-: Okay, now let's get into the nervous system
stimulus and some of the adaptations
that are gonna occur as we challenge that nervous system.
So, just a quick review.
Our nervous system basically is always
learning how to make our body more efficient at a movement,
more efficient at overcoming resistance
with the least amount of work, right?
So our body doesn't necessarily know
that we have a performance goal.
But it does know that it likes to conserve energy.
So if it can learn how to do something cheaper and easier
and more efficiently, then it's gonna do it.
It doesn't know that you wanna have
a better vertical, a better bench press,
or a faster 40 time, or whatever it may be, right?
It only understands the demand you're placing on it
and how it could possibly make that efficiently.
That's what it can learn.
So, we look at coordination.
Coordination makes movements easier.
We kinda talked about this before.
So, learning what to contract when
is going to improve how efficient we can do something,
decrease the demand.
And this is gonna happen in all training types.
So if you're doing metabolic, hypertrophy,
or you know a straight neurological phase,
where you're focusing on either power or speed,
or whatever, you're gonna get coordination benefits
at all of those.
But the coordination may be relative to the type of intent
and the type of load that you're using.
But we're always going to get some motor pattern benefit
regardless of what training,
that's specific to the exercises
that we are doing at that time
and specific to the muscles that we are using at that time.
The most efficient motor pattern that we get,
so what actual adaptations we make to that motor pattern,
is gonna depend on the load.
So, the way I pick up something heavy versus something light
is gonna be different, right,
because it's gonna throw off my center of gravity, maybe,
so it's gonna change the mechanics there.
So if I've got no bar on my back versus a bar on my back,
that's a different motor pattern.
A heavier bar may be even a more different motor pattern.
The intent I use, whether that's a change in execution
or whether or not I'm trying to move that load slow,
whether I'm trying to move it explosively,
whether I'm trying to accelerate through it
or decelerate, okay.
The amount of time under tension is going to affect that
because as fatigue starts to set in,
my body's going to have to learn, like, okay,
what else can help with this as I'm starting to fatigue?
If there's a limiting factor in terms of
agonist, antagonist, stabilizer.
You're body's gonna be making up for all of those things.
The force capability, so say you're doing
a complex pattern like a squat
and your glutes are underdeveloped or something
and your quads are really strong.
Okay, well, your body is making this motor pattern
and learning how to do it with what you have.
So what is the cheapest way to do it
based off of what I have available right this second?
And that's what it's learning.
So if you have a lot of imbalances
in terms of strength or muscular development,
your body's gonna learn the most efficient way
to use that suboptimal muscular development
and suboptimal strength balance.
So, the motor pattern that you get now
will not be as efficient as it could be
if you bring up some lagging body parts or what not.
So if you have something going on with your structure
that's causing some muscular inhibition,
either an old injury or some spinal misalignment
or whatever it may be, some inflammation,
those types of things are gonna influence
how much things can work and what can go on.
So that affects my force producing capabilities.
And so I'm gonna learn how to use whatever I have available.
And that's how compensation, like my ability to
use muscles that I shouldn't be using
if everything was alright,
that's how that develops.
It's like if I start doing things improperly
or I'm going outside of my active range of motion,
I'm getting to a point where I'm not stable or whatnot.
My body has to learn how to deal with that.
And the solutions that it comes up with
might not be good long-term solutions
but it's learning those solutions
on how to deal with this problem today.
It's not thinking long-term.
But you keep doing this, you keep going to the gym,
you keep doing things poorly,
you don't correct your muscular imbalances,
you don't correct your execution, your intent,
then you could learn some really poor movement patterns.
'Cause ultimately your body's just trying to figure out
what's the easiest way to overcome resistance right now.
So, I'm gonna divide basically our motor recruitment-
(clears throat) Excuse me.
-: up into two things.
We're gonna talk about low intensity, which is gonna be like
improving the metabolic efficiency of the nervous system
by basically making that exercise a lot cheaper
in terms of a nice, slow control.
It's cheaper when we're doing low-intensity work.
And then we're gonna talk about high-intensity,
which is gonna be like power efficiency.
And what you're gonna see is that
both of these are ways of conserving energy,
but one is just like managing the muscles
and the other one is actually having to
take advantage of a little physics
to actually make it cheaper.
So, when we do this, right,
we're basically focused on using
the highest mechanical advantage tissue
at any given point in time.
So basically the cheapest tissue.
So, the more mechanical advantage a tissue has, that means
the less biochemical work it actually needs to do.
So while the tissue has good leverage,
it doesn't have to work as hard to help do the movement.
So with these complex movements, my body's always trying to
use the most mechanically advantaged thing at a given time.
And with people with different structures and different
proportions and different muscular development, guess what?
What's the most advantageous at any given time
may be different in complex lifts like a squat.
It's gonna be slow twitch dominant.
So if I'm trying to make things cheaper
and this is low intensity,
my body's gonna figure out, "how do I do this"
"and use the most energy efficient tissues as possible?"
Not just mechanically, but biochemically as well.
Like, so I want these slow twitch fibers
to do as much of the work as possible
and the fast twitch as only a last resort only.
So the fast twitch is only gonna come in
if the slow twitches are fatigued or it's so much load
that the slow twitch can't really do it all on their own,
they need a little bit of fast twitch help.
So the fast twitch only comes in
if absolutely necessary, in this case.
So my body's gonna learn,
"How can I make it so that that fast twitch"
"doesn't have to get involved?"
It's gonna get better and better at making these
low intensity exercises slow twitch dominant.
It's the cheapest way to load,
the cheapest way to move with low load
and slow movements.
So being efficient at this will make you
extremely good at aerobic performance
or endurance type stuff
because you will be conserving energy
as much as possible.
Not necessarily great for high performance
in terms of explosive needs.
So this won't necessarily make you a better sprinter
or a better power lifter,
but it'll make energy consumption
during endurance activities lower.
It'll also make energy consumption just during
your day to day activities lower.
So like me standing here right now.
Guess what?
My body has a lot of low intensity adaptations
in terms of the nervous system
to make me standing here as cheap as possible.
Because if I was inefficient
and using a lot of fast twitch,
I'd be building up lactic acid right now,
just sitting here and standing.
Luckily I'm not quite that de-conditioned,
so that I can actually stand up here
and use very, very little energy to support my structure
with this low intensity, slow type of movement.
Now, if I go to the gym and all of a sudden
I start doing dynamic stuff,
that's a completely different type of stress,
completely different type of adaptations
that would be needed.
So the adaptations I get from this
is just mainly energy efficiency.
How to spend less.
So I'm gonna get better coordination
making these movements cost less
which is good in terms of being able to
do high performance at lower intensities.
And again, this is gonna be very slow twitch dominant.
And I'm gonna basically,
if I'm training movement patterns in these type of ways,
I'm gonna be training mostly that slow twitch tissue.
Even if I go to fatigue
where some of the fast twitch comes in,
the amount of volume that the slow twitch fibers are doing
versus the fast twitch,
like those slow twitch guys might be getting
100, 200% more volume of work than the fast twitch guys.