Pushing ourselves and working hard for our goals has been something we have learned for a long time.
Sweating is an indication of how hard we push ourselves.
I know, there are very good benefits of sweating, but what I intend to show you on this post isn’t about doing more and killing ourselves every single day because surely, that is a great indicator of burnout. We might hate doing it afterwards.
How do we truly build muscle>
On my own experience I learned that to build muscle we have to have some form of progression.
Day after day, Week after week, and month after month.
If I didn’t set a new PR, I would be offended.
Stressed,
Because I wasn’t growing any muscle. In my head, my body wasn’t getting the stimulation to grow. I wanted to grow my booty to look leaner (have less body fat).
I have got results,
I been able to grow my booty,
But I can honestly tell you that I been having to work very hard for it and the progress hasn't beeb because I pushed myself beyond my limit.
On the positive side, I have learned that we are stronger than our mind let us think.
I understood that I did not have to listen to my emotions and that I can have control in my life.
It didn’t help me get faster results though!
During a time, results cost my joy in training.
Something that opened my eyes was learning of conditioning, a class I took twice in 2018.
Learning! Our cells job after certain stimulation.
Conditioning has been seen as a way to improve our stamina.
But in neurology, conditioning is the way we make learning to occur. We all know that the best way of learning is by doing one thing at a time and so in building muscle.
Learning is the way we store memory. Long lasting memory.
Memory is the recruitment of cells on one area. It is reinforced or strengthened after repetition.
Applying this language into fitness.
We can easily identify that muscle memory occurs after adaptation.
Adaptation occurring after constant repetition.
As someone who is been trying to grow muscle and been afraid of exercise to burn calories because as we know, increasing our metabolism or burning calories is counteracting for our owns body's progress, even if I have tried to to get rid of excess fat and belly fat.
Building muscle is an important part of training, as hypertrophy plays a role in mobility;
We have to increase our load, to tense our muscle to then cause stress and make it grow (hypertrophy). This is something that unrealistically can happen with progressive load, adding more weight or more reps on a consistent bases. Remember our body likes taking breaks or rest to grow.
AND in order to grow, we have to adapt. Let our body learn that movement with the same weight for a period of time.
When we adapt, a growing stage happens on its own. The progression flows.
In a female perspective:
We want to build aka grow muscle to look toned.
We surely don’t want to get big.
Some will!
To look toned, we take care of our diet (calories in) and everything else should be intended to build muscle (to grow).
Techniques that we might heard.
1-5 reps to strength
6-12 reps for hypertrophy.
12-more reps for conditioning.
These are the strategies to cause the most important thing: awareness (mindfulness) in our body. We want our body to work with us and we want our reflex to do the job after a learned movement.
We need selective attention.
Something that only repetition can accomplish.
Rep after rep, we start paying attention to the muscle. Repetitions that are brought to our attention. The ones we get through our day to day training, and month to month periodization.
There is a quote I am fan of.
I like to apply it in several aspects of my life.
Not only in fitness.
Believe me that increasing our strength is somehow need it. Somedays and on some occasions we have to push ourselves in ways we don’t think are possible to give our ego a good feeling, but on the opposite side, pushing ourselves increases our metabolism as will also increase our hunger. A common way our body makes us grow.
The quote says.
“No because I can, I should”.
In training means that we might feel empower and motivated to increase way more weight, we can intend to push ourselves to the max, but on the following week, we might lose it all up.
It is better to stay with little.
If exercise and learning is something you want to do for the rest of your life,
why hurry? You can start now with the little you can and grow muscle faster (key to get leaner faster) because you stayed consistent and no because you pushed more than you should.
Give it time and let muscle to adapt. It will make you improve.