Edited by Antonello Monno - Doctor of Motor Sciences, Kinesiologist, Posturologist
Let us first define the two terms: Hypertrophy and Functional.
Hypertrophy is the increase in the volume of cells that make up a tissue or organ.
From the muscular point of view, hypertrophy is an increase in the size of the muscle fibers and therefore of the muscle mass, observed when a muscle reaches a larger diameter or an increase in its transverse section. Through physical exercise, muscular work with overloads leads to an increase in muscle mass through this biological adaptation.
Muscle hypertrophy is the result of a cascade of events, which has been defined as upstream signing ( upstream signaling ), which causes downstream effects ( downstream ). This cascade of events includes in sequence:
- mechanical and metabolic stresses that lead to structural damage (micro-trauma)
- reports of mechanical stress on muscle fibers;
- hormonal response (testosterone, GH, MGF, IGF-1, cortisol), and inflammatory response;
- protein synthesis that leads to muscle hypertrophy;
By Functional, in reference to the muscular system, we mean starting to consider the muscle relative to its function and not exclusively to its action. Eg the action of the rectum of the abdomen is to flex the chest on the pelvis and vice versa, while its function is to contribute to the stabilization of the trunk. Another fundamental consideration to make is that the training must be functional to the life of every subject, or what is functional for an athlete is not said to be for a housewife, but one thing certainly unites them, their physiology, both articular and muscular. In other words, both in everyday life perform multi-articular gestures and move all the kinetic chains in all planes of movement. The mono-articular movement, perhaps bound to a machine, does not exist in nature!
A valid definition could be "The main objective of this kind of activity is to make our body become more agile and functional in carrying out all the operations and movements we perform in our daily lives."
We are a single body that interacts with the environment, so we must reclaim our natural movements, those that as a child allowed us to fall and get up quickly without thinking about what we were doing, of gestures and sensations that only the completeness of the movement in his totality can give us. Our body was not born to select and isolate movements, the completeness of the gesture was our fortune for thousands of years. Let us always remember that the human brain recognizes the movement as a whole and not the single muscle.
Although those in which man had to struggle to survive in the savannah seem to be distant ages, we still respond to the laws of nature. Our body is still forged according to the demands of the environment in which it lives. The image we have of a beautiful, dry, athletic, muscular physique, still recalls an idea of health, of youth, of a better chance of surviving in the jungle.
By FUNCTIONAL HYPERTROPHY we mean a direct correlation between physical and performance, between aesthetics and result.
In short, the muscle mass that contributes to the sporting performance or activity for which you are training. And it is for this reason that there are different muscle structures from one sport to another, a marathon runner will have small muscles because his gesture requires low energy levels for long periods of time. The more the structure is contained (thigh and leg) the easier it is to sprinkle with blood (facilitates the transport of nutrients from the periphery to the target muscle). A gymnast will have bulky muscles to be able to quickly produce the energy required in his sport. You will need a lot of fuel for short periods of time. The body cannot afford to go and get it elsewhere and will have to store all the necessary reserves in the muscle. Each action corresponds to an energy need and this determines how much hypertrophy is needed.
At the base of functional hypertrophy there is only one law: THE STRUCTURE IS AT THE SERVICE OF THE FUNCTION.
From the cellular point of view, there are two types of hypertrophy: the sarcoplasm hypertrophy and sarcomere hypertrophy.
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is caused by increased non-contractile proteins and fluids between muscle fibers. In other words, sarcoplasmic hypertrophy produces larger muscles but does not increase muscle strength. The cross-sectional area of muscle gains, muscle fiber density per unit area decreases and there is no corresponding increase in muscle strength. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy leads to an increase in body weight without an increase in strength and forces the vascular system: this results in decreased muscle nutrition and oxygenation, a slowing down of the metabolic processes in the muscle and a reduced efficiency in the disposal of waste products from the metabolism of the musculoskeletal system.
It is like increasing the weight of a car, but not the strength of its engine: for this reason it is often called non-functional hypertrophy .
Sarcomere hypertrophy is caused by the increase in contractile fibers that work. Also called myofibril hypertrophy, it is the increase in the size and number of sarcomeres that make up the myofibrils (and which in turn make up the muscle fibers): they will contribute to an increase in the ability to produce muscle tension.
