What is muscle?

Per Wikipedia:
Muscle is a soft tissue of animals.  Muscle Cells contain protein filaments that slide past one another, producing a contraction that changes both the length and the shape of the cell. Muscles function to produce force and cause motion. They are primarily responsible for maintenance of and changes in posture, locomotion of the organism itself, as well as movement of internal organs, such as the contraction of the heart and movement of food through the digestive system.


Muscle are classified as skeletal, cardiac or smooth muscles. Cardiac and smooth muscle contraction occurs without thought and is necessary for survival. Voluntary contraction of the skeletal muscles is used to move the body and can be finely controlled.

Examples are movements of the eye, or gross movements like the quad of the thigh.

So what on earth dose that all mean?
We need muscle to survive, cardiac and smooth muscles are important but skeletal muscle is what I am going to dive into!

Skeletal muscle is what we see when we flex or lose body fat.  We have 2 types of skeletal muscle, slow twitch and fast twitch.


-Type I, slow twitch, or "red" muscle, can carry more oxygen and sustain aerobic activity using fats or carbohydrates as fuel.  Slow twitch fibers contract for long periods of time but with little force.
-Type II, fast twitch muscle fibers contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue very rapidly, sustaining only short, anaerobic bursts of activity before muscle contraction becomes painful. They contribute most to muscle strength and have greater potential for increase in mass.

It is important to have muscle!  It helps us move, be stronger, more flexible, increased metabolism, prevent osteoporosis, create a positive effect on insulin resistance, and decrease our chance of occurring diabetes, cancer and Alzheimers.

How do you gain muscle?
-Strength training (lifting heavy weights, fully body workouts and dumbells).
-Eating good proteins, our muscles are made of proteins so need them to grow! Our bodies need 1g per pound of body weight to increase mass.
Recovery! The muscle needs to rebuild sometime.
Eat good whole foods, the vitamins and minerals will help with recovery.
Eat more, to an extent. Breakfast, every 3 hours and post workout is essential.

Also, after the age of thirty there is a loss of 3-5% of muscle mass per decade, making day to day tasks gradually harder to perform and slowing down metabolism - increasing the risk of weight gain.

Who is ready to gain some muscle now!