Are you sure you are achieving muscle failure? How does rejection affect muscle growth and protein synthesis in an athlete's body? We reveal the secret of professional bodybuilders. Start with a definition. Muscle failure is the inability of a muscle to develop the necessary effort to overcome external resistance. Simply put, you simply do not have the strength to complete the last rep. Many experts have different attitudes to this phenomenon, and athletes are increasingly using it in their workouts. Today we are going to talk about the myths of muscle failure in bodybuilding.
Myth # 1: Why does muscle strength decrease?
The answer, in general, is simple - the contractile mechanisms of cells stop working. As you know, muscles contract due to myosin bridges. If they cannot perform their function, then the muscle will not be able to contract. This condition is called muscle failure.
Myosin bridges can fail in two cases:
- If they are in a coupled state after completing work;
- Are in the disengaged position before starting work.
These states are passive. The more bridges are currently active, the greater the effort can develop the muscle. Now it is necessary to understand when the bridges are in an active state. To do this, you need to figure out when they remain engaged or disengaged.
For the muscles to work, energy is needed, which is obtained from the ATP molecules. The more this substance is stored, the stronger your muscles will be. When the bridge interacts with the actinic filament, spending an ATP molecule for this, then additional energy is required to decouple them. When it is not there, the bridges will be in a passive interlocking state. However, there are always substances in the body that are interchangeable. This also happens with energy sources. Creatine phosphate and ATP are more valuable and rapidly depleted. But there are also less valuable ones, which are enough for longer periods of time. These include glycolysis reactions (synthesis of ATP molecules from glucose), as well as oxidative processes (synthesis of ATP from fat cells).
Thus, the body can find energy to continue doing the exercise, and in this case, there will be no refusal, whether this statement is true. Only in part, since failure can occur even when the bridges are in a disengaged position. Most of the time, creatine phosphate and glycogen stores are sufficient for 4 to 6 repetitions. After that, energy begins to flow through glycolysis. This process starts half a minute after performing the movement and can provide the muscles with energy for a couple of minutes.
After that, the process of fat oxidation should have started, but with anaerobic load there is not enough oxygen and its activation does not occur. You should also be aware that during muscle work, lactic acid is synthesized, which limits the ability to use ATP, and at a certain point the bridges remain in a disengaged state. This is muscle failure.
Myth # 2: In what condition is muscle growth most effective?
We figured out the state of the bridges, now it is necessary to understand which of the passive states will bring a greater increase in muscle mass. However, to begin with, we recall that in the uncoupled state, the bridges remain with a long-term energy consumption in a moderate volume, and in the coupled state - with a rapid consumption of energy sources in a large volume. Scientists have found that maximum muscle tissue growth can be achieved by delaying the bridges in the interlocking state. This allows the maximum amount of microdamage to be inflicted on muscle tissue. Since ATP is not enough for all the bridges to work, one part of them remains in a locked state, and the rest moves the muscle. This leads to damage to those bridges that remain linked.
Thus, we need to increase the failure when the bridges are engaged. To do this, it is necessary to quickly use all the energy before the glycolysis reactions come into play. From this we can conclude that the set should last less than thirty seconds and we should do a lot of work.
If your muscles give up after more than 30 seconds, then you are not wasting energy fast enough. As a result, failure occurs not because of tissue damage, but because of lactic acid, which interferes with the use of ATP. At the same time, even with a quick (less than 10 seconds) failure, it turns out that the energy reserve has not yet been exhausted and the bridges have not remained in the engaged position. It is for this reason that using a low number of repetitions (less than 4) is not as effective for building muscle mass as a moderate number of repetitions, ranging from 6 to 10.
Myth # 3: Muscle adaptation to overload
If you did everything right and failure occurs within half a minute with 6-10 repetitions, then your muscles will begin to grow. But gradually the energy reserves will be more and more and the muscles will adapt to the previous load. To keep progressing, you need to increase the stress of the exercise. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.
Through rejection, you know that your muscles have been micro-damaged and will grow in size. To make it easier to increase the load, you should keep a training diary. Unfortunately, not a very large number of athletes do this.
At the time of failure, your muscles are already damaged, but if you continue to perform the movement, the number of microtraumas will increase. Perhaps someone will think that this is good and the muscles will grow faster. However, in practice, a balance should be observed and there should be a sufficient number of microdamages, and not an overabundance.
You should understand that the guarantor of your progress is not muscle failure itself, but a constant increase in energy expenditure. Thus, you should be very careful with refusal training so that the stress in the class does not turn out to be excessive for the whole body.
For more information on the benefits and dangers of muscle failure, see this video:
