Muscle Fatigue

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Muscle Fatigue

Muscle fatigue happens to everyone who over exerts in exercising or working that tires out your muscles. Muscle fatigue is defined as a condition in the muscle in which its capacity to produce maximum voluntary action, or to perform a series of repetitive actions, is reduced. It results when muscle activity exceeds tissue substrate and oxygen capacity. Basically muscle fatigue can be from using your muscles too much or using them in a way that your body is not used to and they result in soreness and tiredness. Muscle fatigue can happen with many activities such as weight lifting, running, playing sports, lifting heavy objects, working, etc. Muscle fatigue is not a disease by any means or even a lack of what happens to most people. This is common and it is also very easy to recover your muscles after your muscles are tired and sore. 

Knowing what muscle fatigue is one thing, but knowing how it happens and what exactly happens is another thing. When muscle fatigue happens it looks like a cycle and it starts when you do short term exercise. ATP and creatine phosphate are used up within 7 seconds of exercising, this then signals the metabolism of glycogen to produce energy for your body, this is known as glycolysis. During glycolysis, glycogen is broken down to produce more creatine phosphate. This breakdown is releases energy, which catalyzes a reaction to produce ATP. The production of more ATP allows movement of your muscles to continue. Lactic acid is a product of glycolysis created by the breaking down of pyruvate.

This is a model of what happens in a short term process of muscle fatigue.

Lactic acid is then disassociated to produce lactate. When lactic acid releases a hydrogen ion, the remaining compound binds to a sodium ion or a potassium ion to form a salt. It is the salt that is lactate. Now the cell contains a lactate compound and a free hydrogen ion for each compound of lactic acid that is produced. It is this increase in cellular hydrogen ions that causes the pH to decrease becoming more acidic. The acid in the muscle causes the fibers' calcium-binding capacity to decrease, this limits muscle contraction. This entire process is the cause of muscle fatigue.

To prevent muscle fatigue you can do a few things such as take BCAA's which recovers muscles, you can take protein powder that also recovers muscle fatigue. If you eat right your muscles will also heal a lot better. But when it comes down to it the most important thing you need for your muscles to recover is to rest. The best thing you can do for the fatigue feeling to go away is to do all of the above. If you take your amino acids, drink protein shakes, eat right, and get a good night sleep then the muscle fatigue will surely go away and you'll be able to recover quickly and go about to doing what you usually do with no soreness or weakness feeling what so ever.