Many of the people who start in the gym aim to increase their muscle mass. In fact, sooner or later it is usually the most common goal of users. At that moment, many questions and doubts begin to arise about training, breaks, the exercise routine and the number of sessions that must be carried out per week.
There are several types of hypertrophy and depending on certain factors you can stimulate the muscle in a different way. We tell you how you get the muscle to grow in diameter or in length.
There are two types of hypertrophy: sarcomeric and sarcoplasmic. As we perform strength training and proper recovery, our muscles increase in mass.
The difference between the two types of hypertrophy is that one causes a greater increase in the number of fibers, while the other changes muscle size by increasing the size of the fibers. Still, even though they are different hypertrophies, one cannot occur without the other.
How does hypertrophy happen?
In order for the muscle to grow and increase its size, a stimulus that causes mechanical tension must occur. This stimulus causes the muscle fibers to change in size, but there is also another way to create hypertrophy.
Since stress is being applied indirectly, the number of microfibers increases and therefore increases the size of the muscle.
There are three factors that determine how muscle hypertrophy occurs.
repetition speed
Of course, the speed of repetition of the exercises with a certain resistance influences the party that we produce in the muscles.
When we perform fast exercise, the mechanical tension is reduced in the main muscles. So the ideal is to perform slow repetitions if we seek to increase the transverse size of the muscle. If we continue to do it quickly, we will increase the size of the muscle fascicles.
range of motion
This factor is not usually taken into account by many people. It is extremely important to perform strength training with wide ranges of motion in order to increase mechanical stress. In this way we also increase the passive force, since there are certain fibers that stretch when the movement reaches a certain point.
When the range of movement is wide, hypertrophy causes the tissues to increase in size, something that will not happen if the movement is shorter.
contraction form
On some occasion we have told you about the importance of including eccentric movements in your training routine. These exercises cause the size of the muscle fascicles to increase, unlike concentric movements that only produce a transverse increase in the muscle.
The ideal is to combine the two types of training to seek the greatest variety of stimuli in the muscles.