How does lifting something heavy build muscle?
In: Biology
There are a few processes that make your strenght, one is the thickness of you motor units (your muscles) which respond to mechanical stress by growing thicker (classic hypertrophy training with 8-12 reps tries to maximise this).
The next is intermuscular coordination. That is essentially how well your body is able to coordinate your muscles during the exercise. That is something your brain just learns when lifting heavy things. Your brain is quite good at this, that also happens for running (experienced runners run more efficiently).
The last is intramuscular coordination. That is the ability of your muscle too recruit his muscle fibers in the most effective way to do the task. It is something your nervous system has to learn. That best works in lower rep ranges as you are forced to adapt to the high stress.
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