• Question: how do you get big muscles ?

    Asked by Brie mode fearless to Theresia, Andy on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Theresia Mina

      Theresia Mina answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Ah a lot of people prefer to have big muscles nowadays 🙂
      Large muscles are achieved through a balanced combination of exercise and diet.. in a nutshell!

    • Photo: Andrew Philp

      Andrew Philp answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Having strong muscle is very important for health as muscle supports your daily function, but it is also very important for storing energy and regulating the amount of glucose in the bloodstream. Pretty much every chronic disease is associated with a reduction in how skeletal muscle functions. So if we keep active and eat the right kinds of food we can keep our muscle working well throughout our lives.

      However, having big muscle does not necessarily mean strong muscle. So running or cycling are great as they will give you very strong and functional muscle but not necessarily lead to an increase in size. Muscle growth is a process called hypertrophy and is normally increased when a muscle is forced to act against a load greater that normal. So if you were to do a press up you are pushing against you body weight which is the force or resistance that you have to move. If you were to lie on your back and do the same action, there is no body weight and so no force to act against.

      Muscle grows when acting against resistance as a number of genes and proteins are activated to male the muscle fibres get bigger and able to produce more force.

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