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Call it what you like, they all mean making muscles with adaptive stress.

Adaptive stress simply means that enough weight/resistance is imposed on your muscles to cause them to develop more muscle tissue. In turn, you become firmer and stronger with a revved-up metabolism to help you become leaner and healthier.

How do you create adaptive stress?  There are countless ways.  For example, you can use your own body weight to do sit-ups or pushups; you can lift weights like dumbbells or kettle balls; you can use rubber resistance bands; or you can lift weights using a variety of machines found in gyms or perhaps your own home.  Other approaches are to perform activities that involve lifting, carrying or pushing anything that engages your muscles in a manner that challenges or stresses them beyond a level that they are accustomed to.  This can be done by participating in various sports or doing vigorous yard work, etc.

The result of adaptive stress on your muscles is to make tiny or “micro” tears in your muscle tissue due to the effort or “stress” imposed on them. The body quickly responds by not only repairing these micro tears but also by making the affected muscle tissue bigger and stronger so that it can better handle such “stress” in the future.  A similar response by our body occurs when we cause stress to an area on our skin.  If we repeatedly rub or otherwise cause repeated stress to that area of skin such that we damage it, our body will repair the skin with a thicker, tougher, stronger skin known as a callous to help ensure that the skin will be better able to handle such stress should it continue.

Benefits of Muscles

Why should we care whether or not we have muscles?  Let me count the ways…..

1.   Improve metabolism with more lean tissue to burn additional calories all day long, (1 lb of muscle burns 3x the calories of 1 lb of fat) 

2.  Build stronger bones, become more flexible and have greater agility

3.  Have a healthier heart, lower blood pressure, a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes and a reduced risk of cancer

4.  Have more energy, be more productive, have improved memory and other cognitive functions

5.  Handle stress better, sleep better and stave off depression better

6.  Look better with a leaner, more compact physique and improved posture

7.  Live longer and be happier

I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t want everything on that list.  It’s all within your reach when you commit to making and maintaining muscles and eating healthy.

Use It or Lose It!

It takes extra energy for your body to maintain muscle tissue.  The beauty of that is that additional calories are utilized to accomplish the task of muscle maintenance and repair.  That translates to a higher metabolism.  Lean tissue (muscle) burns many more calories all day long, as compared to fat.  However, our bodies are also designed to be efficient, so if it doesn’t need to use energy (read “calories”) for a physical function, then it won’t.  In other words, if you don’t regularly use your muscles, your body is not going to continue to expend energy maintaining them.  The sedentary muscle tissue will start to shrink and become softer and weaker.  Your body will need fewer calories with less muscle tissue to maintain coupled with the reduction in energy you would otherwise expend to create new lean tissue.  In turn, you’ll need to trim your calorie consumption or risk gaining excess weight in the form of harmful fat.  Don’t let that happen to you.

Be healthy, lean, strong and sexy!

Make Muscles and Keep Them!