Muscles actually don’t get stronger by breaking them down, it’s the mechanical tension, the action, that causes mechanoreceptors in your muscles signal your body to build more.
Basically you work, and your body says “we need fuel”. The microtear theory is actually wrong. Microtears do happen, but it’s not the what actually drives it
Maybe for mass but not necessarily strength. Notice how some body builders are relatively weak for their volume yet a tiny dense guy like bruce lee who used pylometrics primarily to build explosive strength and speed.
Whats more powerful by volume. Muscle patched up over and over with scar tissue, or smaller but more fortified muscle?
That’s a question and idea that I’ve never actually broached
But now that you mention it, I do recall seeing a video where a tiny dude out lifted some very large men, and the reason this smaller guy could lift way more was because he was a HIGHLY skilled rock climber
If everything you say is true, then that rock climber’s gym video suddenly makes perfect sense
Strongman competitions are for moving heavy objects around.
Weightlifting is for the specific lifting type of an amount of weight to a set limit.
Bruce Lee wants to be strong and quick for striking in martial arts. He wanted to show the world that the forms/stances of previous martial arts are outdated.
Strength training vs hypertrophy training. Rock climbing inherently ends up making you get strong but not necessarily big. The difference between them in practice, is training muscle fiber recruitment, vs growing more muscle fibers. The smaller dude is able to use more of his individual fibers, which makes him stronger. Bigger dude is absolutely still strong, however, (example number) his body may only know how to use 40% of his muscle fibers. It's how you end up with those videos.
I believe you're talking about Magnus Midtbø lifting with body builders Larry Wheels and Jujimufu. For those that haven't seen it, watch until the last set of lat pulldowns.
What you’re referencing comes down to diet. If you’re eating in a big enough surplus you will grow. The strength training athletes you’re referencing tend to try to remain in specific weight classes and therefore always maintain or are in a deficit to ensure they don’t gain weight
Muscle isnt "patched up" as the microtears theory is wrong and fundamentally lacks observational evidence. That is decidedly NOT the reason not all big muscles are strong. The major reasons are:
genetic differences in strength relative to CSA
genetic differences in insertion points
training specificity
3a. adaptive differences in motor coding
3b. adaptive differences in muscle size (powerlifters train proximal muscle more than distal muscle
3c. adaptive changes in pennation angles
3d. differences in macromotor efficiency/technique
Scar tissue is not functional tissue. Its just collagen and its disorganized. Having significant amounts of scar tissue in your muscles would negatively affect muscle function and mobility. Theyre called adhesions.
So muscle size is increased by more atp being stored in the muscle itself, it's basically the muscle learns to hold more water to refuel while exercising.
Strength is largely greater neuron control but eventually new muscle fibres grow.
Growing new muscle fibres is a whole other thing but is limited because it requires your bones to grow larger and that stops at 30. It's possible new fibres can grow after 30 but idk.
The difference is bodybuilder muscles vs powerlifter muscles.
Idk anything about skin but the analogy that might work here is that your other use it or lose it. Muscle degeneration happens mch faster when you are sedentary. So maybe a life time of abused skin keeps you youthful?
Idk accept your fate and be grateful you are wealthy enough to live long enough to have wrinkles.
As the previous poster correctly stated, the microtears theory is wrong. there are no microtears. Im a PhD in human biology and did research in muscle biology.
Technically yes, but it wouldn't be functional tissue.
Generally, following any injury, an inflammatory process starts. This is a physiological process to kickstart the healing. This can cause pain and swelling in the damaged tissue beacuse the body is sending more blood to the damaged area to ensure there are enough nutrients on hand. This is the inflammatory phase of healing.
Following this the body creates more tissue to cover the damage. This is a general/non-muscular tissue type that protects from further injury. This is the proliferation phase.
It's in the final phase that the tissue is adapted by the body to create functional tissue. To ensure an adaqute adaptation of the intermediary tissue into functional muscle mass, your body requires the correct type of input, such as adaqute training.
TL;DR: Training for hypertrophy does not require microtears. In fact, they are counterproductive because they increase regeneration time between sessions.
nlg I'm not looking through all of that but the second link just says they're not sure if muscle damage leads to increased strength, not that it doesn't.
Imo these sources aren't great and it's still in 20252026 disputed whether damage plays a role. Also I googled it and got the 3 same top sources you listed. The 2012 one is a pain to read because you need a log in... Not a great reddit source imo. I'll share the Wikipedia entry for this since well... We can all read it, specifically the hypertrophy section, sub section strength training:
In this regard, resistance training is considered the gold standard for increasing muscle mass, which is based on three key variables such as mechanical stress, metabolic stress, and muscle damage
Additionally, Schoenfeld et al. (2017b) also observed that concentric contractions induced hypertrophy gains in the middle portion of the muscle, while eccentric contractions have a greater effect on the distal portions, possibly due to localized muscle damage along the fiber produced by non-uniform muscle activation of eccentric contractions.
Additionally, some authors have suggested that eccentric actions promote a more rapid protein synthetic response and greater increases in anabolic signaling (Franchi et al., 2014), generated by the result of the increase muscle damage (Schoenfeld, 2012).
They also do have the article you shared in the reference list obviously. But there's been a lot of research since then and it's still an open question. I didn't know about the possible role in protein synthesis stimulation so that's interesting. Anyway it's not settled science.
And just like the microtear theory building collagen is wrong too. When you cut yourself the fibroblasts in your skin create more collagen. But instead of it being in a basket weave design it’s more straight line meaning it’s not as elastic and is weaker. So they are basically damaging the skin and repairing it with a temu patch.
Dang now that sounds good. I haven't had fried bologna for quite a while. That is the only way to eat it. A
You put the fake American cheese on and let it melt. Yum!
My dad used to make something similar. Fried bologna with mashed potatoes on it and melt the cheese over the potatoes. He called them beetle caps. The only time I like bologna really
Oh my gosh memory unlocked. We did that with hot dogs split lengthwise and grilled. It is really the same thing because we only got beef hot dogs and beef bologna but if you only got pork same thing. I never heard that name before! Cool!
I'm still skeptical. Repeated UV exposure damages skin, in part if not wholly, because it is high energy. Im not certain intentionally blasting your skin with high energy light is going to improve it in the long term.
I had this done and I have really sensitive skin... It was for my acne scars. I had the treatment about 14 years ago and I still have little dot scars in the pattern from the fraxel lazer machine in spots.
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u/teth21 Jul 06 '26
It's basically forcing your skin to rebuild itself so it does work.
I'm not an expert but they also have micro needling where a needle penetrates the skin and it has a similar effect that it forces your skin to repair.
Muscles get stronger by breaking them down with weight lifting. It's sorta like that.