I have 3 questions I suppose, I've been ghosting around here for the last 2 weeks(along with my training), and while I was NOT being as intense as I'd like in the gym, my mind got a-thinking!

First question is about calories. When you're bulking why do you need extra calories(from a scientific point of view). Does your body require calories in order to repair your muscle and if so, in the case of cutting, does your body burn some fat it has in reserve in order to get the energy it needs for muscle regeneration?

How do people feel about gloves while training? I put mine in the wash machine the other day and I had a weight train without them and th bottom of my fingers/tops of my palms DIED! I have callus skin there anyway but it really opened them up, and then when I read about the deadlift chart and it says 'no gloves' I'm like WHAT THE HECK!? So I guess I'm asking does anyone not use them if if not how have your hand reacted?

Final question is about intensity. When I'm doing most upper body exercises I dont have the power that I have in my legs. For example I use a leg press machine and I can explode from rest to 'full out position' really quickly and even adding extra weight its not a problem. I'm not able to do this with my upper body though....unless I have a really low weight. Any insights into this?

Thanks guys
Ciaran

1.) Yup. Your body needs materials to build with just like building a house, but in this case the material comes from food.

2.) Your hands will toughen up. I would forgo the gloves to develop a solid grip.

3.) Your legs will be able to handle a lot of weight as they have larger muscles and are used to holding up your body a lot of the time. However, the leg press machine is misleading. While you may be able to leg press a lot of weight, a squat will be much harder and is a far better exercise.

Calories are nothing more than a unit of measurement. It is not so much that your muscle need calories because your muscle build from proteins which are made from amino acids. Calories though help to build these proteins and amino acids... so with out calories your body will not be able to do much of anything.

I don't see anything wrong with gloves. You will build grip pressure regardless. While I don't wear them, I know many people that do and it does help keep your hands from becoming hard.

Evan is right on with the squat. Try doing that instead of your leg press and see what happens. Also what you are talking about is power. Power is the ability of your muscle to produce maximum force in the shortest amount of time. Sounds like you might need to do some good power training.

Did they teach you all that at Clemson?

I do squat, I just used the leg press as an example.

Thats for the advice guys. So just to summarise, muscle is built from amino acids which you get from protein.

Well calories are a unit of measurement of energy, so what I was asking was is this energy used to build the muscle