When training anaerobic exercise over a period of time, what physiologically is changing in your muscles that causes imroovement?

Question

I have been working on improving my health. I read about glucose, ATP, oxygen delivery etc. But when I am cross training and pushing myself, what is happening in my muscles? Do you grow more capillaries to deliver more oxygen to clear waste? Lactate forms, and exercising with lactate present improves muscle “tolerance” to it. But again, what is improving? Does your body produce more enzymes?

Edit: I want to differentiate the training I am talking about versus traditional “over loading” weight lifting (muscles get bigger)

In: 163

Answer 1

You’ve probably heard of ‘mitochondria’ which are the power convertors in your cells. The analogy is a bit simplistic, but you can think of them like batteries. Aerobic conditioning causes your cells to make more batteries, connected in parallel, so you can maintain effort longer. Anaerobic conditioning causes mitochondria to fuse together. In other words, it takes the batteries and joins them end to end, in series, so you can produce higher peak effort.