Sometimes I ask a question or two when trying to answer a question. So I ask you
1. What nutrients are stored in the muscles?
2. How are these nutrients responsible for growth?
3. (If) most of the blood in the body during a workout is in the muscles being trained what extra percentage of blood is in that area and is it different according to the muscle being worked?
4. If all the above is true then how is insulin responsible for the extra growth that occures?
1. glycogen (and water) from the carbs, amino's from the protein, also creatine, and a few other vitamins and minerals needed for cofactor and coenzyme systhesis within the cells.
2. i)they increase cellular hydration via glycogen (stretch theory), and overcompendsate for future depleting activities.
ii) they increase ATP levels which the cells need (energy) to grow, and again overcompenates these levels for future activities.
iii) increase in amino storage within muscle, and overcompensates again.
3. depends on the muscle group/groups being worked, if working the bi's or arms, obviously you wont demand much of the body's total blood volume, but if doing legs or thighs/hams you'll demand much more. how much exactly? I'm not sure, milos claim that at rest approx 12-18% of blood is found in he muscles, with the rest spread out throughout the body. when working out he claims 80% of the blood is found in the muscles with a further increase in circultion too. although i haven't read the studies where he got his figures, it seems perfects reasonable.
4. As i said above i think its because insulin stores nutrients in whatever cells it comes into contact with. with more blood at the muscle during a workout (80%) and hence a greater concentration of insulin (80% of whole body insulin levels) a large increase in nutrient storage occurs there i.e. 80% increase in nutrient storage in the muscle than at rest.
how this works when glycogen stores are full, etc i have no idea. perhaps with the increased enzymes production found in the muscles during workouts, it adds further to the supercompensation levels, and it is this that is responsible for he 40lb increase i muscle mass milos claims insulin is responsible for. although there should still be fat gain of some amount if you really go overboard with the carbs/protein.
someone elsewhere on this site asked a good question - if you need to take an exact amount of carbs to match an insulin injection to avoid 'problems', why do you need exogenous insulin at all as your body already produces the exact amount of insulin for any amount of carbs you eat already, what benefit is there in injecting insulin then? and how has this added 40lb muscle increase
in theory you should be able to add this amount of muscle simply by eating larger amounts of carbs/protein around the workout, and slowly increase the amount over time.
