Muscle Growth: Playing God With Your Body, Part 1

If you want to build a strong body with a toned figure, it is first essential that you know how your muscles grow. Without a proper knowledge of what your body will respond to, you have little chance of making any long-term gains.

I’m going to use a short story to help you visualize how you will stimulate your muscles to grow. As you read this story, think about your own body and how the principles apply. Envision your own muscles reacting in the same way. We will then decode the message and explain the full metaphor and how it applies to you in Part 2.

Building a Foundation

Imagine that you are a god sitting up in the clouds. Let’s say you are Zeus, the great Greek god of the sky. You look down from your cloud each day and see a small tribe of people living out in the wilderness. You’ve been watching them for a while now and decide that these poor little people need some challenges to grow. Hurting them is not your goal; you really like these people and want to help them become stronger.

The little tribe lives in a thatched house with a straw roof. It looks flimsy, as if it could fall over at any moment. Nobody in the tribe has ever bothered to make it stronger because there has never been a need. It stands there just fine… as long as the wind doesn’t blow.

Well, the people simply are not progressing much by living in an old straw house forever. So you lean over the edge of your cloud and blow a little bit. The straw flies right off the roof and a few holes are even blown right through the walls.

You could have easily blown the whole house down, but that’s not your purpose. Why devastate these people? They would suffer severe injury and probably just give up. That’s not your intention at all, so you blow just hard enough to force them to rebuild a stronger foundation.

You see the little people running around in frenzy like little ants in an ant farm. You lean back in your cloud and just laugh for a moment.

Overcoming resistance

Sure enough, after a few weeks of blowing at the house, the people have really gone to work. They have replaced the shabby walls with bricks and the straw roof now has something a little bit sturdier in its place.

“Fantastic!” you exclaim. They responded just as you had hoped they would. The frame of the house is stronger and can withstand greater force. Pretty soon you start sending them full strength hurricanes from time to time, but now their house always stands strong. No amount of wind can knock it over at this point.

There is a bit of a problem, however. No matter how hard you blow, the people sit comfortably inside their home. You still want them to make something stronger, so you decide on a new tactic.

This time you cause an earthquake to rip through the countryside. Long, jagged cracks crawl up through the sides of their brick walls. Again, the people come pouring out of the house and scramble to fill the cracks with cement. They labor tirelessly to get the house into tip-top condition again.

At this point, you are really feeling good about yourself. They are making excellent progress and you are confident in their ability to continue growing. Just like last time, you could have shaken their home to the ground, but you didn’t want to destroy the building. No, you wanted to improve it.

The winds continue to blow and the earthquakes slowly increase in magnitude. With each tremor, the people learn a little bit more about earthquake technology and reinforce their home to withstand the turbulence. Their home is beginning to look like a fortress now.

Finally, one day you send the biggest earthquake you can muster, but the house calmly sways from side to side without even a crack. The people know all about the earthquakes now. Nobody is alarmed. They all just stay inside and relax.

Overcoming Resistance by Applying New Principles

How dare they just sit inside and do nothing all day! Sure, they have a strong fortress now, but you were still hoping for more. You think for a moment and realize that they are resisting change. Pushing or rocking the fortress isn’t going to do it anymore, so you have to come up with a new approach.

You call your old buddy Poseidon, the god of the waters. The two of you work out a deal and he sends a tsunami over the hill by the sea, and the water comes barreling down and crashes into the side of the fortress. The people never imagined that they would see this type of threat; they didn’t see it coming at all. Immediately, they scurry about fixing the house and cleaning up the water.

After a series of tsunamis, the people have built a massive wall around their fortress to protect them from the waves and an amazing drainage system quickly moves the water away.

The fortress is truly amazing. Its walls are strong and it shines like steel. You are almost there.

Focusing on Your Weaknesses.

The fortress stands strong each day amidst the winds, storms, earthquakes, and the tsunamis. Everything seems to be going great until you take a closer look at the roof… and you can’t believe your eyes. The roof looks like it’s made out of cardboard. Are you going to tolerate this?

No, of course not! It wouldn’t be right to have such a magnificent fortress with such a weak roof. So you gather together some hail and then some meteorites and punch a few holes in the darned thing. As expected, the people go to work and reinforce the weak spots.

The fortress finally looks the way you want. The people have grown and learned a lot, but you keep sending your earthquakes and meteorites to make sure that they maintain the place. You feel proud of the magnificent fortress that you helped create. It looks amazing, and you intend to keep it that way.

How does all of this relate to building muscles? We’ll decode the story and tell you what it all means in Part 2.

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Related posts:

1. Muscle Growth: Playing God With Your Body, Part 2
2. Free E-book About Changing Your Body Type: 3 Months to a New You
3. How to Harness the Healing Power of Water for Muscle Health

Tags: 101, god, muscle growth, principles, Weight lifting