Sarcomere and Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy

     I recently did an oral presentation for my class on Sarcomere and Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Just the thought of hypertrophy makes me curious. I did a lot of research on it and found a lot of very useful information. Some of which I am actually including in the design of my work out routines.

     Instead of talking about both forms of hypertrophy on here, I will only make a brief comment on Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy. As most of my attention is focused on Sarcomere Hypertrophy.

     Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy is non-functional hypertrophy. Sure it can make your muscles bigger. Who doesn't want to be bigger? I wouldn't mind being a little bigger myself. Within reason though. I want to add lean muscle mass, but still be able to do most common daily activities without having to hire an assistant to help me, simply cause i can't reach, or bend that way any more.

     So, that brings us to Sarcomere Hypertrophy. Sarcomere is the smallest functioning unit of the muscle, and is also the part of the muscle that does the "contracting" or moving. Increasing the size of the sarcomere, and not only do you increase muscle size (of course not as much as in Sarcoplasmic), but you also increase muscle strength for more forceful contractions. Which is functional since your strength increase is relative to muscle size. Simply put, Sarcomere builds a more dense, stronger muscle. Sarcoplasmic builds bulk, but not as much strength.

     An easy way of picturing the difference would be to picture two well known people. Just as an example, lets use Bruce Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger. When thinking of sarcomere hypertrophy, think of Bruce Lee. He was very strong, but he also had small but very dense muscles. Very functional. Which leaves Arnold Schwarzenegger to be sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Arnold is strong and has large muscles. If Bruce Lee was still alive today, and we could compare, I'm sure we would find out that they are both pretty close in strength. The only difference would be somewhere between 80 to 150 pounds of body weight.

     Although there is a lot of ways I could explain how Bruce Lees muscle structure is more functional, I would rather just make one observation and leave it at that. Bruce Lee being as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger, could still buy his clothes right off the rack.