Comments on: Neurological Efficiency and Recruitment.

By: Eugene Thong

Eugene Thong — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:35:25 +0000

@Jim,

Your observations are spot-on.

Here’s what I think the key statement is:

“All the fibers that are serviced by a single motor unit… ”

In other words, with greater recruitment you involve more motor units per contraction impulse.

By: Jim Lyons

Jim Lyons — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:02:45 +0000

All the fibers that are serviced by a single motor unit will all activate at once!…..not a percentage of them, but all them!….. this is the “all or nothing principle”…… The faster twitch fibers are hooked up to motor units that service a lot of fibers, as compered to the slower twitch fibers that are serviced my motor units that have very few fibers connected to them. So it comes down to the how big the motor unit is. The bigger motor units tend to service the fast twitch fibers, and also have a lot of branches which enables them to service a lot of fibers, as compered to the smaller motor untis that have less branches and tend to service the slow twitch fibers.

By: Eugene Thong

Eugene Thong — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:13:24 +0000

@kaiser

Thanks, your encouragement is always welcomed!

@Corrie

The trained person doesn’t have higher neurological efficiency (but does have greater efficiency in terms of doing work). And I am saying that a person can never buy a bigger bucket; they just get more buckets.

By: Corrie

Corrie — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:30:06 +0000

Neurological efficiency cannot be improved. Than how come a trained person will have a higher efficiency than an untrained person? (like in your example)? Are you saying a person can never buy a bigger (or smaller) bucket?

By: Super-Trainer

Super-Trainer — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:16:49 +0000

Thanks Eugene – I keep getting more impressed with your ability to show the science in an interesting way that we can apply immediately to our exercise – Keep it up -