the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Over the past few years, researchers have found evidence that lifting more repetitions of lighter weight can build muscle mass just as well as fewer reps of heavier weight. Even so, those who train with heavier weight still see greater gains in strength than those who lift lighter loads.

But if strength differs even when muscle mass does not, what explains the disparity?

Nathaniel Jenkins and his colleagues may have uncovered some answers by measuring how the brain and motor neurons -- cells that send electrical signals to muscle -- adapt to high- vs. low-load weight training. Their study suggests that high-load training better conditions the nervous system to transmit electrical signals from the brain to muscles, increasing the force those muscles can produce to a greater extent than does low-load training.

Muscles contract when they receive electrical signals that originate in the brain's neuron-rich motor cortex. Those signals descend from the cortex to the spinal tract, speeding through the spine while jumping to other motor neurons that then excite muscle fibers.

Jenkins found evidence that the nervous system activates more of those motor neurons -- or excites them more frequently -- when subjected to high-load training. That increased excitation could account for the greater strength gains despite comparable growth in muscle mass.

"If we see a decrease in voluntary activation at these sub-maximal force levels, that suggests that these guys are more efficient," Jenkins said. "They are able to produce the same force, but they activate fewer motor units to do it."

Placing electrodes on the participants to record the electrical signatures of their quadriceps reinforced those results. High-load training led to a substantially larger drop in electrical activity after six weeks, the study reported, and that activity was lower across most levels of exertion.

everything wrote:I like the strongfirst community for the kb stuff. Pretty much the only stuff I do.

Peacedog wrote:What does their bodyweight stuff look like? Is it Convict Conditioning type workouts?

D_Glenn wrote:Internal strength comes about by learning to utilize your tendons, and fascia to better coordinate your whole skeletal structure. Understanding the rigging lets the bones support your body, which frees up the tendons and muscles to focus on martial movements. The second aspect is learning to better utilize more movement of individual bones (especially of the ribs and spine) to move each part in a sequential chain, in order to add and deliver a secondary movement, within the attacking movements of the rest of the body. You can’t use a muscular (weightlifting) type of strength to find these more complicated functions, or to figure out the complex manner in which they intertwine with the rest of the body. They require relaxing into, rather than tensing and striving. After you learn the movement, and can competently execute it over and over, in a relaxed manner, then you can start adding in the muscular strength to it. And that muscular strength can then be gradually incremented and the nervous system improved (myelineation, recruitment etc.).

Trick wrote:but ultimately arent we seeking "the weak subdues the strong"?