Romeo a local lawyer has recently found the love of his life

Romeo, a local lawyer, has recently found the love of his life. Romeo is in love with a woman by the name of Caitlyn and to impress her, he decides to workout (weight lifting ONLY) at a local gym 3 times a week. After three months, Romeo notices his arm and chest musles are a lot bigger. Besides the fact that Romeo has been dabbling with illegal drugs (anabolic steroids to yield \'better results\'), he asks you, his nurse, the following questions:

Part 1: \"I can see my muscles are larger, is this because I made new muscle cells or...\" (EXPLAIN the structural changes that occurred to increase Romeo\'s muscles\' size.)

Part 2: \"I thought that after going to the gym I would be able to run longer without getting tired. I am actually MORE tired when I go for a run than before... am I doing the right TYPE of exercises?\" In your answer be sure to explain, to Romeo, the DIFFERENCES between ENDURANCE and RESISTANCE exercises, being sure to explain how HIS exercise routine is affecting muscle types (white vs red fibers and their functional differences).

Solution

When Romeo underwent intense exercise, a trauma occurred to the muscle fibers that is generally referred to as muscle injury. The disruption to muscle cell organelles is responsible for activating satellite cells. These cells are located exterior of the muscle fibers. These cells mainly work in repairing damaged muscle fibers. First they fuse together and to the muscles fibers. This often leads to an increase in the cross section area of muscle fiber. The satellite cells then start replication by dividing and this multiplication result in some of them remaining as organelles or fuse to muscle fibers so that new muscle protein stands can be formed. This helps in the repair of damaged fibers and the myofibrils of the muscle cells will increase in thickness as well as number. Once the fusion with the muscle fiber is over, some of the satellite cells act as a source of new nuclei so that the growing muscle fiber is well supplemented. The additional nuclei help the muscle fiber in synthesizing more proteins thereby creating more contractile myofilaments.
Apart from this Romeo was taking some illegal drugs which may have contained growth factors. These hormones stimulate satellite cells so that they produce gain in muscle fiber cells.
Testosterone is another contributing factor in causing structural changes in the muscles. Hence, due to these reasons there is an increase in Romeo’s muscle size.

No, Romeo is not doing the right type of exercise. In order to increase his stamina so that he does not get tired after running he needs to incorporate some kind of endurance exercise in his routine. There are differences between endurance and resistance exercises. Resistance training is mainly done to increase the muscle strength and has cardiovascular benefits whereas endurance training increases stamina and functional capacity is improved to a better extent.