The Dirty Secret "Fitness Pros" Won't Tell You (Part 2 of 6)

Neuro-Muscular Activation

Modern science has discovered that muscles increase in size and strength as a result of neurological input or stimulation from the nervous system. It may be the outside stress that produces the stimulation, but it is the nervous system which ultimately causes developments in strength. If the nerve to the muscle is destroyed or damaged, the muscle begins to atrophy almost immediately. On a less severe level, lack of exercise and malnutrition will also cause a slow atrophy of the muscle. Nerve activation is the key to muscle growth and maintenance.

Measuring the neuron-muscular activation (NMA) or the amount of overall neural stimulation of the muscle provides an excellent measure of the effectiveness of an exercise. The more amount of neural activation in the muscle, the better the exercise. The higher the NMA rating the more strength development occurs.

It’s the same as watching a movie or reading a book. The more involved you are in something, the more focused you are, the more you will get out of it. The synapses in your brain are firing, emotional responses are triggering your endocrine system, and your senses are heightened to catch all this new exciting information.

Following is the classification system for NMA activities. The higher an exercise stands in the system, the more demanding it will be on your neuron-muscular system. The higher the NMA, the greater results.

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