How exactly does damaging your muscles through exercising make it stronger when it gets rebuilt?
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It’s not just your muscles – it’s every part of your body (well, almost every part). The human body is extremely well adapted to get better and more resilient at the things it does time and time again. It does this by repairing small bits that get damaged when used. Bits like muscle fiber especially. Use a muscle hard enough or long enough and very small tears (micro-tears) happen. When tissues are damaged, chemical signals are sent that tell the body to go into repair mode at the site of the damage. Repair mode releases growth factors (hormones, etc.) and increases the blood supply to the tissue (hence, the “pump” after a hard workout), and this increased blood supply brings additional oxygen and nutrients to the area and whisks away waste and muscle breakdown products. So now you have muscle tissue flooding the area with growth/repair chemicals, additional “food” and oxygen, and a stronger waste disposal system. All of this combines to build more (and typically more dense) muscle tissue than existed before the micro-tears from the workout. Repeat this enough times and muscles respond by getting bigger and stronger. Bones in the area will see similar impacts (mostly growing denser) and connective tissue can as well. Tax the heart and lungs hard enough often enough, and they’ll respond in similar fashion with chemical signals and nutrients specific to them.
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