4. Discussion
muscle hypertrophy
HYPERTROPHIC
The main findings obtained here were that, following the first 3-week isometric training to volitional failure, the 6-week isometric training aiming to strengthen MVC led to an increase in MVC, with no change in mCSA, but the training aiming to develop MVC as well as muscle size increased MVC as well as mCSA, although the relative change in MVC was the same in ST and COMB. These findings indicate that the contributions of muscle size and neuromuscular function to strength gain may be different due to training protocols.In this study, the relative change in mCSA (11.3%) was greater in COMB than ST (0.6%), whereas the strength gain was similar between both arms. The value of COMB is higher than the relative change in muscle cross-sectional area of the knee extensors (approximately 2%) reported by Goto et al. [Another potential mechanism concerning the different adaptation of muscle hypertrophy is considered to be the group-related difference in mechanical stress in training sessions. Mechanical stress may affect muscle protein synthesis directly [Interestingly, the relative change in MVC/mCSA was negatively related to that in mCSA for ST, but the corresponding relationship was non-significant for COMB. Following a 10- and 20-week hypertrophic resistance training regimen, an increase in CSA was shown to be negatively related to changes in muscular activity and voluntary activation in the knee extensors (r = −0.84) [The training-induced changes in MVC were of the same extent between COMB and ST. In this study, different training programs were prescribed to the left and right arms of a participant. Hence, we should state an effect of cross-education on the strength gain. To examine the effect, we computed the correlation coefficient between strength gains in ST and COMB arms. The coefficient was 0.48, which was not significant. Further, the strength of the corresponding relationship was small. In previous studies, strength gain in an untrained arm in unilateral strength training was less than 11% [