When you keep working out, your muscles get used to it and don’t get as sore or damaged each time—so you can train harder and more often, which helps you build more muscle over time.
Context Details
Domain
exercise_science
Population
human
Subject
Reduced muscle damage from training habituation
Action
enables
Target
a higher tolerable training volume, facilitating greater long-term muscle adaptation
Intervention Details
Gold Standard Evidence Needed
According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (1)
Eccentric exercise per se does not affect muscle damage biomarkers: early and late phase adaptations
At first, doing new heavy exercises hurt and damaged muscles, but after doing them weekly for 10 weeks, the body got used to it and stopped getting damaged — yet muscles still got stronger. This means you don’t need to be sore to grow muscle, and getting used to exercise lets you train harder over time.
Contradicting (1)
The study found that doing more workouts didn't make muscles grow bigger or stronger than sticking to the usual amount, even though the people were already used to training. This suggests that just being used to exercise doesn't automatically let you do more and get even better results.