You Are Stronger Than You Think
August 7, 2008 by Kelly Turner
Filed under Fitness
Your body is designed to protect itself. If you don’t eat, your body slows down all of its function to conserve energy and help you live longer.
You’ve got eyebrows and eyelashes to keep stuff from getting into your eyes.
You feel pain so that you are aware that you are injured in some way and to avoid injuring yourself further.
Self preservation- its where it’s at.
Your muscles are no different. In your tendons, which connect muscle to bone, is a sensor called the Golgi Tendon organ. Its purpose is to protect you against too much contractile force. When the tendon organ is stimulated by too much contractile force, the associated muscle involuntarily relaxes to prevent injury. Under normal circumstances, this organ prevents you from using your muscles to their maximum potential, which might cause tearing of the muscle, the tendon, or the surrounding motor units.
In extreme situations, however, you can override this organ. Ever wonder how a woman can lift a car off of her trapped baby?
I wonder how all these babies are getting trapped under cars in the first place, but I digress.
Your first instinct is to probably say adrenaline, which is partially true, but it has more to do with overriding the Golgi tendon organ.
So baby is trapped under car, mother runs over, reaches under the bumper and lifts the car with Herculean strength. Baby wiggles out, hopefully, unharmed.
The mother was able to do this by overriding the Golgi inhibition, and generate maximum contractile force in the muscles needed to lift the car. By overriding this, however, she has undoubtedly caused a lot of damage to her muscles and connective tissues.
You can increase your threshold of force generation at which the Golgi tendon is stimulated by strength training. This happens because as you continually overload your muscle during strength training, more protein is added to the tendon to make it stronger as your muscles get stronger. Therefore, it takes more force to stimulate the Golgi tendon organ.
You still aren’t going to be able to lift a car as a fun party trick, but in serious cases, you may be able to help more than you think.
I don’t have children, but if my puppy was trapped under a car, I could hurl it 3 city blocks. My puppy, or my Michael Korrs flats. Either one.
I’d do it for my puppy, too. Most shoes though, I’d just use as an excuse to go shopping. ;)
Thanks for letting us know about the science behind it! I always assumed it was the adrenaline.
And thats some good motivation to be consistent with strength training- you never know when a puppy/pair of shoes need to be saved!
Thanks for this post – I feel smarter! I would do it for Bad Cat in a second. I am sure he would do it for me, right? right?
That’s incredibly interesting. Thanks!
Bullmastiff
Baby
MBT shoes.
not necessarily in that order ;)
M.
You crack me up. This was a fascinating read.
“My puppy, or my Michael Korrs flats.” I sat here pondering the juxtaposition between those two things. And then determined that my cat and Kate Spade would cause the same effect (and if I had a dog like I want, the dog may win!)
sweets&sweats