related to the subsequent change in muscle size. This thereby confirms the key role of this mechanism in hypertrophy.

While we are most accustomed to muscle growth happening after strength training using active muscle contractions, hypertrophy has also been reported after passive stretching of the inactive muscle, in both humans and animals, and very likely involves somewhat similar molecular stimulation through the motor pathway.

Interestingly, however, it seems likely that muscle fibres can detect the difference between mechanical tension provided by active contractions and by passive loading. This is reflected in the nature of the molecular signalling through the motor pathway, and also in the long-term adaptations to strength training, which is often greater after combining both active and passive loading, even when muscle forces are equated.

This suggests that muscular contractions and stretching provide independent, and additive stimuli that lead to muscle growth.

The role of external resistance

The way in which mechanical tension causes muscle growth is frequently misunderstood. We tend to think of the external resistance as being the mechanical stimulus. While this is appropriate when thinking about passive stretching of muscle tissue. It is not valid when thinking about strength training in which active muscle contractions are involved.

The mechanical tension signal that leads to hypertrophy is detected by single fibres and not by the muscle as a whole, by mechanical receptors. These receptors are probably located on the membrane of each muscle cell. This is an important factor because it means that we need to define the mechanical tension stimulus.  Which is related to the forces experienced by each individual muscle fibre, and not by the whole muscle. See studies here.

In this respect, there are two key points.

Firstly, in an active muscle contraction, the tensile force sensed by a muscle fibre is essentially the force it produces itself. Even so, in the absence of fatigue, it is the external resistance that determines the speed at which each fibre can contract. While the resistance must be external to the muscle, it can be internal in the body.  Such as when contracting the agonist and antagonist muscles simultaneously.

Secondly, muscle fibres interact with one another, bulging outwards and exerting force laterally. And the whole muscle bends and changes shape during a contraction. This means that a muscle contraction exposes its fibres to a variety of external constraints. This leads to different fibre shortening velocities, mechanical tension, and length changes, and this affects the fibres of some regions more than others.

Steps to increase muscle growth – The effects of fatigue

When doing multiple, repeated muscle contractions, fatigue develops. This means that the muscle fibres governed by the working motor units become unable to produce the required force. Which causes higher threshold motor units to be recruited, and their associated muscle fibres are then activated. In addition, the fatigue causes the working muscle fibres to reduce their contraction velocity over the set. Consequently, during fatiguing sets with any load, high threshold motor units that grow after strength training are activated, and their muscle fibres contract at a slow speed. Since the muscle fibres shorten at a slow speed, a large number of attached actin-myosin cross-bridges are formed. This produces mechanical tension on the fibre, which stimulates it to grow.

Nicole x