When muscular endurance is increased, if muscles are not getting larger, in what way are they becoming stronger?
In: 70
I’m not a biology expert but I attended a few lectures on the science of strength from a current Olympic team trainer. So forgive me my terminology.
Most responses here are looking at a cellular level however we also need to look at how muscles are structured.
Muscle fibres are neatly laid out in strands, side by side. These strands slide by one another to change the length of your muscle, e.g. When you bend your arm your bicep is shorter.
Sliding passed deals with changing length but doesn’t allow for any strength.
Each of these strands has lots of little arms/hands on it, like a natural version of velcro, in this way the strands can lock themselves in place.
Your ability to activate all of these little hands is called recruitment. An unused muscle will have a low recruitment % and a highly trained one will utilise more of them.
This is why when you start training you get a lot stronger before you perceive any change in size of your muscles.
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