Coming on the heels of Conor
McGregor’s recent UFC victory, the world has taken notice of his unique
training style that stresses the fluidity and primitive nature of human
movement. Practices such as MovNat, Ido Portal’s Movement Culture, and Animal
Flow are just a few of the many up and coming training styles that stress fluid
and intuitive movement.
These training styles focus
on making movement efficient, adaptable, instinctual, and practical. To better
understand how these training styles work, we need to understand how the body
adapts to movement training.
Lets start by defining a few
terms.
-
A motor unit is a motor neuron (nerve)
and all of the muscles fibers that it innervates (communicates with).
-
The neuromuscular junction is the place
where a motor nerve synapses (meets) with a skeletal muscle fiber. Essentially,
the neuromuscular junction is what
connects the nervous system to the muscular system.
-
A neurotransmitter is a chemical that
crosses a junction (e.g. the neuromuscular junction) and transmits a signal
from the nerve (e.g. the motor neuron) to the target tissue (e.g. the muscle).
-
The central nervous system (CNS) is
essentially the brain plus the spinal cord.
-
Efferent pathways are pathways in the nervous system that carry motor signals from the
CNS to the muscles.
Now lets look at how the
nervous system communicates with the muscular system to coordinate voluntary
movement, in this case, a muscle contraction.
1.
When a person
voluntarily decides to move, a signal is sent from the primary motor cortex (in
the brain) down through efferent pathways, eventually to motor neurons and
eventually to muscles.
2.
Once the signal
reaches the end of the motor neuron, it has arrived at the neuromuscular
junction.
3.
At this point, a
neurotransmitter known as acetylcholine (Ach) is released and binds to
receptors on the muscle fiber(s).
4.
Once Ach binds to
the receptors on the muscle fiber(s), a chain reaction is set off, and to make
a long story short, the target muscle contracts.
Now that we know how the
nervous system communicates with the muscular system to execute movement, how does movement training influence the
neuromuscular system?
1. Improved
synchronization/timing of motor unit firing
As a result of regular training, the
neuromuscular system adapts by improving the timing in which motor units fire
(send signals to muscles). This increased synchronization makes muscle
contractions both stronger and more efficient, leading to improved control over
movement.
2. Increased rate
of motor unit firing
Not only does the timing of motor units
change, but the rate of firing also changes. As a result of regular training,
motor units are able to fire at an increased rate, which helps to produce
stronger muscle contractions.
3. Increased
number of motor units that fire
In addition to the timing and firing rate
of motor units, regular training also increases the number of motor units that
are activated for any given movement. When more motor units fire, more muscle
fibers are activated and more power can be produced in any given movement.
4. Improved
overall brain functioning
Without
going into too much detail I will give you a few of the many brain benefits of
movement training.
Movement training helps to:
· relieve symptoms of depression
· improve memory
· improve brain oxygenation
· enhances brain growth and neural regeneration
If
you want to look further into how training and exercise in general impacts the
brain, there is a myriad of research readily available on the internet, just google
it!
Before I end this blog, I want to offer one possible
explanation as to why training that stresses efficient, adaptable, instinctual,
and practical movement is important for the health of our nervous system.
Our distant ancestors didn’t have desk jobs, they didn’t
go to the grocery store to buy their meals, and they sure as heck didn’t drive
cars from place to place. What I’m
getting at is that our distant ancestors moved…. And they moved often.
Consider the stereotypical “caveman.” He needed to hunt in
order to eat, continuously travel to find shelter and run to avoid being eaten.
Looking at this “caveman” through the lens of evolution, it is a no-brainer
(pun intended) that movement is closely
linked to the health and functioning of our brains. Our ancestors needed
their brains to be able to produce efficient and consistent movement in order
to survive and reproduce. “Cavemen” who had the most powerful brains could move
and think better and they were the ones who survived. Over the course of
millions of years, our ancestors evolved with brains that shared an intimate
relationship with movement.
Taking this into account, it makes sense that in today’s
world, where most of us do not need to move in order to survive, our brains are not being stimulated in the
way that they were once designed for. By using movement training systems,
or by exercising in general, we can better stimulate our brain and enhance the
way that our entire nervous system functions!
I hope that you were able to
follow me throughout this post and make sense of the information that I hurled
at you. If your curious about how primal and instinctual movement is
incorporated into various strength and conditioning programs, go ahead and
check out the section of our website about Animal Flow.
Until next time,
Joe Rinaldi
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