I want to continue from my discussion of the stretch shorten cycle previously to discuss the contribution of neural factors to strength performance. At the end I’ll try to summarize this mess.
Neural & Muscular Factors in Strength Performance
Back in the very early days of the study of strength training, an observation was made that people’s strength went up far more quickly in the early stages of training than their muscle size. Quite in fact, it was often observed that strength increased fairly significantly before any measurable muscle growth had occurred. This indicated that there was some other adaptation, usually taken as neural/neurological (because there isn’t a hell of a lot else that it could be) that was occurring to explain it.
At the most extreme, it was felt that all of the gains in strength were neural although this is kind of questionable: protein synthesis goes up after the first workout even in beginners and it would seem unlikely that there was no increase in muscle size occurring at all.… Keep Reading