Working out at the gym isn’t just about your muscle, it’s about your brain too. In fact it probably comes down to around 50% brain and 50% brawn, as do many things in life. The very fact that your brain signals control your muscles should make this obvious but there are many more interactions that you may not be aware of.

When any nerves fire in your body or in your brain they transmit electric signals called ‘action potentials’ to each other across the gaps known as ‘synapses’. These signals can then order muscles in your body to contract to varying degrees. These signals begin in the brain, specifically the motor cortex, then travel down the spine and to the specific area in your body that you’re commanding to move. This is known as your central nervous system.

Interestingly, each time your neurons fire in a specific way so transmitting a specific signal that individual connection strengthens. This means that next time you want to perform the same movement or recall the same thing it will be easier and the connection will be stronger. This is why practice makes perfect and why you can improve the technique of your lifting through repeatedly performing it.

So as you practice your lifting technique you not only strengthen your muscle, but the connection between that muscle and your brain. This makes every movement quicker and more powerful and means that when you perform the movement in the real world you’ll do so more efficiently as well as more powerfully. In a way you’re training your brain as much as your muscles - and the comparison to muscle goes further than that. What’s even more interesting you see is that as you strengthen these connections you actually enlarge areas of your brain. This phenomenon is something that’s known as ‘brain plasticity’ in psychological circles and is currently generating a lot of interest.

Many studies have demonstrated the power of brain plasticity, for example in one piece of research it was found that cellists have larger areas in their brain responsible for controlling and feeling the fingers. A study like this shows a correlation and so it would be possible that people with certain brain types were simply attracted to playing the cello in the first place, however both common sense and subsequent longitudinal studies where psychologists have actively caused participants’ brains to change shape through their behaviour suggest otherwise. So when you’re in the gym your body is changing shape, but so too is your brain which is just as plastic and malleable as your skeletal muscle tissue. Your brain compared to its potential is likely similar to your bicep compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. Yet no one really goes about actively trying to train their brain.

This is interesting for athletes not only in an incidental fashion however, and it actually has practical application. Through ‘visualisation’ it is thought that we are able to strengthen these pathways further. So when training make sure you focus carefully on the movement and visualise your muscle working and the nerves firing.

Mack LeMouse

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