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Does Lifting Heavier Weight Build More Muscle?

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Does Lifting Heavier Weights Build More Muscle?
Eira Galera
California State University of San Marcos

Kinesiology 202
Professor Anthony Ordas
December 11, 2015
Does Lifting Heavier Weights Build More Muscles?
A strong belief in most gyms is that you have to lift heavy weights to build muscle. However, according to a study by Nicholas Burd, “lifting heavy weights may not be the most effective way to build muscle. Muscle growth, sometimes known as hypertrophy, is the development of mass, density, shape, and function of muscle cells. This adaptation allows the muscle to meet exercise, function induced stress. Muscle cells are sort of like a bunch of sticks bundled up for firewood. Myofibrils are cylindrical bundles of filaments composed of sarcomeres. Sarcomeres are the fundamental unit of muscle contraction and are composed of myosin and actin. After you work out, your body repairs or replaces damaged muscle fibers through a cellular process where it fuses muscle fibers together to form new muscle protein strands or myofibrils. These repaired myofibrils increase in thickness and number to create muscle hypertrophy (Kwon and Kravitz). Muscle growth occurs whenever the rate of muscle protein synthesis is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown. This adaption, however, does not happen while you actually lift the weights. Instead, it occurs while you rest. So how do you actually add muscle to your muscle cells? This is where satellite cells come in

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