What are the manifestations of the relationship between male fitness and muscle gain

For the vast majority of ordinary men, scientific resistance fitness is the core controllable condition for muscle gain, and muscle gain is one of the most intuitive positive benefits of this type of fitness. However, the two are by no means absolutely bound - not all fitness can promote muscle growth, and wrong fitness methods can lead to muscle loss.

Xiao Zhang, who works at my desk downstairs, made me complain a while ago, saying that he ran 5 kilometers after get off work every day for three months in a row, and occasionally played basketball for an hour. He was obviously "insisting on fitness." In fact, we just haven’t grasped the logic of the connection between the two. Most of what we often call fitness that promotes muscle growth refers to resistance training with progressive overload. It must give enough stimulation to the muscles to cause slight damage to the muscle fibers. Afterwards, nutrition and rest can be used to repair excess recovery, so that the girth can increase. Pure aerobic exercise, which is low-load and tends to consume, will naturally not be able to achieve the effect of muscle growth.

There is a lot of quarrel online now about the relationship between the two. One group pats their chests and says, "As long as you move, you will grow muscles. If you don't gain muscle, you haven't practiced enough." The other group shouts, "It's useless to eat 70% and train 30% for exercise. You can gain weight just by lying down if you eat enough protein." In fact, both views are too extreme. Don't tell me that I actually met a little brother who was 183cm tall and only 110 kilograms two years ago. After listening to the latter's words, he ate five eggs and two kilograms of milk a day, and never touched any equipment. In three months, he gained 8 kilograms, and his body fat increased by 6%. His belly was bulging, and his arm circumference was still only 30 centimeters, without any muscle gain. On the other hand, I was just messing around in the first half year of training. Every time I went to the gym, I would hit all the equipment. After training, I would eat a hamburger as a supplement. I would eat a bowl of rice with every meal. My protein intake could not even reach 1g per kilogram of body weight. After half a year of training, my arm circumference increased by less than 1 cm, which was a waste of time.

To use an inappropriate analogy, building muscle is actually like renovating and adding a new roof to an old house. Resistance training is equivalent to workers coming to the door to cut gaps in the old walls and reserve space for new building materials. Nutrition such as protein and carbohydrates are cement bricks. Rest and sleep are the time for workers to construct. If you just cut the walls without transporting materials, or just pile materials without cutting the walls, the house will definitely not be built. If you are eager for quick success and instant gains and are chipping away at the wall every day, without leaving time for construction, you will collapse the original wall. I had a buddy in the gym who was eager to increase his arm circumference. He practiced biceps in the equipment area every day for more than an hour a day for two weeks. Not only did his arm circumference not increase, but he also struggled to hold a mineral water bottle. He lost almost 1 kilogram in muscle mass during the physical test. This means that overtraining caused the muscles to decompose, which had the opposite effect.

In addition, age will also affect the correlation efficiency between the two. The testosterone level of a man in his 20s is at its peak. With the same amount of training, he can gain muscle more than twice as fast as a 40-year-old man. If you are over 35 and still stay up late and train with heavy weights, you will easily lose muscle due to elevated cortisol. Of course, there are some cases where muscle mass is high even if you don’t have to work out deliberately. When I went with a friend to take a hormone test, I met a boy whose testosterone level was 2.7 times that of an ordinary man. He worked in an office from 9 to 5 and did not exercise deliberately. His muscle mass was about 2 kilograms higher than that of a person of the same weight who regularly works out. However, this situation is only one in a million and has no universality. Those online who use this kind of case to talk about it and persuade people not to exercise all the time and take supplements are basically promoted by IQ tax.

I have been practicing for almost 6 years, and I have at least 20 or 30 friends who have successfully gained muscle. My deepest feeling is that the relationship between the two really does not have so many fancy gimmicks. If you find the right training rhythm, every time you train, you will push 2.5 kilograms more or more than the last time. Do two more, eat enough protein of 1.6-2.2g per kilogram of body weight, and sleep for 7 hours. Your muscles will really not lie to you. If you always want to take shortcuts, you will either work in vain for more than half a year, or you will take supplements and exercise indiscriminately and injure your joints, which will outweigh the gains.