Why you may not be gaining muscle or losing weight
Have you ever seen someone who you know eats right, exercise regularly and yet their body never seems to change? They are healthier but they still hold on to a belly or they never seem to build muscle or even tone up. The answer may lie within the central nervous system (CNS) and muscular system. In this blog I am going to explain how a lack of communication between the central nervous system and the muscular system may be limiting your gains and weight loss.
Muscular system
It is no secret that muscle tissue burns more calories. In fact the Mayo Clinic considers strength training and muscle tone to be an integral part of calorie expenditure and fat burn. The problem for many of us today is we are not using all of our muscles. Let’s look at a muscle group such as the quadriceps as an example. The quadriceps muscle group consist of four muscles. Rectus femoris, Vastus lateralis, vastus intermediate and vastus lateralis. What if I told you that most people only use one to two of these muscles? As a medical exercise specialist, I have discovered that most people might only be using rectus femoris and vastus lateralis. Well if you ask a muscle to do 3 jobs when it was only designed to do one that muscle overloads which leads to compensation that eventually causes pain.
How does this effect my weight loss or muscle gain?
If you are doing a knee extension on a machine and you only have one or two muscles that are contracting efficiently to move the weight, only those two muscles are getting stronger. No matter the weight or exercise, the muscles that are fully able to contract are the ones getting bigger or stronger. If muscle burn more calories and im only building muscle in two of the four muscles in the group how many calories am I really burning? Obviously not as much as you can be. For many people this is why they do not lose weight or build muscle. For those who do have muscle but no definition it maybe you are only using a small percentage of the muscles in a select group. A lack of communication and contractile capability is also why some muscles are more developed than others or one side is bigger than the other.
Central Nervous System (CNS)
Your brain sends a signal to your muscles that tells them to contract. That contraction may be to do an exercise or simply walk. But sometimes that signal gets disrupted. When this happens, some muscles get more signal than others. The longer this goes unchecked your body has to involve other muscles and groups to do the task the primary muscle group cannot do anymore. This is why people have to have knee and hip surgery. The continue to compensate until the joint cannot take it no more an has to be replaced.
How does the signal get disrupted?
I have found there to be several reasons why the signals from the CNS would be disrupted. The most obvious is trauma. An old injury, a surgery something that cause pain. Well your body does not want to feel pain so in order to do that your brain will start to try and limit the signals to the damaged areas. The problem is when the pain is gone there is nothing to tell your brain to send the signal back to the area. This is why some people still limp long after they healed from a lower body injury. It might not be as obvious, but they are still compensating from protecting themselves. Other common reasons signals might be disrupted would be from medication, poor diet, poor sleep, stress and dehydration.
How to fix a broken signal ?
The answer is muscle activation techniques and isolated movements and contractions. MAT is the only modality that address how efficient the muscular system contracts. We are not talking about E-stem or some device. MAT is a manual therapy in which the practitioners looks at ROM and manual muscle testing to identify which muscles are firing and which are not. Then the practitioner can palpate or activate through Isometric contractions. Once the practitioner stabilizes the client, they can then develop a routine or exercises to keep the muscle contracting as efficient as possible. At Dynamic Fitness and Rehabilitation, located in Tampa, Florida we have helped hundreds of people reach their goals and improve their quality of life by simply helping them move more efficiently. Click or call today and see how we can help you!!!