The Nervous System is the Key

Neurologists have accumulated a pretty respectable sample of studies over the last 50 years that
help elucidate just how damn powerful your brain, spinal cord, and associated neurons really are to
control and develop your strength and muscles.

You see, I preach the importance of fast muscle contractions for a variety of reasons. One of the
reasons is because of a study by Desmedt and Godaux. They demonstrated that fast muscle
contractions activated motor units earlier; and fast contractions activated approximately three times
as many motor units as slow contractions.(4)
Fast muscle actions cause more fast muscle fibers to be formed by blocking slow muscle fiber
formation in the nucleus, thus allowing us quicker strength and muscle gains.


My all-time favorite neuroscience study was performed by Yue and Cole in 1992. I carry this study
around with me like Ben Affleck must carry around his Oscar from Good Will Hunting. When I'm
feeling hungry or lonely, I suckle on the page corners like a newborn pig suckles on his mama's tit.
And once while in a state of inebriation, I put a wig on it and... .okay, I better stop there.
[]Now, for the shocking part: At the end of the study, the group that actually performed the
contractions against resistance increased their strength by 30%. But the "imagined contraction"
group increased their strength by 22%! (5)
I still get chills when I think about what that study demonstrates.
This is about as close to a holy grail as a neurophysiologist like me will ever find. I mean, think about
that protocol and its implications. It means that we can significantly improve our strength without
even contracting our muscles!
How does this happen? We really don't know. Remember what I said in the beginning, there's so
much we don't know about even the most common neural tasks such as storing and recalling
memories. But it's likely that by thinking about a specific movement, we're priming our descending
pathways so our muscles at the end of the pathway will receive more stimulation (greater motor unit
recruitment) once we actually perform the movement.

After studying the nervous system's role in human strength and performance, I've come to this
conclusion: Our nervous system has the brakes set on our muscles' capabilities. []In other words,
we have thousands of year's worth of survival reflex mechanisms hard-wired into our nervous
system. Building bigger biceps wasn't important for survival, and neither was squatting triple your
body weight. So what we must do is find ways to release the brake that our nervous system is putting
on our muscles. If we do, we can tap into motor units and contractile proteins that will accelerate our
size and strength beyond belief. But this "unbraking" must be gradually systematic if it's not, we'll
tear our muscles and joints to shreds.


Case in point: If your son, daughter, or mistress was trapped underneath your car, you could
immediately release this brake that I'm referring to. Yep, you could probably lift up the back end of
the car even though you couldn't ordinarily deadlift 600 pounds. Your brain is the commander of
your nervous system, and if your brain decides that you must deadlift 600 pounds of Chevrolet to
untrap your daughter, you'll be able to do it. (It's likely, however, that your lower back will remind
you over the course of 3 months while you're in physical therapy.) So as I said, we must release the
brake slowly.
Studies have demonstrated that motivation causes people to immediately increase their maximal
strength.(7) In other words, being motivated will help release the brake.