Do you know which sport you were born for?

Do you know which sport you were born for? Of course this only matters if you compete and strive for the very best results. If you are not aware of your innate attributes and how they can be adjusted, you cannot rise above mediocrity.

Many factors determine your physical abilities: your circulation, your breathing, the blood supply to your muscles, the development of your capillaries, the mitochondrial content of your muscles, the quality of your rest, your physical and mental condition, your congenital muscle-fiber ratio, etc. Perhaps the latter is one of the most important, because the "mix" of fibers in your muscles limits which types of movements or sports you have a real chance of excelling in.

It is not utopian to think that selection for a given sport should be based on muscle analysis. Knowing your fiber ratio also determines how you should prepare!

One thing is certain: since no one else has exactly the same mix of attributes as you, only a training program tailored specifically to you and taking your innate qualities into account will bring results.

The relationship between the muscle-fiber "mix" and physical performance

Voluntary movements are performed by your striated (skeletal) muscles. You have roughly 350 smaller and larger striated muscles in your body. Their contraction is initiated and regulated by instructions from the brain, which determine when, how and with what force you should perform movements. The execution is then carried out by the muscle fibers in your muscles. Through a complex mechanism they slide past one another, shorten or lengthen, joints move and movement occurs.

Your striated muscles are built from muscle fibers. Fibers are divided into three groups based on the frequencies at which they "operate": slow and two types of fast fibers.

The mixture of these fibers builds your muscles and determines which sports you are truly suited for. If the proportion of fast fibers is high, you are better suited for short, strong and rapid movements. In contrast, many slow fibers are advantageous in endurance sports (e.g. cycling, running, racewalking).

Every person is different in this respect, which explains differing abilities. One of us is fast but tires quickly, another is slow but endures without tiring, and so on.

Muscle fiber types

Slow fibers

• They have many capillaries, which is why they are red.
• They are thin in size and do not increase their mass with training, so endurance training cannot increase muscle strength or muscle mass.
• The motor nerve triggering their contraction works at low frequencies, so the muscle contraction is slow and sustained.
• They are full of mitochondria, therefore they can produce energy even during prolonged activity (in both oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor environments).
• Under aerobic conditions they do not fatigue for a long time.
• They regenerate quickly.

Intermediate (IIa) fibers

• Also called transitional (intermediate) fibers.
• They have weak capillary supply, so their color is light.
• They are thicker than slow fibers and thicken moderately with training; they are primarily for strength increases.
• Their motor nerves are activated at medium frequencies, so their contractions are fast and relatively sustained.
• They have fewer mitochondria. Their metabolism is partly oxidative (they produce energy themselves) and partly glycolytic, depending on stored resources.
• Their virtue is endurance during near-maximum efforts lasting several minutes.
• Their regeneration is of medium length.

Super-fast (IIb) fibers

• They have almost no capillary supply, so they are white in color.
• They are thicker in size and, with appropriate training, thicken significantly and provide mass increase.
• Their motor nerves are activated at high frequencies, so their contraction is very fast and powerful.
• They lack mitochondria, so during activity they rely solely on stored energy (glycolytic metabolism).
• Their strength is explosiveness: enormous power for a moment, which can be sustained for at most about one minute.
• Their recovery is long.

Henneman's size principle

Voluntary muscle movement follows the rule defined by Henneman. According to this, muscle activation is under brain control and cannot be bypassed.

• to perform a movement, the neuromotor system first activates the smaller and then the larger muscles
• first your type I (slow) fibers are activated, then IIa and finally IIb fibers
• IIa fibers are activated when the movement requires more than about 50% of your maximum strength,
• while the super-strong IIb fibers only activate when the movement requires at least about 75% of your maximum strength.

Consequences of the size principle

Most of your muscles are a mix of white and red fibers, meaning you rarely have exclusively white or exclusively red muscles.

Knowing Henneman's rule, you can see that not every training method ensures that all fiber types are trained at the same time.

If your goals are endurance-based, you perform moderate-intensity, sustained muscle work – but such exercise only recruits type I fibers and somewhat the IIa fibers. With this training you improve endurance and somewhat your strength, but you will not gain muscle mass.

