Andrea Raimondi - Natural Bodybuilding And Body Recomposition: Slim With Muscles

Homeostasis. This is the main feature of the human body, that is the tendency to maintain a constant condition and indeed to save as much energy as possible in carrying out any type of bodily activity, with the aim of ensuring the survival of the body itself.

In fact, any change in the external world that somehow affects the body puts into action mechanisms that seek and, under normal conditions, guarantee the return to the initial stage. So when we introduce molecules in the form of food, the body begins a setss of transformations, movements, biochemical processes that have the purpose of returning the body-system to a situation of equilibrium. This equilibrium is fundamental to allow life: think of blood pH level which is constantly maintained at the optimal level through reactions and counter-reactions based on what we eat. For example, the management of carbohydrates, which represent the main energy source, in the form of simple sugars in our body: an excessive level of sugar in the blood triggers a whole setss of biochemical reactions with the release of insulin which allows to stabilize the level blood glucose.

So if you want to increase muscle mass, you have to force the body to get out of homeostasis, you have to break homeostasis and reach a new level of balance in which the body has and manages a greater amount of muscle.

This new level is reached through physical exercise. But not a physical exercise carried out in a casual way but aimed at the purpose we have set.

We will see in the rest of the book what are the variables we have to deal with and that are to be exploited to maximize the exercise aimed at hypertrophy up to the proposal of a training plan that allows us to achieve our goal.

Of course, without constant practice and without detecting in a timely manner what we do during a single workout, the further the goal will remain.

In no field like that of training, theory must be put into practice and verified in reality.

To get out of homeostasis, the body must therefore be subjected to a stress that produces an adaptive response to the stress itself.

Specifically, the neuromuscular system must be subjected to a stress that overloads the initial capacity of the single muscle or of the specific muscle district. The response to this stress generates a setss of neural and muscular adaptations.

Neural improvements, that is the efficiency in the execution of movements, manifest themselves over time by repeating the same gestures, this repetition leads to an increasingly fluid execution and this leads, under the appropriate load, to hypertrophic muscle adjustments. In fact, muscle growth is produced by increasing the size and number of contractile proteins, actin and myosin, present in the muscle itself. These proteins are responsible for muscle movement and form filaments that, during muscle contraction, slide over each other and, overlapping, causing the shortening of myofibrils and, consequently, of the muscle fiber. Therefore, at the base of the muscular contraction there is the sliding of the actin filaments on those of myosin.

The increase in muscle mass must be maintained over time by making the body believe that the extra muscles are needed to deal with the surrounding world and therefore the muscles must increase to allow it to stay alive.