How Workout Can Harm the Central Nervous System

Almost always, when it comes to strength training, the abbreviation of the CNS immediately jumps out, i.e., the central nervous system, which is tired, exhausted, and even leads to overtraining.

How central nervous system works

We have the largest energy consumption for various types of activity (domestic and training), and the designer decided using the central nervous system, i.e., command point of the body to save on food, such as there is nothing to eat, and then there are such energy costs for work.

In 1956, Comrade Henneman described the principle of magnitude, which explains that to complete the work, the central nervous system sends a signal to the muscles that is necessary to overcome this particular resistance. But as fatigue increases, our central nervous system amplifies the signal and connects those fibers that were previously inactive.

CNS and strength training

Moreover, it turned out to be a surprise for many that highly repetitive training of 20-25 repetitions depresses the central nervous system more than 5-6 repetitions.

We will have to remind you that work on 5-6 repetitions immediately involves about 80% of the fibers of 90% possible, and by the 5th repetition the fibers of almost the entire muscle are recruited, but for 25 repetitions – at first, only 50% are active, and the same 90% are connected only to the last failed repetition.

The work of central nervous system in simple words

Now simplify. Imagine the owner of a large building. The owner is you, the manager of this object is the CNS, and the workers are muscle fibers.

You gave the manager a task to do the hard work (for five repetitions), and now the manager sets the task to almost all personnel at once (80-85 out of 90 people). The task is clear: the staff began to work but gets tired (2-3 repetitions), and the manager sends (recruits) another five workers. All the work took a few seconds, and the tired manager can rest.

Now the manager has only 50 people (25 repetitions) and the same task. These 50 started to get tired, the manager sees this and sends help, and now the workers are already 60 people, they get tired again, another ten connects, then another ten and more, until they finish work. You can imagine how exhausted the manager looked in the second case.

In addition, you have a great chance to get to know first what is the muscle asymmetry and how to get rid of it.

What is more, we’ve prepared an expert view on the bubble gut issue.