Fitness
Weight Lifting Strengthens Your Nervous System, Too
The first few weeks of weight lifting may strengthen your nervous system, rather than your muscles.
3 min readSep 7, 2020
Have you ever had frustration that you are not building a lot of muscle with weightlifting? I know I have been. But even though your initial workouts might not create much muscle mass, recent research suggests that you may be strengthening your nervous system, rather than your muscles. Today we look at how this occurs.
How can weightlifting optimize your nervous system function? New research offers some clues. We begin with some basic science. The brain regulates movement through two major nerve highways. These tracts travel from the brain to the spinal cord through these paths:
- the corticospinal tract, the dominant route
- the reticulospinal tract, responsible for controlling posture
To gain strength, you must utilize the more primitive reticulospinal tract. The corticospinal tract does not change with strength training.