If your goals require both endurance and strength, then you must strengthen the endurance and intermediate fibers, keeping the training load around 60–70% of your maximum. This way you strengthen both type I and IIa fibers. Your strength increases, your muscle mass grows moderately, and your endurance improves, meaning you can sustain near-maximal efforts for longer (usually a few minutes). With such muscles you might excel at crossfit, combat sports, kayak-canoe, etc., where near-maximum intensity must be endured as long as possible.

If you want to increase muscle mass, you need a completely different training approach. You must train with weights close to your maximal capacity, with low repetitions and very high effort. Such work activates not only type I and IIa fibers but also IIb fibers. These latter fibers provide the large mass. However, with that kind of muscle you lose endurance. With such muscle mass you can perform intense efforts for at most about one minute. Running races are not for you.

From the above it follows that mass gain can only be achieved by moving very heavy weights! There is only one method that can "bypass" Henneman's rule: electrical muscle stimulation, which I write about in these articles of mine.

Can the fiber ratio be modified?

Among scientists it is still debated whether training causes muscles to merely thicken and strengthen (hypertrophy) or whether new muscle fibers also develop (hyperplasia), or both processes occur. Many studies have also investigated whether the congenital fiber ratio can be altered.

It has been proven that type I and IIb fibers certainly cannot be changed. In other words, no matter how you train, these fibers will not transform from one type to another.

Only the type IIa, intermediate fibers show a willingness—if they receive appropriate training—to shift toward slower or faster characteristics. The method to "tweak" intermediate fibers is electrical muscle stimulation, which I discuss in these articles.

Your body type is a matter of genetics. You can change your muscle–fat ratio, but not your muscle-fiber ratio.

You don't have to resign yourself to your genetic gifts, because with training and diligence you can improve within certain limits. However, your fibers essentially determine whether you can be outstanding in a given sport.

For example: someone with many red fibers will never become a true sprinter no matter how much speed training they do. Conversely, a sprinter rich in white fibers will not become the king of the marathon even if they train for long distances.

How do muscles develop?

Some studies show no significant difference in the number of muscle fibers between untrained men and bodybuilders. The differences lie in fiber thickness and in the supply of motor nerve endings and blood vessels.

Men—due to different genetics and hormones—have greater muscle mass than women. Because of the lack or low levels of certain hormones, women cannot become more muscular beyond a certain point.

In women the proportion of slow muscle fibers is dominant, which is advantageous in endurance sports.

Everyone has a congenital capacity for muscle growth.

If muscle tissue "feels" that it cannot produce enough force for a repeated task, it sends information to the cell nucleus and ribosomes to begin building new muscle tissue from proteins. Therefore, if you train regularly in this way, your muscle mass and strength quickly increase according to the demand.

If you do not train, the body quickly "breaks down" unnecessary muscles. That is why a few weeks of inactivity is enough to cause a significant decrease in muscle mass and strength.

Why is it important which sport you were born for?

From the above you can clearly see that you possess a completely unique set of abilities. No one else has the same. Therefore, only training specifically tailored to you offers a real chance of outstanding performance.

In our country the biggest coaching mistake (stemming from ignorance) is that an entire group of athletes (say a football team) does the same work…

They make chubby, big Pisti run as much as skinny Laci. They give the same medicine ball exercises to very thin Kati as to plump Juci…

The result is not that thin Kati becomes extremely strong, but that demanding strength exercises with her weak muscles overload (and possibly already damage in childhood) her joints. Fat Pisti will hate the sport because of all the running and will end up obese, even though his muscles are strong and fast and he could be shaped into an excellent sprinter, jumper, thrower, etc. — but only if he were given work suited to his build, musculature and fiber composition.

This flawed training practice (i.e., the lack of individualized training) is why many average athletes are produced in our country and very few truly outstanding ones. Those who do stand out (e.g., Katinka Hosszú, a few kayakers, etc.) achieve results precisely because their training was tailored to them.

So if your coach gives you exactly the same training plan as your friend who is completely different from you in body type, be suspicious! He probably has no idea what you need; with a copy-pasted training plan he just tries to save effort and attention. Find someone knowledgeable!

I also recommend the method of muscle stimulation, which is a medical method of treating muscles and has recently become an indispensable tool in sports preparation.

Electrical muscle stimulators offer many possibilities. Beyond speeding muscle recovery, preventing injuries and aiding rehabilitation, you can "fine-tune" your genetic gifts and maximize the transformative potential of your intermediate fibers, effectively improving your performance.