The muscles just don't want to get bigger despite targeted training?
A neurobiologist explains what influence the nerves have on muscle building.
Is it your goal to build arm muscles? Or would you like to train your abdominal muscles? Sure, without weights or self-weight exercises, defined arms and suggested six-packs move far away.
But other factors also have an enormous influence on muscle building, such as the nervous system.
In his podcast "The Huberman Lab Podcast", Dr. Andrew Huberman, Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at the Stanford School of Medicine, discussed the connection between the nervous system and muscles. "When we talk about muscles, we are not only talking about the muscle itself, but also about the entity that controls the muscles, namely the nervous system,"
says
Huberman from the
Fitbook
portal
cited: “In voluntary motor skills, that is, conscious movements, the upper motor neurons in our brain send signals to the spinal cord. This is where the lower motor neurons are located, which send chemical signals to the muscles telling them to contract. "
How good the connection between nerves and muscle cells is also shows how well a muscle can be trained, according to the expert
.
For example, if you can tense your calf muscle to the point of cramping, Huberman says that this would show that the connection between the mind and muscles is very good - that is, you have good neural control over this muscle.
This increases the chances that you can strengthen the muscle even further through exercise.
Anyone who finds it difficult to tense a muscle through the power of thought alone will not be able to build it extremely well even through targeted training, according to the thesis of neurobiologist Huberman.
Fitness survey
Which muscles you can easily build - self-test should provide the answer
Arms, stomach or legs: which muscles show the most growth potential in you?
A simple self-test should provide information on which parts of the body the connection between the nervous system and muscles is best.
So about which muscles can be trained best.
According to Huberman, the self-test is very simple and you do not need any aids: "
Think through your body and see whether you can tense one or all of the muscles independently,
" says Prof. Dr.
According to
Huberman
, according to the
Fitbook
portal
: "For example, if you sit or stand in a chair, see if you can only tense your calf muscle with the help of the upper motor neurons by sending a signal downwards".
Does that mean, conversely, that you don't even need to train the muscles that you can't mentally control?
Definitely not:
Most fitness trainers advise involving the whole body in training.
It's all in the mix: Endurance and weight training not only define the body, but also prevent a number of diseases.
These include diabetes, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases and even cancer.
(jg)
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