Questions about Hypertrophy

[Nach]

Hey people I have a few questions about the hypertrophy process. Im sure Im going to hear good answers here.

Why sprinters(with low volume and explosive tempo) have more development than marathon runners(with slow tempo and high volume)?

Muscle hypertrophy occurs only in the recruited fibers or is a general thing in the muscle?is it hypertrophy a result of neural recruitment?

If failure is a neural thing, should we do a post failure technique to stimulate the Fast Twitch fibers?

that ´s all for now

Warm regards everybody

 

[imported_electric]

Sprinters are using more force or strength on their task because to achieve explosive acceleration you need more force (force = mass * acceleration). Marathon runners use endurance. Besides that the amount of energy required to move your body is proportional to your weight which is highly influenced by the amount of muscle (and fat) you have. It is not optimum for a marathon runner to be muscular and bulky. Of course this could apply to sprinters, but since they need as much explosive power as they can, that means more muscle. Apart from that it doesn't mean that sprinters or marathon runners look that way because they sprint or run marathons. Their training and diet makes them that way because it is the most optimum way for performance in their particular tasks.

I might be talking c* but as far as I am know, failure is the inability to complete a rep which happens if don't have the strength to lift it. If you are fatigued not all muscle fibers are fully participating in the lift and therefore you might fail to lift a weight that you could lift were you not fatigued.

Most recent studies seem to indicate that incorporating failure to your training is not optimum. The gains you get from training until you fail a rep seem to be more then compensated by the negative side effects such as CNS impact and overtraining. If you want to use fatigue (not failure) in your training, routines such as Myo-reps are focused on that. On the other hand, routines like HST are optimum for hypertrophy and have you lifting submax weight most of your lifting time, do not directly use fatigue as a hypertrophic stimulus and yet result in great gains. Choose your poison.

 

[WeAre138]

Hey Nach,

For my two cents, I'm with electric. Sprinter vs. marathoner body type has nothing to do with what kind of cardio they do (actually, they tend to do the same kind of cardio) and everything to do with the fact that sprinters lift weights and endurance types want to carry as little body weight as they can. Let alone genetics and drugs, etc.

I don't know what percentage of muscle fibers are recruited at failure, but it's my understanding that if the weight is heavy enough, all the muscle fibers that you can recruit are recruited. So failure is related to not having enough muscle fibers recruited to lift a give weight a given number of times (due to either not having enough muscles or not having sufficient neural recruitment, or both). How fatigue factors into this, I don't know.

As with most types of exercise, there is a direct correlation with intensity and recovery time (the more intense, the longer you need to recover). Lifting post failure would be fine I guess if you're going to give yourself a week to recover. But programs that are optimized for hypertrophy generally value frequency over intensity, and it just wouldn't be possible to lift post failure (or even at failure) and then be recovered enough to lift again in 2-5 days. Assuming the lifter is natural, of course.

 

[Bryan Haycock]

Here is a visual aid for people to see what Nach is talking about.

 

[Old and Grey]

The marathoner looks like an an AIDS victim.

 

[dkm1987]

There is a lot that has yet to be known on exactly why there is a divergent response but it is mostly owing to the force and volume that each mode of exercise employs. Low frequency stimulation (endurance exercise) impacts and activates a different subset of effectors (albeit in some/many cases these overlap) compared to resistance type training.

Whereas sprinters are somewhat like BBs in that they are repetitively subjecting their muscle to high force contractions which effects a greater increase in fiber specific protein changes, endurance trainees are effecting a greater change in mitochondrial proteins.

WRT to failure training and fatigue, it is mostly metabolic in nature and although a constant reliance on failure can/may lead to a decrease in neural efficiency it does takes some time to do so. In other words the occasional reliance on going all out probably won't hamper you much. Where you may see the greatest deficit is in how often you can hit the gym again which would lead to a lessened frequency of increased protein synthesis and less protein accretion.

WRT to fiber type training, as said already once above an intensity that recruits all motor units there is no reason to go to failure because as stated all motor units are actively participating and if all motor units are active then so are all fiber, fast and slow. There are other means of activating fast fibers without going to failure as well such concentric contraction speed, so there are more than one way to skin a cat. But in essence I wouldn't worry about trying to activate any specific fiber type and just concentrate on getting in enough work with a heavy enough weight.

In fact if you are truly interested this may prove to be a good jumping off point.

Differential effects of resistance and endurance exercise in the fed state on signalling molecule phosphorylation and protein synthesis in human muscle