How to Increase Your Strength Through Utilizing Your Nervous System

   

 Have you ever wondered why power lifters can lift so much, even though some of them are not that big? Well, I am here to tell you that most of the strength gains that power lifters and individuals just starting a workout program see are from neural adaptions. Strength is primarily a property of the nervous system. Thus, strength is not exclusively a property of muscle. This shows that motor unit recruitment, stimulation frequency, spinal activation, brain activation and other neural factors are important to strength gains. These neural factors explain strength gains in individuals who do not see an increase in muscle hypertrophy.

     Motor units are not all recruited at the same time. Rather, they are controlled by a number of different neurons that can transmit excitatory or inhibitory impulses. The motor unit is activated and its muscle fibres contract only when the incoming excitatory impulses exceed the inhibitory impulses and the threshold is met. The muscle can increase its ability to generate force when the motor units perform more synchronously. This means that the motor units are working together in a similar pattern to allow for a greater force to be produced by the working muscle.

     Also, another explanation for why the muscle can generate a greater force through neural adaptions is because more motor units are being recruited to perform the given task. This shows that the more motor units recruited at once, the greater the force that will be produced in the working muscle.

     The recruitment of motor units is usually improved when performing maximal contractions. This means training close to your 1 rep max. When training at maximal contractions, this increases the frequency of the motor units and also reduces the inhibitory impulses, allowing more motor units to be activated.

     So the real question is how can we reduce these inhibitory impulses? To reduce these inhibitory impulses, you must train frequently and gradually increase your work load to reduce these inhibitory impulses, allowing the muscles to generate more force. Thus, strength gains can be achieved by reducing neurological inhibition. This explains why strength gains result in the absence of muscle hypertrophy and also why individuals such as power lifters have superhuman bursts of strength.  

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