Why Muscle Matters

Whenever we talk about muscle, there are always three distinct crowds we’re addressing. The first crowd gets it. They know muscle is healthy and they know they need it. The second crowd understand the benefit but is hesitant about the pursuit of muscle because they don’t want to “get bulky.” This one is for you, second crowd.

Here are a few reasons why adding functional muscle will help you.

You Will Live Longer
The amount of lean body mass you have (a friendly way to say muscle for those of you who freak out at the thought of adding it) is directly proportionate to our life expectancy. While much of the science is centered around an older population, the easiest way to thwart off the need to have it when your older? Develop it when you’re younger.

Having functional, lean muscle improves your daily vitality, makes you more resilient, more able, extends your life.

Do we honestly need to continue?

Soft Tissue Function & Symmetry
Fine. Isolation work and sub-maximal work on the big barbell lifts in the range of 40 – 60% of your one rep max can improve the health and function of our joints, tendons and ligaments. This goes a long way in keeping us healthy as we continue to age and incorporate the rigors of training into our daily lifestyle. Further, isolating muscles also creates better symmetry in the body, and we know that a leading cause of sports injury is asymmetry among large muscle groups.

You Burn More Calories
This one usually gets the second crowd more on board. Muscle is the most calorically active tissue in the human body, meaning. There is the old adage that one pound of muscle added to your frame will burn an extra fifty calories per day simply existing and looking awesome. That’s often debated and honestly, I don’t really know or care if that’s true or not. Even if it isn’t, the concept that lean muscle mass increases your resting metabolic rate is not debatable, that is science. The more lean body mass we have, the healthier our metabolism, and the more calories we burn. That’s fact. of fat on their body relative to their amount of muscle.

Improved Endurance
Building muscle is going to allow you to sustain higher fitness outputs for longer. The more muscle we have, the more phoshocreatine potential we have for immediate power use. The first source energy system we used is the ATP-PCr, or the Phosphocreatine System. This is where we use burst power, and our body stores creatine in the muscle. Creatine is largely responsible for repeat, high-power muscle contraction so by adding more functional muscle to our frame, we’re able to improve our creatine storage capacity and our strength and power endurance output.

Not to mention, the more higher ratios of muscle we have proportionate to total body weight, the more our aerobic endurance will improve, as well. We are essentially increasing the capacity and size of our engine.

Strength Improvement
More muscle gets you stronger. Not only that, but the further you progress along the curve, the more important hypertrophy work becomes in order to continue progressing. At the onset of a program, I’d say around one to two years, most of your strength gains occur at the neuromuscular level. That is, our body and brain working together more efficiently to perform heavier movement. However, once you’re past a certain point your body is no longer going to adapt like it once did and you need to focus on strength from a structural level, that is, building the muscle and soft tissue.

Think about it like this. At first, the soldiers you have are being trained on what to do. Then, they get really good at their task. However, at some point they’re as good as they’re going to be and you simply need more soldiers to take on more of a fight (load). This is the process of adding muscle as you progress along the curve.

No need to get your maximum pump on every time you go to the gym when it comes to adding functional, spread out muscle. Challenge yourself on the major barbell movements, pick up a heavier kettlebell or set of dumbbells, focus on getting more protein, and before you know it you’ll notice your health, physique and physical ability all remarkably improve.

-Dave