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Are Your Muscles Digital? - With Lee Labrada

3,345 views · Published 8 May 2014 · 4:01 · Indexed 3 October 2026

Channel: Labrada Nutrition · 2014 · Sports

Are Your Muscles Digital? - With Lee Labrada == FREE 12 WEEK PHYSIQUE TRANSFORMATION PROGRAM :http://www.labrada.com/12weekleanbody

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have regarding Fitness or Nutrition and I will be happy to try and answer them. Here's where you can ask.. http://www.labrada.com/asklee

QUESTION: Have you ever wondered what happens inside a muscle when it contracts? And more importantly, how can you use this to your advantage, to maximize your muscle and strength gains?

ANSWER: In this video we're going to be looking at what happens to a muscle when it contracts. I think that you're going to find this interesting, but your muscles act a lot like digital equipment.

Let's take a look at what I mean by that.

I want you to flex your arm and pump your biceps like this. (Lee flexes bicep) If we took a cross-section of your bicep muscle right now it might look like this (image from Lean Body Promise book, page 106) Voiceover: "those little circles are your muscle fibers, and they are enabling you to flexure arm. Since you're not holding any weight, and you just flexing, your body doesn't need to recruit many muscle fibers, maybe just a handful, in order for that muscle to flex. The rest of those muscle fibers well they're just hanging out being slackers, sipping amino acids glucose and chilling out."

Now pretend you're doing the same flexing motion but instead you're lifting a 40 pound dumbbell. As you flex and that dumbbell comes up, here's a cross-section of what you probably see: (Image from lean body promise book, page 107)

Voiceover:
As there's more resistance involved, your body has to recruit more of the muscle fibers in the biceps. You can't just use a few of the same fibers and expect the job to get done. That's because muscle fibers contract according to the all or nothing principle. In other words when stimulated, the individual fibers in a muscle either fully contract, or do not contract at all.

If you're familiar with computers or you watch the matrix once or twice you know the basic concept of the digital world and that is zeros and once it's the same thing with your muscle fibers there either resting which is a zero or contracting which is a one.

And that's why I say that your muscles are digital any sense.
The heavier the resistance you use during exercise, the more muscle fibers you will recruit to enable you to lift that weight. Then with each successive repetition of that exercise those original fibers will tire out and more muscle fibers will have to be recruited. This continues until all of the available muscle fibers are recruited contracting and eventually tiring out.

So what's that mean for your resistance training work out?
It means that in order for a set to be successful, you have to keep performing repetitions, until all of the available muscle fibers are recruited and tired out.

Only then, will you reach the growth threshold, the point during your workout when the level of fatigue and the muscle is high enough that a growth responses sent to the brain, telling it at the muscle needs to adapt in order to accommodate future work. And that means muscle growth for you.

So the summary on all of this is that the first few reps of any set you do aren't the result- producing reps. It's only when the set gets tough and you're struggling with the final reps, that all of the muscle fibers are recruited and you get the real benefit of the set.

Keep this in mind, and push yourself hard in your workouts. I'm Lee Labrada your lean body coach. Stay lean and stay strong.

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