Tips for How to Promote Muscle Growth with Your Lifestyle Choices

I was recently asked to comment on the impact of lifestyle on muscle growth, with a sly fine print indicating to use only 50-100 words. I laughed out loud. How could such a topic be given any justice with such brevity? At any rate, it sounded like a fun project to take on so I figured I would make it the topic of this months newsletter! I hope you enjoy the read. 

1. How do people’s lifestyles affect muscle growth?

Muscles adapt with growth in response to one thing - demand. So really, the question is this: how can we organize life to maximally encourage muscular growth and maintenance? Evolutionarily, mankind has been met with various stressors and challenges that required strength and physical stamina in order to survive, but today it is relatively uncommon for an individual to be physically challenged in the same manner as our ancestors without the addition of purposeful exercise. 

The musculoskeletal system is designed to enable the organism it belongs to, to execute movements ordained by the nervous system to be beneficial, so that is where tactic number one as humans comes into play: Functional Movement. While we don’t need to hunt down Wooly Mammoths anymore, walk from home to water source, or even squat to take a break, the kinds of motor programs we evolved to exploit are still very much ingrained in our nervous systems. Simple patterns like the cross-crawl coordinated arm swing during normal gait, full hip flexion and ankle dorsiflexion in a squat, and even adequate hip extension and glute activation in normal gait have all suffered at the hands of enhanced comfort and modern living. 

So, one very simple intervention begins with intentionally moving through the day - the way we stand up, the way we walk, how we walk up stairs, the deliberate choice to work on a squatting rest position rather than sitting at 90 deg. These movements are all in our programming, but the efficiency is lost. Here are three cues I give clients that can help.

• Squeeze the glutes with every step, and fully extend that active leg. Walking nowadays looks like a controlled fall - quadricep dominant and pushing off the toe in order to take the next step. Instead, with each heel and foot strike on the ground, the hamstrings should be engaged to pull the body forward, and then the glute should contract and extend the hip forward. 

• Increase dorsiflexion. I have my clients utilize the PNF concept, or proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, in order to increase awareness of the tissues involved as well as strength, flexibility, and stability. This concept replaces static stretching and instead invites a greater participatory role of the individual. In order to mobilize and strengthen a particular position, the joints and muscles that facilitate the attainment of that position must be pliable enough to allow it. For dorsiflexion, or the closure of the ankle joint, the gastrocnemius and soleus (calf muscles) must lengthen and the anterior tibialis (shin muscle) must shorten. These two muscles are antagonistic to each other, but still must work together to meet the end goal of maximal dorsiflexion. So, the exercise is performed by first statically stretching the calf to the greatest degree possible, stopping just past that uncomfortable feeling of stretch. This is held for 10-20 seconds and is followed by the active contraction of the shin muscle to the point of potential cramping for the same amount of time. Then, go back into a passive calf stretch. I like to repeat this a few times and finish with active contraction of the muscle with newly increased range, so in this case, elevated calf raises - just 5-10 reps to lock in the brain’s remapping of the tissue. Have someone take a picture of your dorsiflexion before and after!

• Oppose gravity. It sounds silly, but it is a fundamental principle! The extensor system is designed to resist gravity and develops over childhood. Just think about the main reason astronauts atrophy in space - there is no gravitational force to continuously stimulate our graviceptors. With the advent of chairs and normalization of sitting in them the hip flexors generally become chronically shortened, or ‘tight’, combined with the ever-present demand from cell phones to flex the neck and immobilize our arms in a prison of thumb-scrolling vertically to further crunch inward. Stand up straight with shoulders back when you’re out and about and just doing that will begin to rehabilitate posture and improve the canvas upon which more muscle mass can be developed. A specific exercise that can be done is the prone super-man extension. isometrically flex the extensor chain - gastroc, quads, glutes, back erectors, rhomboids, deltoids, lats, traps, forearms, and even fingers - it should ideally look like someone portraying a non-aerodynamic superman, somewhat of a ‘U’ shape. Using principles of PNF like before, this exercise can be used to greatly enhance flexibility and proprioception of weak places in the chain. Maximally contract the extensor chain, and then relax.

2. How can families incorporate physical activity into their daily lives, even with busy schedules, to make sure that even small amounts of exercise become a regular habit? 

To make something a habit it must be meaningful and productive - as habits are nothing more than the amalgamation of automatized predictions made from prior learning and external feedback. Simply put, you have to like what you are doing if you expect to do it eventually without a second thought. If it takes Pokémon Go to motivate the family to take a walk and engage the environment external then so be it. In an ideal world, play would be the best manner in which to incorporate physical activity into familial architecture. Playing tag, running around and climbing trees, simply going to a park and leaving ego behind, going to the pool or lake for a swim, wrestling in the dirt - that’s what generations of humans had done up until the recent technological advancements replaced actual skill development with artificial character development. 

No soapboxing here, just an observation, and if we want to normalize physical activity as a habit of humanity then we have to let ourselves physically play. It has to be protected within the ‘busy’ schedule, prioritized as a tenet of appropriate development - something that without fulfillment will lead to reduced potential in all domains of function, not just physical. 

3. What makes sleep important for muscle growth?

The impact of sleep on muscle growth is enormous. Even one night of sleep deprivation or restriction has been shown to reduce muscle protein synthesis and Increase the catabolic cascade for preservation. Sleep is so critical to our survival that if the sensor for rest is out of balance the rest of the body systems will succumb to the meta

-regulatory process and begin shifting resources away from ‘growth’ and towards ‘survival’. Given that sleep is also tied to energy level and motivation to produce effort, it’s not simply the increase in catabolic processes that leads to reduced strength, force output, and atrophy - the desire to exercise and engage in difficult tasks that manifest a more favorable milieu for muscle growth and fight catabolism is lessened. 

Historically, reasons for sleep deprivation were centered around stress - either due to hunger or perceived threats to safety. Under these environmental stressors, increased wake drive and motivation to correct the deviation lead to more movement and seeking behavior that can blunt the catabolic processes. 

Today, caloric restriction is seldom the cause of sleeplessness, but there is no shortage of anxiety that promotes chronic stress and an overwhelming cascade of increased sympathetic nervous system activity, cortisol secretion, and metabolic uncoupling. 

Having a complete picture of ones sleep can help delineate where support is needed. Is it a stress problem? Is it a nutritional problem? Is it a neurochemical problem? Perhaps sleep apnea? If you are concerned about putting on lean mass, you must prioritize sleep and the facets that impact it. On a more mechanistic level, here are a couple ways sleep impacts muscle growth. 

• Growth hormone. The majority of growth hormone (GH) secretion happens during deep sleep in the first half of the night. Given the anabolic stimulus of GH, any reduction as a result of less sleep is detrimental to growth. The fact that slow wave, deep sleep reduces as we age is also a problem to contend with as we fight to preserve lean mass over time. 

• Gene signaling. Genetic pathways involved with autophagy and clearing out old or poorly functioning tissues are induced during sleep, a critical step in ensuring only the best remains. Additionally, genetic pathways involved with connective tissue repair are also induced during sleep, which in combination with appropriate GH secretion promotes strength and growth as an adaptive response. If you want the work you’ve done to pay off, you have to sleep deeply.  

I hope this was helpful! Stay well.