Abstract
While strength is indeed a skill, most discussions have primarily considered structural adaptations rather than ultrastructural augmentation to improve performance. Altering the structural component of the muscle is often the aim of hypertrophic training, yet not all hypertrophy is equal; such alterations are dependent upon how the muscle adapts to the training stimuli and overall training stress. When comparing bodybuilders to strength and power athletes such as powerlifters, weightlifters, and throwers, while muscle size may be similar, the ability to produce force and power is often inequivalent. Thus, performance differences go beyond structural changes and may be due to the muscle’s ultrastructural constituents and training induced adaptations. Relative to potentiating strength and power performances, eliciting specific ultrastructural changes should be a variable of interest during hypertrophic training phases. By focusing on task-specific hypertrophy, it may be possible to achieve an optimal amount of hypertrophy while deemphasizing metabolic and aerobic components that are often associated with high-volume training. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to briefly address different types of hypertrophy and provide directions for practitioners who are aiming to achieve optimal rather than maximal hypertrophy, as it relates to altering ultrastructural muscular components, to potentiate strength and power performance.
Highlights
In most sports, athletes are required to sprint, jump, and throw, (e.g., American football, rugby, baseball) or produce maximal force and power in a very specific manner relative to a competition task
With evidence indicating that preferential hypertrophic adaptations are possible [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18], it may be advantageous for strength and power athletes to increase type II muscle fiber content rather than type I content to improve the associated contractile machinery of type II fibers to potentiate sport performances
Rather than achieving maximum hypertrophy, optimal hypertrophy should be acquired relative to (a) increasing sarcomeres in parallel and/or in series relative to predominant competition tasks, (b) increasing the type II/I fCSA ratio, (c) enhancing type II myofibril utility, and (d) accruing select regional areas of hypertrophy to improve the function of type II molecular motors relative to competition tasks
Summary
Athletes are required to sprint, jump, and throw, (e.g., American football, rugby, baseball) or produce maximal force and power in a very specific manner relative to a competition task (e.g., back squat in powerlifting, overhead press in strongman, snatch in weightlifting, put the shot for throws). Hypertrophic adaptations are a result of structural (i.e., whole muscle size that can be viewed without a microscope) and ultrastructural (i.e., molecular muscle physiology, visible only with a high-powered microscope) augmentation The former is often used to determine a positive increase in size via anatomical muscle cross-sectional area (mCSA), depending on how hypertrophy is measured [1]. While the term “hypertrophy” is often used as a general expression of muscle enlargement, there are several forms of hypertrophic outcomes that are possible that will be discussed in detail later in this review These potential outcomes should be considered when prescribing training volume (i.e., product of sets × reps × load) and intensity (i.e., percentage of 1-repetition-maximum [% of 1RM]) to drive the desired hypertrophic adaptation rather than settling for a general hypertrophic change determined by gross muscle measurements.
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