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What Are The Factors That Affect Your Muscular Strength?

The amount of force that is produced by a muscle is known as its muscular strength. Several factors affect our muscular strength. In the following article, we look at the factors that affect your muscular strength.

What Are The Factors That Affect Your Muscular Strength?

What Are The Factors That Affect Your Muscular Strength?

Muscle strength is an important parameter of health and fitness. It may determine your health, endurance, and overall performance. It is necessary to know the factors that affect your muscle strength.

Lifestyle is believed to influence muscle strength. Studies have concluded that factors like physical activity during leisure are associated with a positive effect on muscular strength in both sexes.1

Type Of Muscle Fiber Affects Your Muscular Strength:

One of the most important factors that affect your muscular strength is the type of muscle fiber. We, in our day-to-day life, perform a variety of physical activities that combine varying composites of speed, power and also endurance; and no single muscle type possesses all these characteristics. We possess two important types of muscle fibers, namely the “slow-twitch” muscle fiber and the “fast-twitch” muscle fibers.

Slow-twitch type of muscle fibers is greatly used for aerobic or cardiovascular activities. These muscle fibers produce low levels of force for a longer period, and thus they are known to be fair enough for several kinds of endurance activities. An average person has 50% of slow-twitch muscle fibers, and this distribution of the type of muscle is usually equal throughout the major groups of muscles.

Fast-twitch muscle fibers are to be used in anaerobic activities. These types of muscle fibers bring higher levels of power for a short period and are best known for high power activities.

Although both the types of muscle fibers; i.e. the slow-twitch as well as the fast-twitch muscle fiber, fairly respond to the different types of strength training exercises, the latter type of muscle fiber (fast-twitch) experience greater gains in the size of the muscle and also in muscular strength

Age Can Affect Your Muscular Strength:

One more factor that affects your muscular strength is your age. We have only a little control over this factor. However, people of various ages can improve or increase their muscular strength and size of their muscles, with a safe and significantly effective program of strength training. But, this is to be noted that the rate of development of muscle mass and strength seems to be greater from the age of 10 years to 20 years. These are the years of rapid growth and development. Usually, muscular improvements do not come quickly after attaining normal or usual physical maturity in life.

Gender Affects Your Muscular Strength:

Another factor that affects your muscular strength is your gender. Gender doesn’t affect our muscle quality but influences muscle quality. The muscle tissue in women and men is indeed similar characteristically; men usually have comparatively more muscle tissues than women. This is because the muscle size increases because of the male sex hormone or testosterone. So, the larger the muscles; the stronger is the person; and this is the reason why most of the men are stronger than most of the women.

Your Limb And Your Muscle Length Affects Your Muscular Strength:

Another factor affecting your muscular strength is the length of your limb. Individuals having short limbs usually tend to be able to lift more weight as compared to those with longer limb lengths. Similarly, differences in the development of strength may also come due to the variation in their muscle length. Some individuals have long muscle length, and some have short ones. Individuals with comparatively longer muscles have a higher potential in developing the size as well as the strength than those individuals having comparatively short muscles.

The Point Of Tendon Insertion Affects Your Muscular Strength:

One of the most important factors that affect your muscular strength is your “point of tendon insertion”. Just citing an example; let’s say, Jack and Ricky, both of them, have the same arm as well as the same muscle length. But, Ricky’s biceps tendon is attached to his forearm much farther from the elbow joint than Jack’s does. This, in turn, offers Ricky a biochemical advantage and that is, he is able enough in lifting more weight than Jack while doing the biceps exercises, like the bicep curls.

The Nervous System Also Affects Your Muscular Strength:

Our nervous system plays a crucial role and is one of the factors that affect your muscular strength. The brain and the nervous system both, have the power of activating more motor units when they require generating larger amounts of bodily force. Your body learns to recruit more and more motor units and increase how often the units fire, by appropriate strength training. This is one way you can gain additional strength via resistance training.

Some Other Factors That Affect Your Muscular Strength:

Some other factors affect your muscular strength. These include your posture, fitness levels, and lifting techniques. Your muscular strength can also be developed through appropriate lifting techniques and other strength training exercises. However, you need to be very cautious about not overtraining.

Apart from these, our muscular strength is also inherited from our parents, and they have a great impact on the size, strength as well as the appearance of the muscle. So, genetics too is one of the factors that affect your muscular strength.

Conclusion:

These were some of the most common factors that affect your muscular strength. It might be right to say that you do not have absolute control over all of these factors, but a regular strength training regime can build the strength of the muscle by progressively overloading the targeted muscles. Everyone can be benefited from resistance training, irrespective of what their age or gender is. However, it is always important for you to take professional advice about the best exercise program for you from an expert fitness trainer.

References

  1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5846640/

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Team PainAssist
Team PainAssist
Written, Edited or Reviewed By: Team PainAssist, Pain Assist Inc. This article does not provide medical advice. See disclaimer
Last Modified On:October 14, 2019

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