We have two types of skeletal muscle
fibres: slow twitch and fast twitch and
depending on what form your physical activity takes, depends upon which of
these you rely on to help.
FAST
TWITCH
The fast twitch muscles, or muscle
fibres, are working hard when you’re working hard at short bursts of high
intensity sports or routines as they generate energy anaerobically; but not so good
for an endurance activity like long distance cycling for instance.
SLOW
TWITCH
The slow twitch muscles are more resilient
to fatigue and are used to fuel distance runners and are less liable to
fatigue. Slow twitch muscles contract at
a slower pace so would be used by a jogger, but if the pace were picked up to a
sprint then the fast twitch would take over.
Slow twitch muscles are powered aerobically and it is precisely because
they are aerobic that they are more efficient when called on to produce energy
thereby powering prolonged training sessions.
Knowledge and an understanding of the
type of fibres in a particular muscle group can aid training, along with all
the other components such as nutrition that go to make up the complete package. Of course there are activities where a
combination of the two groups are utilized.
Weight training or resistance work would be a good example depending on
whether strength training were the primary focus in which case fast twitch
would do the heavy lifting but for high rep low intensity endurance training
and conditioning it would be slow twitch.
So, are you predominantly fast twitch or
slow twitch?
The average body, broadly speaking, has
a 50/50 ratio of each of these groups. However,
in the case of athletes who specialise in one particular discipline, they could
have a bias slanted more towards which they’ve developed.
So what if after a career as a track
sprinter an athlete had developed a higher ratio of fast twitch muscle fibre
but then wanted to change speciality, say as a long distance or endurance
runner, would it be possible to retrain the muscles to acclimatise to a marked
change in circumstance? It was
originally believed that these muscle fibres could not be converted this may have
been because fast twitch muscles are actually round about 20% larger in a
normal person. Begin exercising with
intensity and it is possible to increase their size by up to 50% but these
bigger muscles fatigue more quickly, and now we’re beginning to see why. However, as science is ever evolving new research
now indicates that these muscle fibres can be re-trained to alter their basic
components and adjust and adapt to new demands made upon them. Although this can only be achieved by
prolonged training over time.
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