Hypertrophy explained simply
Hypertrophy means growth in thickness. Training does not give your muscles new fibres - the existing ones get thicker. And that does not happen in the gym, it happens afterwards, during recovery.
The stimulus is an unfamiliar load. The adaptation is the reserve the body then builds, so that the same load demands less of it next time.
💬 Mia & Grandpa Theo
Do muscles grow during training?
No, during training they first get weaker. You are only setting the stimulus. The building happens afterwards - while you eat and above all while you sleep.
Then could I just train hard every day and keep setting new stimuli?
Then you set stimuli without ever finishing the adaptation. That is like tearing down a house every morning before it is done. Rest days are not doing nothing, they are the building phase.
For the building material the body needs protein, and for the building site it needs energy from cellular respiration. That is why growth depends as much on eating and sleeping as on training.
Anyone who has built muscle once gets it back faster after a break. The reason: while growing, the fibre takes on additional cell nuclei - and those remain even when the muscle shrinks again. That is the biological basis of „muscle memory“.
This text explains the basics of training and is not a substitute for individual training or medical advice.
← Back to overview