Why Bigger Muscles Aren’t Better
Discover the potential health risks of bigger muscles, and what kind of muscle you should really be trying to build.
Ben Greenfield
Listen
Why Bigger Muscles Aren’t Better
You probably know that the way you train shapes your muscle size and also shapes your muscle function. For example, if you lift heavy weights, you can build strong, dense muscle, and if you lift very light weights, especially if you don’t lift to fatigue, you simply build muscular endurance and small, less dense musculature. If you choose exercises that involve multiple joints working all at the same time (such as a deadlift or a squat), you tend to build coordination and natural movement patterns, while if you choose single joint exercises (such as a bicep curl or leg extension), you tend to fatigue muscle and build lots of lactic acid in an area. But from a functional standpoint, you may not build quite as much coordination or athleticism. If any of that confusing to you, you may want to check out, “How To Build Muscle.”
But when it comes to your overall health, what kind of muscle training is best? You’re about to discover the answer in this episode, along with why you may actually not want to be training your muscles to simply “get bigger.”
How Your Muscles Respond to Different Types Of Training
A recent study entitled, “Single muscle fibre contractile properties differ between bodybuilders, power athletes and controls,” looked into the muscle fiber contractile properties of muscle biopsies taken from the quadriceps muscle (vastus lateralis) of bodybuilders who had been engaging in low- to moderate-intensity, high-volume resistance training and compared these muscle fibers to power athletes who had been engaging in high-intensity low-volume training.
What’s the training difference between the bodybuilders and the power athletes? Bodybuilders tend to perform lots of sets with a high number of repetitions, literally “blasting” a single muscle group, such as the chest, over and over again to beat it up, let it recover, and then maximize that muscle group’s size. Meanwhile, powerlifters simply lift as heavy as possible a weight as quickly and explosively as possible, using a relatively low number of sets and reps.
Because of this, bodybuilders tend to be big and bulky with lots of muscle mass, while powerlifters tend to be smaller and wiry, with not too much muscle (although the muscle that they do have is extremely powerful, explosive, and athletic).
The study that I mentioned didn’t seem too groundbreaking with regards to it’s findings: the researchers simply found that high-intensity, low-volume resistance training performed by powerlifters caused significantly different adaptations to training compared to the low- to moderate-intensity, high-volume training style of bodybuilders. Perhaps more interestingly, they also found that the adaptions to training went beyond simply changes in muscle fibers, and found that the differing styles of training caused changes in important markers of muscle health and recovery such as “myofibrillar density” (think of this as having “harder” muscles) and “post-translational modifications of contractile protein” (think of this as being able to use foods to help muscles recover faster).
What Kind Of Muscle Is the Most Healthy?
So, now that we know there are two different kinds of muscle you can build depending on how you train, the question is, which is healthiest? One study looked into this, putting a group of elderly men on a 12 week strength training routine in which half the men did their strength training while on anti-oxidant supplements (1000 mg per day vitamin C and 235 mg per day of vitamin E), and the other half on no antioxidants.
Not surprisingly, both groups gained muscle mass, but the placebo group (the group not on antioxidant supplements) gained more muscle mass and more muscle thickness, with an increase of about 3.9% muscle mass in the placebo group, compared to just 1.4% in the antioxidant group. Muscle thickness increased by an average of 16.2% in the placebo group, and 10.9% in the antioxidant group.
So, as I’ve discussed before on other episodes, it appears there is some potential for high dose antioxidants to blunt gains in muscle size, with the caveat that this only really seems to occur if you’re training at such a minimalist level that you don’t actually need the antioxidants. In other words, an elderly man strength training is going to have far lower needs for extra help from antioxidant supplements compared to a hard charging Ironman triathlete).
Having small muscles that are capable of high amounts of force production may be the healthiest muscles.
But this same study also looked into something else: strength. Specifically, they looked at 1 rep maximum weight (1RM) on leg extension and leg press. Interestingly, the group that took the antioxidants increased their 1RM by more than the placebo group, with a strength gain of 18.7% compared to the placebo group’s 15.8%. In other words, the group that took antioxidants didn’t gain as much muscle mass, but they did gain more muscle strength. And ultimately, a smaller muscle that can exert more force but requires less metabolic energy to maintain, is easier to carry and cool, and requires less oxygen and nutrients could actually be a more healthy muscle, especially compared to a big, less functional muscle that generates less force despite all it’s bulky fibers.
So when it comes to muscles, bigger may not actually be better. Instead, having small muscles that are capable of high amounts of force production may be the healthiest muscles. If I had to choose who would live longer and feel healthier—the small strong athlete with the wiry physique versus the magazine cover model with the bulging, venous muscles, my money would be on the former. For this reason, if you have limited time to strength train, or you want to prioritize your strength training choices, you should lift moderate-to-heavy weights very quickly with a low number of sets and reps vs. lifting low-to-moderate weights to complete exhaustion for many reps.
Finally, for even more nitty-gritty scientific details on why small, strong muscles are probably healthier than big bulky muscles, and for more on the antioxidant arguments, I’d recommend you read this article on the PerfectHealthDiet website.
If you have more questions or comments about the potential health risks of bigger muscles and what kind of muscle you should really be trying to build, then head over to Facebook GetFitGuy and join the conversation there! I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.