Physical Culture
Level 5 Valued Member
I have several questions regarding muscular hypertrophy at the cellular level. I'll dump them here and see who can help! Thanks!
1. How long does the process of hypertrophy last? By this I mean, do we know how long it takes the body to grow muscle when it has been stimulated? In this blog post (Intermittent Fasting: 12 Lessons Learned from 1 Year of Fasting) James Clear advocates calorie cycling. His idea is to have a positive energy balance on training days, to grow muscle, and a negative energy balance on non-training days, to lose fat. This does not make sense to me- it seems that when the body has been stimulated to grow (assuming the hormone, protein, and calorie levels are sufficient), that it should take a while to create new cells. Do we know, when the stimulus is provided and the body goes into "hypertrophy mode", how long it will take to grow muscle before the process ends and more stimulation is required to restart it?
2. It's often said that a calorie surplus is required for hypertrophy. Is this true? If the body has been stimulated to grow muscle through resistance training/endocrine system stimulation, can it used stored energy (adipose tissue) to fund the hypertrophy process? For example, if fasting into the state of autophagy, can the body use the cells it breaks down to pay for hypertrophy? Or does hypertrophy only occur through energy ingested through diet?
Thanks for any help you can offer!
1. How long does the process of hypertrophy last? By this I mean, do we know how long it takes the body to grow muscle when it has been stimulated? In this blog post (Intermittent Fasting: 12 Lessons Learned from 1 Year of Fasting) James Clear advocates calorie cycling. His idea is to have a positive energy balance on training days, to grow muscle, and a negative energy balance on non-training days, to lose fat. This does not make sense to me- it seems that when the body has been stimulated to grow (assuming the hormone, protein, and calorie levels are sufficient), that it should take a while to create new cells. Do we know, when the stimulus is provided and the body goes into "hypertrophy mode", how long it will take to grow muscle before the process ends and more stimulation is required to restart it?
2. It's often said that a calorie surplus is required for hypertrophy. Is this true? If the body has been stimulated to grow muscle through resistance training/endocrine system stimulation, can it used stored energy (adipose tissue) to fund the hypertrophy process? For example, if fasting into the state of autophagy, can the body use the cells it breaks down to pay for hypertrophy? Or does hypertrophy only occur through energy ingested through diet?
Thanks for any help you can offer!