Like if I had a professional surgeon cut my muscles super slightly other than the scars could I theoretically get stronger without weightlifting?
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You’re misunderstanding the mechanisms for muscle hypertrophy (building muscle).
You’re probably just hearing about micro-tears to growing muscle, but in actuality, micro-tears is not the primary driver for muscle growth. Micro-tears are part of the result as you’re lifting weights, but the primary drivers for muscle growth is the stimulus which can be achieved by:
Volume (number of reps and sets),
Load (weight),
Time under Tension (The time you’re putting your muscles under the weight, per rep/sets).
As you provide your muscles with the proper stimulus from this, you’re recruiting more and more muscle fibers to do the work. This signals to the brain that you need to adapt to this type of stimulus and it’s time to build more muscle to do it.
Now comes the nutrition necessary to build the muscle. This is where you’ll need extra protein and energy to build more muscle through protein synthesis. If you don’t also provide your body with sufficient sources of this, your growth potential won’t be optimal. I say “extra” protein because your body requires a certain amount for its normal processes, like growing hair, nails, repairing tissue (you’re constantly using protein in your body). You’ll at some point need an excess for optimal muscle building, or you won’t see much growth past some initial stages.
This is just the short of it. But as you can see, there’s a lot more to muscle building than just “damaging” the muscles. If you simply just damage the muscles, you will repair it. But you need additional stimulus and nutrients to actually tell your body that you want to grow more muscle.
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