How does muscles grow

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Medically reviewed by Daniel Bubnis, M. Muscle growth Strength training Resistance vs. How do muscles grow? How to build muscle. Resistance vs. Why rest is important. Do women build muscle at the same rate as men? Cardio and muscles. Diet and muscles. Read this next. Muscular Hypertrophy and Your Workout. Medically reviewed by Alana Biggers, M. This paper first reviews muscle growth and then considers the influence of exercise in growth.

Knowledge about how muscle cells grow and some factors that may influence the growth pattern are discussed first since these effects must be considered before the influence of exercise becomes clear. Growth of muscle can occur in three ways: 1 by an increase in muscle cell numbers, 2 by an increase in muscle fiber diameter, and 3 by an increase in fiber length. All three of these mechanisms are involved in muscle growth.

However, growth in cell numbers is limited to the prenatal and immediately postnatal period, with the animals and man being born with or soon reaching their full complement of muscle cells.

Thus, growth occurs by either hypertrophy of the existing muscle fibers by adding additional myofibrils to increase the muscle mass or by adding new sarcomeres to the ends of the existing muscle fibers to increase their length.

When a muscle cell is activated by its nerve cell, the interaction of actin and myosin generates force through so-called power strokes. The total force depends on the sum of all the power strokes occurring simultaneously within all of the cells of a muscle. The exact mechanism by which exercise enhances strength remains unclear, but its basic principles are understood.

Overall, two processes appear to be involved: hypertrophy, or the enlargement of cells, and neural adaptations that enhance nerve-muscle interaction. Muscle cells subjected to regular bouts of exercise followed by periods of rest with sufficient dietary protein undergo hypertrophy as a response to the stress of training.

This should not be confused with short-term swelling due to water intake. Enhanced muscle protein synthesis and incorporation of these proteins into cells cause hypertrophy. Because there are more potential power strokes associated with increased actin and myosin concentrations, the muscle can exhibit greater strength.

Hypertrophy is aided by certain hormones and has a very strong genetic component as well. The neural basis of muscle strength enhancement primarily involves the ability to recruit more muscle cells--and thus more power strokes--in a simultaneous manner, a process referred to as synchronous activation. This is in contradistinction to the firing pattern seen in untrained muscle, where the cells take turns firing in an asynchronous manner. Training also decreases inhibitory neural feedback, a natural response of the central nervous system to feedback signals arising from the muscle.