Human growth hormone and exercise have a close, two way relationship that no bodybuilder should ignore and that can be used for dramatic results in the gym. Not only does exercising boost your production of HGH but at the same time HGH will greatly enhance your performance in the gym and your results in the mirror. Thus when you understand this connection you begin a virtuous cycle with each training session increasing your levels of growth hormone and all that growth hormone going into repairing your body for the next intense training session.
What is Growth Hormone?
The first thing to understand is what growth hormone actually is. Technically then, growth hormone is a somatropin or peptide hormone that stimulates the reproduction and growth of cells in the human body. When you were younger this was one of the key hormones that contributed to you getting taller, though that will have stopped once you reached a certain age and your growth plates closed.
While you won’t be gaining any height on your colleagues now though, you still do need to grow and reproduce your cells in order to repair damage caused during the day which is why the body continues to produce growth hormone during the night and after strenuous activity.
This has a particularly important role in bodybuilding then as bodybuilders purposefully place their body under strain in order to create small ‘microtears’ in their muscle fibres. These are essentially tiny injuries that require repairing, so in response the body will trigger the production of growth hormone and those fibres will be built up bigger and stronger. The net result is that your muscles recover from the previous workout and gain in both size and strength.
Now if you could find a way to produce more growth hormone, then you would be able to see quicker recover, better strength gains and more size all in less time. Others want to increase growth hormone so that they can slow down the effects of ageing and improve their ability to heal wounds.
How Exercise Stimulates Growth Hormone Production
As a bodybuilder you will want more growth hormone to see better results then. The good news is that as a bodybuilder you will also already be experiencing higher levels of growth hormone compared with your non-lifting friends (if you have friends who don’t lift that is…).
The reason for this is that creating those microtears signals to the body that your muscles need repairing and your body responds by increasing production of growth hormone. The more microtears you can create in your muscles, the better your hormonal response will be and the more you will grow during sleep.
Thus the best way to promote growth hormone production in the gym is to use movements that target the larger muscle groups. Better yet, you should use exercises that target multiple muscle groups and require them to work in unison to deliver results. Squats are one of the very best exercises for this purpose, which is because they are a) compound movements that use multiple muscle groups, and b) exercises that focus on the large muscles of the legs in particular.
Running is also a very good way to produce more growth hormone. This is because running, along with other forms of cardiovascular training, requires a lot of energy and forces your body to scavenge fat for food. This is another of the roles of growth hormone and the reason that it is so useful for gaining lean mass in particular.
Other Ways to Produce More HGH
If you want to get more from your training, then there are other ways you can promote the production of extra HGH outside of the gym. Sleeping more is the number one strategy seeing as the anterior pituitary gland produces growth hormone predominantly while you rest. Meanwhile you can also encourage the production of extra growth hormone by taking hot baths or even by watching comedies. It appears there’s a link between dopamine – the reward hormone – and our production of GH.
Failing this there are also a number of different supplements you can use in order to trigger even more growth hormone release throughout the body. By combining all these strategies along with an intensive and well-designed training regime you can trigger all the right hormonal responses and turn your body into a veritable muscle-building machine!
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