This difference explains why body builders with huge muscles are not necessarily able to lift large loads, or rather the "bigger, stronger" rule is not always true. How many times have we seen that client in the gym who, due to his physical appearance, would have gone unnoticed, but who perhaps in a certain exercise manages to raise the same load as a person much bigger than himself, if not more ... ., but how is it possible we would ask ourselves, the explanations are many:
- the aforementioned difference in hypertrophy (sarcoplasm or sarcomere)
- fiber arrangement (in parallel or in series)
- vascular adaptations
- types of fibers involved / recruited (type I, II a, II b)
- intermuscular coordination (that is the coordination between muscles that work together in a given movement)
- intramuscular coordination (ie, internal muscle coordination)
The arrangement of the fibers can take place "parallel " ; an increase in sarcomeres and myofibrils that are added in parallel to the pre-existing ones. When a skeletal muscle is subjected to a training stimulus there is a physiological imbalance that involves the myofibrils and the extracellular matrix; the imbalance activates a chain of events that guide the muscle tissue towards increasing the number of contractile proteins and sarcomeres. This process causes the increase in the diameter of the individual muscle fibers and the consequent enlargement of the cross section of the muscle. Ex. Bodybuilder.
"Serious hypotrophy", or the one that causes the increase in the number of sarcomeres arranged in series, is also the cause of the increase in the overall length of the muscle, it is a phenomenon that occurs especially when the muscle is forced to adapt to a new functional length, in this regard there are some scientific evidences that show how certain types of exercises can influence the number of sarcomeres arranged in series. Eg jumper at the top.
Vascular adaptations, it is now recognized that an excess of fat adversely affects tolerance to physical exercise, in fact to increase Vo2 max it is enough to lose excess body fat; it is also true, therefore, that an excess of muscular development negatively affects the vascular system, negatively influencing the performance.
The last 3 points, on the other hand, are closely related to neurological efficiency, so the maturation of the central nervous system, or how effectively an individual can recruit the highest threshold muscle fibers, and his ability to recruit them as quickly as possible; all these are fundamental abilities in the concept of functional hypertrophy, or being able to recall as many fibers as possible in the unit of time, to perform a specific gesture.
Conclusions
In order to obtain functional hypertrophy, explosive movements and compound movements should be emphasized using whole kinetic chains and not individual muscles, so train the gesture and not the muscle, using all the planes of the movement, choosing exercises in which strong accelerations are used and moderately heavy loads, without making us lose speed.
This type of training will also improve the ability of the CNS to quickly recruit muscle fibers.
If you train explosively you will not have sticking points and then you will have the ability to give the greatest possible strength to an object, any object, using the maximum intra and intermuscular coordination.
The first is the ability of the nervous system to generate strength, the second is the body's ability to coordinate different muscles in an athletic gesture.
With regard to intramuscular coordination, this type of training improves the ability of the nervous system to generate strength, in particular:
- recruitment: by departing from the principle of size, smaller motor neurons are recruited first, then larger ones. Explosive training ensures that even the fastest UM is involved right away, at the base of everything is the quality of the nerve impulse, not so much of the load used.
- rate coding: rate coding is a fundamental mechanism for modulating muscle strength. Once recruited, the motor unit is excited and only after reaching a certain level of excitement it will be possible to recruit others to increase or sustain the force produced.
- Synchronization: normally the UM work in a mutually asynchronous manner, but it is proved that during a maximum voluntary commitment the UM can work synchronously. The result is an increase in strength.
It will also allow you to strengthen type II fibers, which are essential for longevity.
On the contrary, performing traditional bodybuilding workouts is not desirable for those seeking an improvement in performance, ie we need to look for sarcomere hypertrophy and not sarcoplasm, which is fine for a bodybuilder.
So in a work of functional hypertrophy we need to research / hope the following cascading events:
- Look for sarcomere hypertrophy (and not sarcoplasm)
- fiber arrangement in series (and not in parallel)
- involve / use entire muscle chains (not single muscles)
- work on the speed of execution
- greater inter and intramuscular coordination
- more fiber recruitment per unit of time
The reasons to look for this type of hypertrophy can be multiple:
- For performance in your sport.
- For efficiency in their work (security, armed forces, etc.).
- For health (originally this type of functional approach was the sole area of physiotherapy rehabilitation and sports medicine).
Today, too much well-being and too many comforts create dull subjects, deprived of those energies that in the past made us integrated with the world around us. Situational sport is made up of rapid, explosive movements, sudden changes of direction, lightning-fast accelerations and equally rapid decelerations, in short, our body uses all the muscles to move simultaneously, so the athlete must be trained as one large entity . Just as a great driver needs a high-performance machine to win, each of us needs our body to respond to commands and resist stress. The training, therefore, must be functional to the sport or to the activity practiced, with the purpose of creating positive effects reproducible in the moment of the competition or in the life of every day.
Bibliography and Sitography
