I always have wondered about the human body. particularly our frame(muscles, skeleton, tendons etc). Just how.. unique are we as humans? When I look at my own body, I see the muscle I do have and such but I can't help but think our bodies are lack luster in terms of what we can do? Maybe I am looking at it wrong.
Is the human body in terms of muscle and frame unique? Is it intriguing or amazing? I also wonder about the brains connection to our muscle tissue. When people mention stuff like "Muscle fiber recruitment" and such, what exactly do they mean? Do some people have a stronger connection to their muscles in their brain? How would you increase your connection if you have a weak one? I have even heard of people mentioning stuff like frying your central nervous system by using too many muscles at once. Is such a thing possible? By fry, I don't mean destroy but basically you can fatigue your central nervous system? Any information you guys have would be great, its all very interesting to me.
Compared to animals we have vastly superior coordination and endurance. Our strength is somewhere in the middle of mammalian strength, at least among humans that exercise, but our explosiveness is way inferior to most of the mammals.
Basically humans are supposed to be able to walk long distances and work all day using tools. That's our advantage. It seems kinda shitty compared to being able to jump 30 feet in the air or something, but it is what it is. That's what we are best at.
Aiden Gomez
we sacrificed pure strength for fine motor control
Noah Johnson
>The Virgin Sapiens >The Chadmagnon
Ethan Lopez
Modern white europeans are cromagnon man you idiot. Literally cro magnon man is the "early modern human."
Aiden Jenkins
We are the only animal abel to throw objects with accuracy and power. This is because our shoulders are unique. Apes and Gorillas suck at throwing things, they just swing their arms in the general direction and lob things, and its not because they are too dumb to throw, they shoulder simply isn't built for it. Humans can actually see a target, throw something, like a spear or rock, and hit the target.
Julian Hall
interesting I never knew that. When it comes to how our muscles are structured and how muscles grow or repair themselves, are ours different than other mammals? My goal is learn more about muscle so I can understand how they grow or become stronger. My goal is workout very efficiently and get the most out of my work outs by improving what I am doing outside of the gym. I am working on eating right. I have the quality of food correct but I think I may not be eating enough or possibly eating too much I guess. When we work out, are our muscles literally breaking themselves in order to lift whatever we are trying to lift? Why is it that they grow back stronger rather than just growing back to the strength they were at?
Leo Thomas
google.com
Brody Ramirez
We're weaker. That's literally it. Our brains are exponentially superior to those of animals.
Anthony Sullivan
>using tools seems kinda shitty compared to being able to jump 30 feet in the air or something
You should read the whole thing but chapter 4 specifically addresses you questions
Connor Jones
strength, coordination, ability, and motor skills are 90% the central nervous system
the central nervous system is what makes a piece of paper feel light and a deadlift PR feel near impossible. It controls the recruitment of the muscles you have. This is why you see people who look untrained display unimaginable feats of athleticism
Improving the efficiency of the central nervous system is pretty easy. Do it more. The more you bench 185 the easier it will be. The more you practice a movement the easier it will be to repeat it. Just build the motor engram by repeating the movement/action. If you play a sport spend more time doing drills. Force your nervous system to recruit more muscle fibers by lifting heavier
Oliver Myers
I thought a core component of this is that you cant go to failure. Because everytime you do its training your motor neurons to put out less. Hence why greasing the groove works so well
Oliver Perez
you put out less because your nervous system is fatigued, not the other way around
"greasing the groove" implies doing higher rep work, and that does train your nervous system as you are repeating the same movement over and over again, forcing your nervous system to adapt to it. However the processes your body goes through when attempting a serious 3 rep max are different than when you do a set of 15
your body literally adapts to what you do. If you lift and really force it to recruit more fibers through lifting low reps high weight it will do that. If you lift and force it to do 20 reps instead of 20, it will do that through increasing the liquid volume in the muscle. (that's what forces hypertrophy)
im gonna stop there and dip before the autistic debate of 5 reps vs 12 reps and strength vs hypertrophy begins with dudes claiming strength = size and etc etc
Nolan Ortiz
please don't this is interesting, have any related reading on the subject? (preferably from a doctor or someone experienced with anatomy and physiology)
Cameron Harris
Sometimes I wish sapiens had been given a few more million years to develop physically before we got smart.
Or just not become intelligent in the way that we are. Like damn, wonder if neanderthal bro had a higher level of satisfaction fucking cavestacey, praying their child lived past 2 and constantly on the lookout for predators and food than I do on my comfy bed going to my shit job and having to pick between a million staceys.
When it comes to strength and size.. what exactly is it that is strengthening our muscles? Do some people physically have FEWER fibers than others? For example, I would consider my back to be pretty strong. I have a friend who cannot do one pull up while I can do 10. Does it mean that my back has MORE fibers than his or is it more that my nervous system can recruit more fibers to do the pull ups than his can?
