How to Build Muscle
There is a lot of useful advice in that article. However, I am always made weary by people&#x27;s use of term &quot;muscle growth.&quot; What is typically perceived and dubbed as muscle growth is actually simply muscle cells retaining water and sugar as fuels to help accommodate the ongoing increase in physical activity. That is what anyone who begins training observes in the first few months. Think of this as a simple increase in the size of each muscle cell due to storage of extra fuel. This is completely analogous to our accumulation of fat. We barely ever grow the number of fat cells. Instead, we shrink or expand them like sacks.<p>However, when it comes to the actual increase in the number of muscle cells, this process is much more difficult to launch. From my experience, this cannot be done without proper hormonal background. By this, I do not mean exogenous (injected) hormones. I mean that one has to have proper levels of testosterone and growth hormone. The former is regulated by the psyche and can be described as the hormone of successfully overcoming difficulties and becoming a winner. An interesting thing is that your brain does no care whether you successfully beat someone in a computer game or just finished a marathon. It will still reward you with testosterone. On the contrary, if you beat yourself over small things, you will fill yourself with cortisol, which is inversely related to testosterone.<p>Needless to say, to me the muscle growth constitutes invoking the second scenario. That is a formidable but not at all impossible task. It requires knowing how to work with yourself and your mind.