I’ve always had a huge interest on psychology and neuroscience, especially when it comes to high performance individuals (top athletes, executives…). There’s a huge gap in the delivery of real information on the subject. You can even see it in the dates from the sources I used. We need more people exploring this, it’s so underrated how the brain affects our daily lives… Most of what we see is “motivational” bullshit, talking about how you should push harder, don’t be weak, all that stuff. While that can be useful, there’s much more to psychology and neuroscience when the subject is maximizing your potential. Because this is a topic in such a crowded space, I believe this will be the posts with the worst performance numbers wise. But since I was able to create a solid crew that truly seeks progress, I have reached my goal: those who are truly looking to improve as people will see this and benefit from it. Let’s dive into today’s topic: Most people still think failure is purely muscular. Research on central fatigue, supraspinal fatigue, and descending cortical drive suggests that performance is heavily regulated by the nervous system long before muscular failure occurs. In Marcora’s famous mental fatigue study, athletes who were cognitively exhausted reached physical failure significantly earlier than the control group, despite nearly identical physiological markers such as heart rate, lactate accumulation, and cardiovascular output. The muscle itself was not necessarily the primary limiting factor because the brain changed the perception of effort and reduced voluntary output earlier! This becomes even more interesting when we look at research involving transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Researchers had subjects perform maximal voluntary contractions to complete perceived failure. Then, during exhaustion, they stimulated the motor cortex directly with magnetic pulses.The result: the muscles immediately produced additional force. That finding is extremely important: If the muscle was truly incapable of contracting further, the externally stimulated contraction should not have happened. In simple terms: sometimes the nervous system reduces the signal before the muscle completely loses the ability to produce force. Performance is regulated by both the muscle and the nervous system simultaneously, so psychology is a great predictor of progress and performance. During a workout, stress, distraction (📱cough cough) mental fatigue, and cognitive overload (📱cough cough) can dramatically change training performance even when recovery, nutrition, and programming are controlled. And this is where the conversation becomes incredibly interesting for hypertrophy and strength athletes. If attention, perception, neurological state, and descending drive influence force production, then the psychological environment surrounding training matters far more than most people realize. If your goal is to reach your best, this is heavily important. But I’d say that this is noise for those who just want to stay active and have a good time at the gym. I’m super excited for the future posts and Im looking forward to the feedback from you guys! Sources: * Marcora SM et al. Journal of Applied Physiology (2009) * Noakes TD. British Journal of Sports Medicine (2004) * Gandevia SC et al. Brain (1996) * Taylor JL & Gandevia SC. Journal of Physiology (2001) #goliathliftzz #hypertrophy #trainhardorgohome #buildmuscles #highperformancetools - @goliathliftzz