I’ve interpreted the progression of the bodys adaptation to weight lifting (low reps, for strenght)to be:
-First few weeks, the body becomes more efficient (relaxing and coordinating the muscles of the body) at performing the chosen exercise and increases in weight are greater
-Weeks after, the body now adapts by increasing lean fast twitch fibre and the gains are slower
I’m curious about the aspect of neurological adaptation, which I partly described in the first few weeks, but is there another aspect where the nervous system actually increases the amount voltage or juice that it can create. If so where in the time line would this adaptation take place?
What you’re talking about is fairly complicated and complex. Not to mention it deserves a lot more talk and credit than people give it. The average person is only capable of recruiting approximately 60% of their available muscle motor units for any given movement. With long term training this can be increased to around 85-90%. Although the short term strength gains you get from doing a new exercise are neuromuscular oriented it’s doubtful that the body is actually able to recruit that many more muscle motor units in such a short period of time. Those gains come from intermuscular and intramuscular coordination. It takes many years of training to be able to max out ones recruitment abilities under normal circumstances. Under abnormal circumstances…such as life or death situations it is possible for a normal person to be able to do this. example: a woman lifting a car off of her child. What happens in situations such as this is epinephrine over-rides the shutdown mechanisms such as the golgi tendon organ. But what also happens is the individual ends up getting hurt due to this override. I dont know if I did a very good job of answering your question but the answer is yes the nervous ssytem is capable of increasing the “juice” sent to the muscle but this is usually a long term deal.
yea i am gonna second kelly and say its way complicated. No one really knows when a specific adaptation really takes place (after the very first ones w/ novices) and the forms of hypertrophy in general a still quite mysterous to scientists…