Natural muscle growth is desirable for many of reasons. Athletes, body builders and fitness nuts alike all rely on healthy sustainable bodies. Although steroids are effective, they are hardly sustainable as they are costly and dangerous in long-term use. It is still possible to gain significant amounts of muscle even though there are several limiting factors to natural muscle growth.
Genetics
The amount of muscle you can gain is limited to the size of your frame and muscle type distribution. People with larger skeleton's have the room and the stability to carry large amounts of muscle. Fast twitch muscle fibers are the fibers we use during exercise. Overloading these fibers during exercise is what creates growth. The number of fast twitch muscle a person has is completely genetic and can only be increased through intense exercise, according to the satellite cell theory (see section 5).
Recovery Ability
The mechanism that allows steroids to be effective is recovery. A person who uses steroids will be able to recover faster from more intense exercise and will be able to do more work than a person who is not using steroids. This is what truly allows a steroid user to get so large, so fast. Your natural recovery ability also depends on your genetics and nutrition. Muscle needs protein in order to rebuild itself. The more protein you consume--be it meat or legumes--the more resources you have to build muscle.
Age
The body's recovery ability is higher during youth when the body is already growing and changing. The law of inertia holds true here. The amount of time it takes a body to begin to change varies, but ounce change begins, changes become steady. Young people have an easier time packing on muscle or changing their physique because their bodies were already changing when they started.
Supplements
It is not possible to change your genetics, and if it were, it would be accomplished through supplements. The amount of protein that needs to be consumed in order to create positive muscle growth gets larger as the person increases his muscle mass. Protein drinks are a huge help to bring a person closer to his goal of natural mass. The vast amount of work that needs to be done in order to create a stimulus to create muscle can be tiring. Pre-workout energy drinks can be used to create the inertia needed to get through tough days.
Satellite Cell Theory
There has been confusion about how muscles actually grow in science. It is has been agreed upon that muscles hypertrophy through hyperplasia. Hyperplasia is when muscles grow by increasing mitchondria and nutrient reserves. This leads many who wanted to grow muscle to use volume training as it is an easy way to pump the muscle full of blood and nutrients. In 2004, scientist discovered that injured muscles could divide and create new muscle fibers after injury. They named this discovery the satellite cell theory. This discovery leads trainers to use intensity training as it actually creates new permanent muscle instead of the inflated muscles created by hyperplasia.
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