Alpha Progression
Hypertrophy
The growth or enlargement of your muscle cells (muscle fibers) is technically called hypertrophy, or muscle building. To get your muscles to grow, you need to consider three basic factors. These factors include strength training, nutrition, and regeneration.
Your muscles need to be exposed to a strong stimulus in order to grow. You achieve this with strength training. The progressive overload principle is important here. Your muscles must be regularly confronted with an increasing load. You can achieve this by increasing either the weights, the number of reps, or the number of sets.
So training hard with progressive overload is huge for building muscle and provides the foundation for that growth. Training creates small tears (muscle damage) within your muscles. This damage needs to be repaired. For this, the body uses the important building block protein. The proteins (amino acids) accumulate in your muscle cells and provide an increase in muscle cross-section.
As a rule, you should consume 0.8 to 1.2 g of protein per pound of bodyweight to optimally build muscle. Furthermore, a calorie surplus is necessary. That is, you need to consume more calories than your body uses.
Thus, you ensure that your body and your muscles are sufficiently supplied with energy so that you can train hard and then recover well. The main source of energy is carbohydrates, but you also shouldn't go without fats (especially omega-3 fatty acids), since they are important for your hormone balance.
Hormones also play an important role in muscle building. The better your hormone balance works, the higher your potential to build muscle, as different hormones can inhibit or promote muscle growth.
The last factor is recovery. With your strength training you set the necessary stimuli for growth. With the diet you provide your muscles with the building blocks that are needed. But only in the recovery phase do your muscles actually grow, so you should give your muscles enough time to recover from the hard training sessions you put them through.
As a rule, you should take a break for around at least 48 hours before training the same muscle group again. Furthermore, you should optimize your sleep to achieve the best possible results.
Alpha Progression can help you to build muscles effectively. With the Calorie Calculator you can calculate your calories. In addition, use the Alpha Progression App to create a training plan that is tailored to you and your goals.
