Before you can effectively train your muscles, you need to know how they function so you can select the exercises that will best excite them to grow. Shall we examine a few of the body’s basic structures and see how they work together, and how this information will lead to your becoming a more informed and more successful iron pumper.
Central nervous system. The central nerve network is of imperative importance to both the expectant and competitive body-builder (as it is to the remainder of our species and any other species). Without nerves, our bones would not move, because our muscles wouldn’t contract. The central nervous network consists of the spinal nerve and the brain; it functions together with the marginal nervous system, which comprises the ganglia and nerves that reside outside the brain and spine. The nerve system appears like thousands of little wires that function as transmitters, receivers, and interpreters of info from every part of the body. It is responsible for exciting the muscles of the body to contract, which in turn give the chance to move. Damages to the nervous system, obviously would hurt the body’s movement potential. Movement itself is accomplished when the nervous system excites the muscles, which then move the bones that support us via the tendinous attachments around our joints, which are connected by ligaments.
Ligaments. Ligaments are wiry bands that bind bone to bone. Their compactness establishes to a significant extent the flexibility of our joints. Great care must be taken when you’re coaching because if a ligament is stretched too far, the joint that it holds together will become loose, leading to permanent damages to the tissue. (That is the reason why some football players are never able to fully recover from significant knee injuries.) A joint that has been thusly injured will probably “go out” with no warning, thanks to the unsteadiness of its overstretched ligaments.
Tendons. Tendons are the dense, fibrous bands at the end of muscles. Their function is to attach muscles to bones. Within the tendons are found the golgi tendon organs, whose function is to send signals to the brain to show stress and fatigue. Generally the ache that you experience during strenuous exercise is being broadcast through the tendon and not the muscle.
Bones. The human body contains 206 bones that, communally compose the skeleton. Muscles, as we have seen, are attached to bones by tendons and assist us in moving from one position to another.
Muscles. There exist 3 distinct kinds of muscle tissue in the body: cardiac, skeletal, and smooth. Cardiac muscle is the heart, while smooth muscle assists organs such as the stomach and guts in the passage and digestion of food. Skeletal muscle, on the other hand, is answerable for moving our bones. As we are looking to increase the size and strength of our skeletal muscles, it is to this group that we shall give almost all of our attention. There are rather more than six hundred skeletal muscles, which yields a skeletal-muscle-to-bones proportion of almost 3 to one and accounts for our highly developed dexterity and precision in movement.
In summary nerves stimulate our muscles, which in turn move our bones thru the tendinous attachments near joints, which are connected by ligaments. When working with its parts in correct unison, the body is a complex and complex piece of machinery. Our objective as weightlifters will be to extend the efficiency of our “machine” through controlled periods of stress, or tension, on the muscles, tendons, and ligaments so as to have the nervous system broadcast the signal for “overcompensation,” or muscular growth.
Ben Brown is a hack on body building, writing on subjects such as anabolics and preferred mass building programmes like The Muscle Maximizer.
