Have you noticed how health and fitness seem to have lots of big words to express what you might have thought were simple concepts? Hypertrophy is one of them. It’s a fancy turn of phrase that you probably don’t use every day, but if you’re someone who cares about growing your muscles, muscle hypertrophy is what you’re trying to achieve.
When you do certain forms of exercise (lifting weights is probably the most obvious example), it increases the number of muscle cells and makes your muscles grow bigger. That’s what we mean by hypertrophy. Simple, right? It’s often one of the main goals of someone stepping into the gym.
There are actually two parts to hypertrophy. The first is myofibrillar, which is about your contractor muscles. This is where you gain strength and also some speed. There’s also the sarcoplasmic aspect, which involves how much glycogen you can store in the muscles. This affects your energy levels and how long your muscles can endure through an exercise.
Lifting a heavy weight can cause mechanical damage to the muscles. This isn’t all bad, though, because it means that the repair process is activated. When your body moves to fix the muscle, that’s when it grows.
Another important aspect of hypertrophy is what’s known as mechanical fatigue. That’s the point when your muscles run out of energy (specifically, the ATP compound) and can no longer lift weights. Again, it’s reaching this point of apparent weakness that allows the muscle to grow back stronger.
Other factors can affect how effective your exercise is at muscle gain. How often you repeat the exercise is an obvious one. That goes for the number of reps in a single session and how regularly you schedule those sessions. Equally important, however, is the recovery time between them. Remember, you’re damaging your muscles and need them to repair if you want them to grow again.
You need to challenge yourself if you’re trying to achieve hypertrophy, which means making sure the weights are heavy enough and the sessions are long enough. On the other hand, you don’t want to push yourself too hard and end up with a serious injury that leaves you out of action for weeks or even months. Talk to a doctor or personal trainer first to make sure you have a safe plan suited to your body’s needs.