Chase Robinson
you don't gain muscle fiber count they're just stronger or weaker. Working out quite literally increases the size of the existing fibers. Cant say for certain if there's significant differences in fiber counts between humans but it's not unlikely considering things like insertions can vary so greatly.
Hudson Hernandez
>Does it mean that my back has MORE fibers than his or is it more that my nervous system can recruit more fibers to do the pull ups than his can?
most likely both
to give you a practical example:
a lot of times when an average dude first starts lifting they usually bench 45-65 lb. Then, in about 4-8 weeks (depending on genetics) they're usually at the 135 lb area. That's a 2-3 times increase in weight, while the person looks exactly the same. This is because the nervous system adapts and lets them use more of the fibers they already have. Look at Olympic weight lifters, many times you probably see people at your gym who literally look bigger than them, yet these people can put 300 pounds over their heads
A way to look at it is that more muscle is obviously more strength, but efficiency of that muscle is through the nervous system
David Gomez
Humans are really good at throwing things. Like, REALLY good, no primate can even compete with us.It takes a lot of brain power and specific muscle groups to be able to aim a rock or spear at a moving target and hit it. We also have really good eyesight. The only other animals that have such good eyesight are hawks, and other similar birds of prey.
We have butts. This allows us to have crazy good endurance compared to even animals like gazelles. Early humans would just run after animals at a constant speed until it collapsed from exhaustion or they were able to get close and kill it using other means.
Jason Adams
OP here, this is interesting because I think I was the same way with my squat. I start maybe 2 months ago and my squat was about 2 plate for my max. Now I can do 315 pounds relatively easily for one rep. So really a lot of our strength is locked behind our nervous system? So a lot of people are actually stronger than they really think?
Lucas Campbell
And Neanderthals didn't have that shoulder adaptation.
Matthew Wilson
>the only other animals that have such good eyesight are hawks, and similar birds of prey source on that? It sounds very false
is that good or bad? I was new to the squat motion and such. I wasn't really extremely new to fitness I guess. I only recently started doing structured routines. Before I would go and feel very aimless which is probably why my progress is fucked and I don't know if I am a beginner or not.
John James
we're alright at a lot of things, but we're not the best at anything besides motor control and endurance running.
Samuel Sullivan
It's pretty decent for a start
Joseph Jenkins
>Like, REALLY good, no primate can even compete with us Broaden that statement. According to our current knowledge, there is no animal on Earth (current or past) that can compete with humans in terms of throwing. It would probably still be true if you replaced throwing with "killing or wounding prey at a distance". What other animals can reliably do that? Archer fish, mantis shrimp...? We're the apex shitflingers
Blake Gutierrez
It's not our shoulder, it's our center of gravity. Apes are mostly all upper body so throwing with force throws off their center of gravity and they fall over.
Julian Gray
We have way more slow-twitch muscle fibers than all other primates. Quick-twitch makes the muscle stronger pound-for-pound but fatigue much faster. We can run dozens of miles because of our slow-twitch fibers.
Owen Morris
muscles contract when a motor neuron tells them to every motor neuron innervates a certain number of muscle fibers and can make them either contract 100% or relax 100% if you have a lot of motor neurons innervating a muscle, you can make it contract more precisely, if total muscular strength is for example 100, and you have 10 equal motor neurons, you can regulate strength of the contraction in increments of 10 if you have 100 motor neurons, you can regulate it in increments of 1 if you have 1 motor neuron, you either contract it full force or not at all we have more motor neurons to allow for better fine coordination so we can use tools and shit animals have less motor neurons because they don't have to use tools and shit we have to learn to use all our motor neurons at once for those 1rms through training animals don't have to learn that
we also can sweat from our entire body we also utilize fat very efficiently, for example if you take a fat cat and force it to exercise without food, it might die because it cannot use a lot of its own fat continuously for a long period of time whereas we can i think we also have one of the biggest penises in the animal kingdom
you put out less because your muscles are fatigued, I think because actin can't get unstuck from myosin in an acidic environment or when there's not enough atp molecules. either way you can't lift your 1rm for 10000 reps because cellular metabolism is not keeping up with demand, not because your nerves get tired. i speculate that you might end up with motor neurons firing without proper synchronicity if your nervous system is "tired" but you don't get that from weight training.
Ian Taylor
actually speaking of fatigue. Is there any way I can improve how fast my muscles recover between sets? If I do 5 sets of bench press, I find that I just can't do another 5 reps in the third set. Am I just not waiting long enough? I feel like I would have to wait 5 minutes which sounds insane though. I want to recover in about 3 minutes but I guess big compound lifts don't really work like that.
Grayson Richardson
being able to sweat is a big reason humans can run down prey, animals that can’t sweat just can’t compete. also all the other shit said in this thread like the throwing and asses and muscles, brain power etc
