Originally published in Quora by Chris Vargel.
These are muscles. They look kind of cool, right?
Now this is a nerve cell:
Not that big a deal. It’s just an octopus-looking thing with a universe in it’s center.
But what if I told you (Morpheus never said that) the last picture is where the true magic happens?
Your brain’s motor cortex controls your muscles. Like the rest of the brain, it’s plasticity is extremely high. It changes, and can learn to fire more and more muscle fibers simultaneously. An increase in strength is simply an increase in the efficiency of the nervous system.
We tend to think of strength as a trait - like hair or eye-colour - but it’s more so a skill. Someone lifting a lot of weight is not really different from Messi gracefully caressing a football or Picasso masterfully crafting a painting - they’re just a lot less cool.
We become stronger at the movements we do because our brains becomes more efficient at doing them. This explains why strength isn’t very transferrable. (Insert bro who quarter-squats a ton but can’t full squat more than an empty bar here.)
I bet I look way more impressive now.
Consider this:
Pound for pound, a chimpanzee has twice the strength of a human being, despite carrying similar amounts of muscle mass.
How did I get dragged into this? And yeah, I’ll kick your ass.
So - what’s the difference between us and our furry friends?
You mean besides manscaping?
Well, for one, they have longer and denser muscle fibers than we do, with greater portions of those fibers being of the fast-twitch explosive kind. But there’s another way we differ too - and it has a lot to do with those nerve-cells.
Our brains have a lot more grey matter than those of chimps. This means we have a lot more fine motor control - a trait allowing us to play guitars, knit scarves and operate on each-others brains while flirting with nurses.
But lacking grey matter also means a chimpanzees neural signals toward any given muscle become a lot stronger than ours. Every ape-neuron controls a whole lot more ape-muscles and those muscles thus fire way more easily. Were we are more wired to work requiring fine motor-skills, they are more wired to break doors off of cars and jump like superheroes.
Lol, look at that puny human bench pressing!
Think of strength like this: Your muscles are a car. They can have a lot of horse-power, but they’re simply a tool. The nervous system is the driver. Without it, you won’t get very far. Some drivers don’t even know how to turn an ignition.
So, even though muscle mass definitely correlates with strength, some skinny guys may just be really great drivers. Through more practice, they can have a nervous system way more effective at the task at hand.
Talk about brain gains.
Now now, just visit the link below and give proper credit to him by donating just a tiny bit of upvotes.
How can some people with smaller muscles lift heavier than people with bigger muscles? by Chris Vargel https://www.quora.com/How-can-some-people-with-smaller-muscles-lift-heavier-than-people-with-bigger-muscles/answer/Chris-Vargel?share=8244f37f&srid=uYBLj
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