Why Your Muscles Have Stopped Growing - Part 1

Whether you workout in the gym or workout without weights at home, it's pretty well known that the hormone testosterone helps to build muscle mass. But, what is not so well known is that the hormone, cortisol, does the exact opposite!

Cortisol has a catabolic effect on muscle tissues. This means that cortisol actually is responsible for a decrease in muscle mass because it prevents tissue growth and decreases protein synthesis.

Cortisol is a hormone made in the adrenal cortex. That's the outside layer of the adrenal gland. This particular hormone plays a few different roles. It serves to increase blood pressure, blood sugar levels and will have an immuno-suppressive effect on the body.

But the one that everyone interested in building muscle should be concern with is this: Cortisol increases amino acid supplies to the liver when there aren't a lot in circulation. It's this that increases protein catabolism or the breakdown of muscle.

Those hardcore fitness folks are at risk of working against themselves. The reason for this is that by spending too much time working out many have found that they are not able to progress any further toward their muscle building goals. And those that spend an hour or more at any one time doing cardio are especially setting themselve up for disappointment

You see, it's after about 1 hour of training that your testosterone levels begin to drop. As your testosterone levels drop, your cortisol levels start to rise. You can imagine what the overall result of this combination is. That's right. You put in motion a cycle where your body actually starts to mobilize muscle protein to be used as energy or other bodily functions.

This scenario is what you want to avoid. You can easily do this by adopting a good muscle building and stregthening routine that you can finish in under an hour. If you combine your warm up with the actual resistance movements this would be best. Once you go through your warm ups go immediately into your resistance work. Stay focused and resist the urge to "do a little more". If you do this and make this into your routine, you will get finished sooner and not have to worry about the harmful effects of increased cortisol levels.

Keeping your workouts short and intense will help avoid this type of situation. Also, intense and prolonged cardio work causes increased cortisol too. A good solution for those interested in cardio work is interval training. High intensity interval training is an excellent way to continue to improve cardio capacity and also increase levels of muscle building hormones.

So, to recap: Whether you spend your exercise time in the gym or you workout without weights; if your workout routine typically lasts more than 1 hour you will experience lower testosterone levels. The added physical stress will also increase circulating cortisol levels. Both of these conditions will work together to limit or reverse protein synthesis and muscle growth.

Bryan W. is a physical therapist and fitness professional. With over 16 years experience he teaches his clients how to maximize their fitness level using simple and effective training strategies. In addition he teaches his clients extremely powerful Workouts Without Weights and maintains a blog at http://www.workoutswithoutweights.net