From the beginning of time, we have been told the bigger you’re the heavier weights you can lift, while there is some truth to that because to lift heavy weights you need muscle and muscle helps you lift weights. You may have noticed in your gym or wherever you workout, not everyone’s physique is the same while some have small but dense muscle and some have bigger but soft muscle.
There are high chances that you might have seen someone lifting more than your gym god but is not as big when compared to the gym god and the particular reason for that is he has dense muscle. When I say his muscle is dense I mean his muscle has more muscle fiber than your gym god.
Most people don’t even know that if they have dense muscle or big muscle and it’s not their fault because they don’t even know such as thing/concept exists so they don’t even bother. So if you have searched for this article this means you have some idea about it or it has piqued your interest so let us understand it in detail.
Sarcoplasmic
Its a type of muscle growth that mainly focuses on increasing muscle glycogen concentration that will lead your body to draw fluid in larger quantities to your muscle cell, This type of muscle growth is faster when compared to the ‘myofibrillar’ and it shows the visible results but this only means that you will have big muscle and soft. It will lack muscle fiber that makes your muscle strength and that’s the reason why most of the big-looking guys can’t lift heavyweights.
If you have a high level of body fat then it will accompany your big and soft muscles. As we have all heard that when you stop working out your muscle shrinks and that is true in the case of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.
Bodybuilders have this approach, they train with light/moderate weight with high reps because they aim for volume and pump with this there is an increase in muscle cell fluid sarcoplasm which causes the size of the muscle to increase.
Myofibrillar
You might wonder sometimes, that he’s not that big but how can he lift heavy and the particular reason for that is myofibrillar hypertrophy. This type of training focuses on making your muscle fiber bigger rather than increasing its size, growth in it is time-consuming and for that reason, most people don’t prefer it but it will improve your muscle strength leading you to lift heavyweights.
Your muscle won’t look big but they will be dense and firm this will give your body a more defined and lean appearance. Another great advantage of this approach is that even if you stop working out your muscle won’t shrink what you gained from your hard work you will keep it with you, not like the previous approach (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy) if you stop working out your muscle will shrink.
Powerlifters keep this approach and for that reason, they are able to lift heavy weights most people dream about their only goal is to lift more. They might not be big or muscular as a bodybuilder but when it comes to strength they are second to none.
Conclusion
If you want to look lean and strong go with myofibrillar hypertrophy, train fewer sets but with heavyweights, and repetition ranged between 1 to 6 but if you prefer having a muscular body and look big then take sarcoplasmic hypertrophy approach train with light/ moderate weight do 8 to 12 repetitions. For beginners, I will advise taking the dense muscles approach (workout for dense muscle) so they can build a strong foundation and after that focus on getting big in the areas, you’re lacking.
Having dense muscle or looking big will all fall down on your approach and goal but remember big doesn’t mean strong and lean/small doesn’t mean weak. With all the training it is also necessary to keep your diet in check so if you want to lose weight eat according to and watch out for the food that can make you fat and keep your cardio in check too. This sums up my knowledge of dense muscle and big muscles, hope you liked it.