When Lifting Light Weights Results in Big Strength

One of the things I hear from my clients on a regular basis, especially those just getting back into the gym, is that whenever they begin to go heavy with weights in the gym, they get injured. Or, it's not so much that they get injured but there are just so many nagging aches and pains that going to the gym loses it's luster. And let's face it, unless you're one of these sickos that loves spending hours in the gym every day, this is not your favorite place to be.

It's like - why is everybody in such great shape? How do these machines work? I don't know what I'm doing with a barbell; is that a barbell?

That's why I like to make it simple.

Using electrical stimulation on the muscles while exercising can make the muscles work as if they're lifting heavy weights without having to actually lift heavy weights. Let me explain.

Normally, our nervous system which is the software that runs all of the hardware pieces of our body, only allows access to around 30 to 40% of muscle fibers within our body. In other words, look at your arm and envision a one square inch area. You're only able to access about a third of those fibers. What a jip!

Even the most elite athletes have trained their nervous system enough to allow access to up to 70% of those fibers. The nervous system holds the rest of those in reserve. 

Knowing that our brains are built for preservation first and performance second we need to find a way to quickly gain access to those muscle fibers to help us build them and make our body strong

Time to get nerdy!

Our brain sends between 30 and 80 pulses per second of electrical charges that are generated in the brain and travel through the nerves to the muscles. These muscles act as shock absorbers for our joints and as pulleys to pull our joints through different ranges of motion to lift weight. I don't want to lose you in the weeds here, but the charge or wave of that pulse has a certain shape to it. In electrical engineering, there are square waves, sine waves, sawtooth, Etc. Our brain uses a square wave. (Don't worry, there won't be a test at the end of this).

The electrical stimulation machine I use, the NeuFit Neubie, uses a square wave as well. So the charges are patterned in the same way that our brain sends them along the nerves and to the muscles. Our brain's maximum power output is only between 15 and 20 watts. The Neubie’s output is 65 Watts, meaning that it puts out identical charges as the brain on a level of about four times more intense than what we can do ourselves.

It's kind of like having one person rowing in a boat versus four people rowing in a boat. That four-person boat is going to get there a lot faster.

So placing electrodes on these muscles we want to work can activate them at a much higher level. In fact, repeatedly exposing the muscles of this higher activation level will retrain the brain to activate them on its own later. Just like the elite athlete has spent years honing their craft to be able to access more muscle fibers and get as strong as possible, you will be able to do that on a much faster time table!

If you head over to our page called The Science on this site, you're going to find a link to this study. You can read the full detail there, but the gist of it is that participants were able to build as much muscle with these electrodes and virtually no weight compared to using real weight. That's incredible!

Now think about how this relates to you. If you want to build muscle, shape up your body, tone your physique, but you have been worried about chronic pain in the past, this is a really easy way to start gaining muscle and improving your function. Not only that, but since the nervous system is also our pain management system, we're going to be able to reprogram that with the Neubie to reduce your pain

Reduced pain, improve range of motion, and faster muscle building? What are the reasons do you need?