Neuromuscular Conditioning Neuromuscular Conditioning

Neuromuscular Conditioning

We have all heard of amazing physical feats at some point in time, stories of exceptional human endurement, physicality and achievement, especially in a time of crises. The power of the human brain has the ability to accomplish amazing results when desire and will power become imperative to survival. One story that stands out for me is where Kansas man Nick Harris was able to free a six year old girl from being pinned under a car. Harris, 32, said he doesn't know how he managed to lift the Mercury sedan off the child. The 5-foot-7, 185-pound Harris said he tried later that day to lift other cars and couldn't. This is just one example of thousands where even comprehension is confused by outcome. These type of stories leave us questioning our ability, power, potential and existence....What are we really capable of?, Where are we headed? What is really possible? What are our limitations?.

The complexity of the human brain is without doubt at the forefront of any futuristic research we will conduct and is more complicated than anything we might build in the 20th century. Until such time as we can define our limitations, generations will strive for improvement. Now don't get too overwhelmed by my opening paragraph, I am merely highlighting the fact that we as the human race have only tapped into a small percentage of our true potential. With that said, the main focus of this article is to open the door to belief that we can in fact train ourselves for what our conscious side of the brain is not prepared for. This is called neuromuscular conditioning, the ability to train our bodies ability to react above and beyond our conscious thought process. Neuromuscular conditioning has been around for quite some time now and has made it's way into every professional athletes daily training regime. So what is neuromuscular training?...I'm glad you asked!. Let's use the following example:

Let's say we have an athlete that has a vertical leap of 60cm. We have the athlete jump from a box say 1mtr off the ground and achieve a height of 65cm. When the brain is put in a difficult situation it becomes frightened the body is in danger of being hurt. It then is forced to react to compensate and prevent injury. The result...Greater strength, quicker reaction. The brain remembers the more intense routine it had to undergo during training and there you have it...The athlete can now exert more effort into a standing vertical leap to exceed the older limiting belief of 60cm. What we have in fact done is increased the brains capacity to exert more intense physical effort while at the same time protecting itself from bodily harm. In other words we have conditioned the brain to perform at a higher level by raising our conscious risk level.

This is just one example of many I could give you, however the principle behind each sport or activity is in essence the same...Increase the brains element of risk by continually exceeding it's conscious belief. This particular theory can be applied to anything in life whether physical or not where results are required. Take public speaking for example...If you trained by speaking in front of 100 people and your job required only speaking in front of 10 people, you would nail it every time, you see the requirement falls well short of your expectation of conscious discomfort. In conclusion neuromuscular conditioning is really your ability to unleash your brains capacity to achieve your physical goals by increasing conscious resistance. The greater we push our mental barriers the greater results we can expect to achieve.