Eli5: why does your muscles come back bigger after ripping them during workout but doesnt when you cut yourself?
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First of all, as far as I know, the “micro tear” theory of muscle growth is still debatable.
That said, your body has mechanisms to adapt to certain stresses.
If you spend more time in the sun, your body will adapt by making your skin darker to make you more resistant to sun burns.
If you play guitar, your body will adapt by growing thicker skin on your fingertips on fingers which press the strings to make the skin more resilient to tearing.
When you lift weights, your body will adapt by growing bigger muscles to allow you to lift more weights.
But in order for body to adapt, you need the right kind of stress, stress needs to be of the right magnitude (if it’s too small it won’t trigger the adaptation, if it’s too big it will cause damage) and it needs to happen regularly. If you cut yourself, that’s a very damaging event, and it happens only once.
Lifting weights, on the other hand, is moderate stress that occurs regularly, so your body gets a signal that it needs to adapt to this stress it keeps experiencing over and over again.
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