It’s not funny how far our understanding of how muscles work and grow has progressed in the last 20 years.
Few do a better job than Chris Beardsley at making the science of how muscles work accessible. He digs into new studies, older studies, puts them in context with the basic biology and presents them in simple infographics, short write-ups and detailed essays too.
Here are all the crazy questions one could or should have that we are getting more nuanced answers to:
Why do muscles grow?
How do muscles grow?
How do they change after exercise?
What is the right amount of ‘work’ to make a muscle grow?
Does some kind of work make muscles more tired than other work.
What is the right amount of work to make a muscle strong?
Is making a muscle stronger guarantee that it will grow optimally too?
Do all exercises produce the same kind of growth in muscles.
Are different ‘types’ of strength required for different athletic groups?
Is what happens to a muscle different after we do different kinds of exercise?
Do muscles fundamentally change to work differently for completely different types of activity?
What is damage to a muscle? Is there a good and a bad damage ?
These fascinating questions are the key to making sound choices as a coach for your clients. And clients also understand isn’t randomly strung together or just a arbitrary set of a coach’s favourite moves.
There is a sound logic rooted in cause and effect to :
What exercises you should do
What does good execution look like
How much exercise you should do
Why you need to make it harder
How much harder should you make it
Maybe it’s time to make it easier?
How much you need to rest within a session and between sessions?
All of this down to your age, capacity, joint health, lifestyle and athletic requirement.
Few do a better job than Chris Beardsley at making the science of how muscles work accessible. He digs into new studies, older studies, puts them in context with the basic biology and presents them in simple infographics, short write-ups and detailed essays too.
Here are all the crazy questions one could or should have that we are getting more nuanced answers to:
Why do muscles grow?
How do muscles grow?
How do they change after exercise?
What is the right amount of ‘work’ to make a muscle grow?
Does some kind of work make muscles more tired than other work.
What is the right amount of work to make a muscle strong?
Is making a muscle stronger guarantee that it will grow optimally too?
Do all exercises produce the same kind of growth in muscles.
Are different ‘types’ of strength required for different athletic groups?
Is what happens to a muscle different after we do different kinds of exercise?
Do muscles fundamentally change to work differently for completely different types of activity?
What is damage to a muscle? Is there a good and a bad damage ?
These fascinating questions are the key to making sound choices as a coach for your clients. And clients also understand isn’t randomly strung together or just a arbitrary set of a coach’s favourite moves.
There is a sound logic rooted in cause and effect to :
What exercises you should do
What does good execution look like
How much exercise you should do
Why you need to make it harder
How much harder should you make it
Maybe it’s time to make it easier?
How much you need to rest within a session and between sessions?
All of this down to your age, capacity, joint health, lifestyle and athletic requirement.