I’ve wondered this for so long but don’t know how to articulate it well and also feel like it’s potentially a very dumb question but thought this would be a good place to ask it.
Essentially- while I’m working out, are the muscles building themselves during that time or is it a situation where you’d be able to see the effects afterwards like in the coming days? I hope that makes sense.
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I think they actually get bigger afterwards. Like you damage them and they come back bigger and stronger. However there is something called getting a “pump” for people already existing muscles. I know body builders do curls and push ups before going on stage to get a pump. Or if a guy has biceps but takes a week off from lifting and then hits arms hard they do get bigger right there in the moment but I don’t know the science or anything about it
The body is constantly growing/replacing itself. When you work out it increases this growth, and for some time after. During your workout it won’t have any significant impact. Any growth during the exercise is probably just due to swelling or increased bloodflow.
The answer is both.
After a workout your muscles will temporarily appear enlarged. This is due to an increase in blood flow to the area.
The muscle physically grows in the days after a workout when your body is recovering. It grows a very very small amount, but it does grow. Compound this effect for 6 to 12 months and you have significant muscle growth
Exercise is, in a nutshell, the process of literally tearing yourself down to rebuild yourself back up.
As you work out, your muscles are being destroyed.
That’s how it’s supposed to work though. They’re built this way so your body can replace the broken weaker, smaller fibres in your muscles with better, stronger, and thicker fibres.
Due to the injury you’re sustaining + the actual activity you’re doing which requires more oxygen = more blood in muscles to feed the activity.
More blood swells the muscles hence the “pump” you get during the routine.
Afterwards your muscles will be sore because they are now effectively an internal wound of sorts.
Again, designed for this.
They then begin rebuilding within an hour or so of stopping your session at the gym or whatever. Just as any wound would.
The human body is an amazing system of countless smaller systems acting in sync to effectively create one combined unit.
Hope this helps.
your muscles tighten and look bigger during the workout because blood is flowing to them so you can do all the excerises, also you create micro tears on your muscles, with the right diet and working out constantly causes your body to repair those tears better than how they where before
You’re actually gaining a pound or so of muscle mass every day, unfortunately you’re losing about the same amount as well.
So on a typical day you get +100 muscle, and also -100 muscle, meaning you’re +- 0. Diet and exercise can change these values, so by regularly exercising you might get +103 and -100 every day, meaning you gain +3. This is a slow process, you do get +3 every day, but it might take a total of 200 before there’s a visible difference.
The more muscle mass you have, the more you’ll also lose, so after a while, while still exercising regularly you’ll reach a point where you get +103 and -103 every day, and you’ll have to make your workout harder somehow in order to grow further.
My numbers are of course completely made up, but the point is that it’s a constant tug of war, 24/7.
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