Beach muscle and the short lived syndrome
Unless you’re willing to train like a man, you should get familiar with the concept of beach muscle.
LAHORE:
We all know at least one; young men who endeavour to be big and broad and have thus hit the gym. In a matter of months, they’re sporting inflated biceps, shoulders and pectoral (chest) muscles and the much sought-after ‘v-shape’. Some will even have developed a newer walk (think: slower and more deliberate.) You’re supposed to be impressed, but you can’t help thinking: there’s something artificial about those muscles. Well, that’s because there is. It’s called ‘beach muscle’.
The two types of muscle growth
There are actually two mechanisms that can lead to muscular growth or ‘hypertrophy’: the myofibrillar kind and the sarcoplasmic kind.
Wait. What?!
To easily understand this, think of a muscle as being composed of many identical spherical compartments. In each such spherical compartment will be an oblong strand of protein known as a muscle fiber or ‘myofibril’. Immediately surrounding this muscle fiber will be cell fluid, known as sarcoplasm.
When you train with ‘heavy’ weights — informally, a weight that you can only lift for upto seven reps in one attempt — you send the body a signal of being under heavy physical stress or ‘muscle failure’. In the days following the heavy-weight training session, the body will then attempt to recover from this stressor/failure by absorbing nutrients from your diet, especially protein, and infusing into the myofibril within your muscle, a process known as muscle protein synthesis. If sufficient rest and nutrients are met, the result is a larger, stronger muscle, prepared in the face of such a stressor the next time it encounters it.
In such a scenario, the muscle growth encountered is what is called myofibrillar hypertrophy. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is the primary mechanism involved in strength gains, and is thus the aim of athletes. Gains come slow and hard, but are long-lasting.
On the other hand, if you train with moderate or light weights — informally, a weight that you can lift from anywhere from eight to 20 reps — you additionally send the body the signal of fatigue. As a result, the body will now also attempt to recover by absorbing large amounts of carbohydrate and water from your diet, and storing them as energy in the sarcoplasm surrounding the fiber, a process known as muscle glycogen synthesis. In this case, there is much larger muscle, which is not necessarily stronger, but can now work longer.
Such is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which results from doing ‘bodybuilder’ work-out routines of very high reps and following it up with a high-carbohydrate diet. If this mechanism accounts for the vast majority of muscle growth, there can sometimes be very little strength gains, which is why professional bodybuilders can be not as strong as athletes half their size. For the same reason, bodybuilders have their characteristic slow, almost robot-like manner of walking — they’re carrying pounds and pounds of fluid inside them! Nonetheless, since you can easily put on 10 pounds of muscle in a month through maximising sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, most people opt for this training regimen. In fact, famous American author and public speaker Tim Ferriss reportedly put on 34 pounds of muscle in four weeks.
The downside
As you stop sending the signal of fatigue to your muscles, the energy stores are no longer required, and you immediately and rapidly start shedding all of this accumulated fluid. The result is frequent trips to the bathroom and plenty of stretch-marks. Tim Ferriss is back to his normal weight!
So, unless you’re willing to train like a man, you should get familiar with the concept of ‘beach muscle’.
The term was initially used to refer to front-upper body muscles. It was characteristically targeted by young men just wanting to look good, but it is now also employed to refer to inflated and non-functional muscle in general. After all, just like your time at the beach, your time with these muscles is soon going to be over too!
The author is involved in a project called Scholars by Profession. Please visit their Facebook page for further details.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2012.
We all know at least one; young men who endeavour to be big and broad and have thus hit the gym. In a matter of months, they’re sporting inflated biceps, shoulders and pectoral (chest) muscles and the much sought-after ‘v-shape’. Some will even have developed a newer walk (think: slower and more deliberate.) You’re supposed to be impressed, but you can’t help thinking: there’s something artificial about those muscles. Well, that’s because there is. It’s called ‘beach muscle’.
The two types of muscle growth
There are actually two mechanisms that can lead to muscular growth or ‘hypertrophy’: the myofibrillar kind and the sarcoplasmic kind.
Wait. What?!
To easily understand this, think of a muscle as being composed of many identical spherical compartments. In each such spherical compartment will be an oblong strand of protein known as a muscle fiber or ‘myofibril’. Immediately surrounding this muscle fiber will be cell fluid, known as sarcoplasm.
When you train with ‘heavy’ weights — informally, a weight that you can only lift for upto seven reps in one attempt — you send the body a signal of being under heavy physical stress or ‘muscle failure’. In the days following the heavy-weight training session, the body will then attempt to recover from this stressor/failure by absorbing nutrients from your diet, especially protein, and infusing into the myofibril within your muscle, a process known as muscle protein synthesis. If sufficient rest and nutrients are met, the result is a larger, stronger muscle, prepared in the face of such a stressor the next time it encounters it.
In such a scenario, the muscle growth encountered is what is called myofibrillar hypertrophy. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is the primary mechanism involved in strength gains, and is thus the aim of athletes. Gains come slow and hard, but are long-lasting.
On the other hand, if you train with moderate or light weights — informally, a weight that you can lift from anywhere from eight to 20 reps — you additionally send the body the signal of fatigue. As a result, the body will now also attempt to recover by absorbing large amounts of carbohydrate and water from your diet, and storing them as energy in the sarcoplasm surrounding the fiber, a process known as muscle glycogen synthesis. In this case, there is much larger muscle, which is not necessarily stronger, but can now work longer.
Such is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which results from doing ‘bodybuilder’ work-out routines of very high reps and following it up with a high-carbohydrate diet. If this mechanism accounts for the vast majority of muscle growth, there can sometimes be very little strength gains, which is why professional bodybuilders can be not as strong as athletes half their size. For the same reason, bodybuilders have their characteristic slow, almost robot-like manner of walking — they’re carrying pounds and pounds of fluid inside them! Nonetheless, since you can easily put on 10 pounds of muscle in a month through maximising sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, most people opt for this training regimen. In fact, famous American author and public speaker Tim Ferriss reportedly put on 34 pounds of muscle in four weeks.
The downside
As you stop sending the signal of fatigue to your muscles, the energy stores are no longer required, and you immediately and rapidly start shedding all of this accumulated fluid. The result is frequent trips to the bathroom and plenty of stretch-marks. Tim Ferriss is back to his normal weight!
So, unless you’re willing to train like a man, you should get familiar with the concept of ‘beach muscle’.
The term was initially used to refer to front-upper body muscles. It was characteristically targeted by young men just wanting to look good, but it is now also employed to refer to inflated and non-functional muscle in general. After all, just like your time at the beach, your time with these muscles is soon going to be over too!
The author is involved in a project called Scholars by Profession. Please visit their Facebook page for further details.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2012.