this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
96 points (95.3% liked)
science
14698 readers
94 users here now
just science related topics. please contribute
note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry
Rule 1) Be kind.
lemmy.world rules: https://mastodon.world/about
I don't screen everything, lrn2scroll
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Evolutionarily, it makes sense if you're pushing a muscle to 100% exertion, even for only a few seconds a week.
Otherwise, animals would have to spend a large amount of energy to maintain or increase muscle mass, which is wasteful and inefficient — the species who needed more energy to maintain muscles are likely extinct or limited in number.
There's another element to this. Muscle tissue is metabolically expensive, so it's beneficial for an organism to limit muscle mass to only as much as it needs to succeed, thus reducing how much food is necessary. There's actually a protein, myostatin, that directly works to inhibit muscle growth. Some specific breeds of cow lack this; search up Belgian Blue cattle for a look.
Yes. The key difference is the near 100% exertion. If the muscles are used to they're maximum on a regular basis, the body will consider them necessary for survival.
If you suddenly dropped the weight by 20%, so that you exert those muscles less, you would expect them to gradually weaken by a similar margin over time; eventually, to the point that lifting the 80% weight would require near 100% exertion.