How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
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Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#2Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#3Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Simply maintaining muscle mass requires a considerable amount of calories. Our bodies evolved to function with the least calories possible. So, if you aren't using your muscles often, the body will catabolize muscle to save energy. If you are using your muscles, and thus signaling to your body that you need more of them, your body will devote energy to hypertrophy and increase muscle mass.
The current regime of near universal caloric surplus is not something our ancestors ever faced and evolution left us very little tools to deal with instinctively.
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#4Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Probably a calorie surplus is more efficiently stored as fat than as muscle (which consumes considerable extra calories too). And most food crisis events maybe aren't remedied with brute strength, especially if you hadn't been using strength before the crisis to achieve your main foodstuffs.
(But it could be many other reasons too when you factor in sexual selection, etc.)
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#5Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Genetics and epigenetics.
If muscle isn't needed and used, it's expensive to maintain.
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#6Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Because muscles take energy to power and fat is storage. In the non-modern world where food was scarcer it wasn't always advantageous to increase in muscle size and therefore caloric needs. Better to carry some fat around in case you don't find food for a while.
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#7Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Bravo, spoken like a true geek, if only evolution was as simple as building machines.
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#8Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Bravo, spoken like a true geek, if only evolution was as simple as building machines.
Evolution is building machines. What is often missed is that the machines that survive best across many scenarios may not excel in most scenarios. You can build a robot that moves 60mph on wheels but it can't take the stairs. Evolution could have built humans that naturally carry far more muscle, but those same humans would die massively in the event of a famine.
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#9Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Even if you are operating with a calorie surplus, you'd need to eat an optimal mix of nutrients to maintain extra muscle. Most people (most likely) cannot simply ramp up amounts of what you currently eat.
For example, if you suddenly require 5000 c/day, you cannot simply eat more pizza, MT Dew, etc. You have to eat 5000 c/day of nutrient rich food. Your muscles do not only require calories. This is actually very hard to do (imagine how much actual food volume you have to process)!
You also need many more macronutrients to keep things going (all that extra food needs to be processed), and clean (significantly more waste byproducts produced).
Your cardiovascular system needs to grow in conjunction with the extra muscle -- it must keep up. As does your skeletal (bones, ligaments/tendons).
Re: How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good
#10Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.
Simply maintaining muscle mass requires a considerable amount of calories. Our bodies evolved to function with the least calories possible. So, if you aren't using your muscles often, the body will catabolize muscle to save energy. If you are using your muscles, and thus signaling to your body that you need more of them, your body will devote energy to hypertrophy and increase muscle mass. The current regime of near…
> The current regime of near universal caloric surplus is not something our ancestors ever faced and evolution left us very little tools to deal with instinctively.
This depends on your ancestors. Demographics with a long history of agriculture are much less vulnerable to diet-induced diabetes than, say, native Americans are.
Some people will eat to gorging when faced with more food than they can eat, and some won't.