Strengthen Your Nerves with Deliberate Practice

Before I dive into the fascinating data from a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience—Cortical, corticospinal and reticulospinal contributions to strength training—I'll point out that this study was conducted with macaques, not humans. But, as I will cover later, macaques have a very similar nervous system to humans so this isn’t a big stretch.

It was also a small study that involved only two monkeys, both female. But since the researchers were studying the fundamental features of motor control, they don’t expect any differences in males.

Due to particularities in our nervous system, if we practice deliberately, we can respond quickly and effectively to resistance training.

So with those caveats out of the way, let’s look at the results. This study points to evidence that, due to particularities in our nervous system, if we practice deliberately, we can respond quickly and effectively to resistance training. And that's true even if we don’t see a large amount of muscle growth as soon as we start hitting the gym. 

Stronger nerves, not bigger bulk

Sports scientists have known for a while that early increases in strength involve both building new connections and eliciting changes to the existing connections between our brains and our muscles. (We call these "neuromuscular connections.") This process involves bundles of neurons and nerve fibers carrying commands from the brain’s motor cortex through the spinal cord to the muscles more efficiently and effectively. As these motor cortex commands get stronger and faster, the muscles receiving the commands generally respond in kind, giving us a functionally stronger reaction.

To illustrate this, let’s look at learning to do a pull-up. When you first learn a movement like this, we generally focus on something called the principle of specificity. In basic terms, we want to increase the volume of pull-ups you do on a regular basis. That's because every time you pull your body up and pop your chin over that bar, your neuromuscular system gets better at creating the interaction between your motor cortex, muscles, and nerves, optimizing them to become more effective at doing the movement known as the pull-up.

Every time you pull your body up and pop your chin over that bar, your neuromuscular system gets better at creating the interaction between your motor cortex, muscles, and nerves.

This is most evident when you're learning to do your first pull-up. The difference between doing none and three...

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