06/02/2010
Signal Underlying YOUR FITness
(2 Comments)
mjohnson's Blogs
Signal Underlying Your FITness II
Continuing with the signal that underlies your fitness I wanted to touch today on the signalling pattern that is sent to your muscles (or perhaps that they send to themselves) after/during a weight lifting workout of sufficient intensity (as we defined last time).
The research seems to show that the actual force produced by the muscle is what sends this signal. Exactly how it is transduced is yet to be fully elucidated, but some ideas are:
metabolites from contraction, such as calcium, phosphate, or protons, actually activate a pathway called mTOR (mammalian target of rapamyacin).
One such way that mTOR is activated is through leucine concentrations in the muscle increasing. This can be done via taking leucine (in the form of proteins such as whey, or crystaline form directly) that will stimulate protein synthesis directly and also longer term (longer term means several hours) through mTOR.
Here is a diagram from some recent research pointing to the different places mTOR probably plays a role
One interesting finding that is only now coming out in the literature but that I had the honor of discussing by personal communication before it hit the journals. Is that after intense muscle contractions leucine concentration seems to rise in the cell “naturally” that is without needing to take in protein. Why this is, is still a mystery, but what we do know is that taking in extra leucine will stimulate protein synthesis even more!
So this brings us to the main point of this blog on the signal underlying your FITness. That is that the main reason our muscle hypertrophy from high load resistance training is because it stimulates protein synthesis (duh most people are saying now). But this is an important point. Because at any given time the size of the muscle is a cumulative effect of synthesis (laying new muscle protein down) and degradation (breaking down muscle protein). The research seems to be showing (from multiple labs around the world). That protein breakdown doesn’t change a huge amount, in comparison to the changes in protein synthesis.
So the newest science out there seems to be pointing to the idea that the best way to increase strength and size is to stimulate protein synthesis as often as possible.
The research seems to show that the actual force produced by the muscle is what sends this signal. Exactly how it is transduced is yet to be fully elucidated, but some ideas are:
metabolites from contraction, such as calcium, phosphate, or protons, actually activate a pathway called mTOR (mammalian target of rapamyacin).
One such way that mTOR is activated is through leucine concentrations in the muscle increasing. This can be done via taking leucine (in the form of proteins such as whey, or crystaline form directly) that will stimulate protein synthesis directly and also longer term (longer term means several hours) through mTOR.
Here is a diagram from some recent research pointing to the different places mTOR probably plays a role
One interesting finding that is only now coming out in the literature but that I had the honor of discussing by personal communication before it hit the journals. Is that after intense muscle contractions leucine concentration seems to rise in the cell “naturally” that is without needing to take in protein. Why this is, is still a mystery, but what we do know is that taking in extra leucine will stimulate protein synthesis even more!
So this brings us to the main point of this blog on the signal underlying your FITness. That is that the main reason our muscle hypertrophy from high load resistance training is because it stimulates protein synthesis (duh most people are saying now). But this is an important point. Because at any given time the size of the muscle is a cumulative effect of synthesis (laying new muscle protein down) and degradation (breaking down muscle protein). The research seems to be showing (from multiple labs around the world). That protein breakdown doesn’t change a huge amount, in comparison to the changes in protein synthesis.
So the newest science out there seems to be pointing to the idea that the best way to increase strength and size is to stimulate protein synthesis as often as possible.
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Comments
it’s awesome seeing the chemistry and mechanics behind these occurances, thanks for the posts matt!