This is sort of an add question, but I am a weightlifter so that’s where this curiosity originates.
Like beef is marbeled (with fat), does human muscle marble as well, in the same manner?
If I am eating a lot and working out a lot and I seem to be getting bigger, could a lot of this perceived muscle growth (by perceived I mean the muscle is getting bigger but there doesn’t seem to be any subcutaneous fat accumulating on top of said muscle) actually be fat accumulating not just under the skin but amongst the muscle fibers? Assume no cardio is done and we are talking about upper body here. Genetics will play a role, I am asking on the whole.
Is there some sort of ratio between marbeled fat and subcutaneous fat? If so, does people’s fat composition ever stray from this ratio?
Anybody work at the coroner’s and looked at a bodybuilder body?!
IIRC, marbled beef is the tenderest and therefore comes from the parts of the cow that get the least workout. More heavily used regions of the body will have less fat and be considered leaner and tougher.
By extrapolation, my guess is that those muscles you most use in your workouts will have the least amount of fat surrounding them. If you favor one set of muscle groups over others you may see more fat around the lesser-used ones. If you never use any muscles at all, like me, you will see lots of nice, huggable flab.
I don’t think there is any set ratios for people or animals. It will depend almost entirely on the use of the muscles and the diet, although there may be some genetic predisposition that affects the overall balance.
Muscle biopsies of serious weight trainers have shown that it was the size of the individual fibers within their muscles that was responsible for the abnormal muscle size and not the actual number of muscle fibers present. …although extreme conditions may result in modest hyperplasia (new muscle cels). This means that the formation of new muscle cells is, at most, likely to be only a minor factor in increasing muscle size. The mechanism responsible for supercompensation is hypertrophy - the increase in size of existing muscle fibers themselves. The fat molecules won’t increase or decrease from this process.
The whole process of cellular damage and subsequent overcompensation (the cells grow back a little bigger than they were before) can take anywhere in the neighbourhood of 24 hours to several days - depending on the severity and type of training.
You’ll only gain fat by taking in more calories than you burn…if you are worried about it, just do a 45 minute low intesity cardio session a few times per week.
Muscle and Fitness magazine had a detailed diagram of how this worked a while back…I think it was the one with “The Rock” on the cover but I’m not sure.
No cite right now, but intramuscular fat is the first to go–that’s why first-time lifters experience tightening and hardening in the first few weeks. Also, it’s very possible to grow new muscle cells by training with slow eccentrics.