TRAIN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM

Athletes are always looking for more efficient ways to train and to improve muscle response. After all, in collision sports having faster reflexes than the next guy could mean the difference between celebrating a victory or spending the night in the hospital. We all know how to improve our cardio and muscle stamina, but how can we improve our nervous system response and how does our nervous system really work?

Your nervous system sends impulses over 250 miles an hour through a network of nerves to your brain. These impulses alert your brain and control many of your bodies functions such as muscle response. In particular MMA fighters are incorporating nervous system training into their routines to enhance their overall performance. In the cage it doesn’t really matter how strong you are or how great your cardio is if your reflexes can’t keep you from getting knocked out or taken down.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when focusing on training your nervous system:
(1) the strength gained in one activity does not automatically transfer over to other activities. The transference in strength gets smaller (and may approach zero) as the activities become more dissimilar.

(2) in your training, you should focus on strengthening sport-specific movements, not individual muscles or muscle groups. If you fail to concentrate on movements, you are leaving the nervous system out, and gains in strength will not be optimized.

(3) If your sport involves running and you would like to run faster, you should try to avoid seated strengthening exercises, which isolate muscle groups, and ‘two-leg’ exercises, and instead focus on exercises in which strength is exerted in a coordinated fashion by one leg at a time, as is the case with actual running. One-leg squats are superior to two-leg squats, one-leg hops are better than two-leg jumps, high-bench step-ups are preferred over regular barbell squats, and so on.

Nutrients for Brain Power
Boost Choline Intake
Choline, a B vitamin-like substance, is a crucial ingredient in the membranes found in every one of your cells. Dietary or supplementary choline can boost the production of acetylcholine and thus is important for memory, learning, and mental alertness. Rich food sources of choline include lecithin, peanuts, wheat germ, and soy foods.

Balance Your Electrolytes
The ability of a nerve to fire depends on the presence of electrolytes – minerals such as potassium, sodium, chloride, and magnesium dissolved in water. They are termed electrolytes to signify their critical role in conducting electricity in the human body. If you have too much sodium and too little potassium in your diet, the imbalance can slow down the ability of neurons to conduct signals.

Herbal Brain Tonics
Biochemic tissue salts (also known as tissue or cell salts) are essential components in the cellular level. For without them, cells in bodily organs and consequently, the organs in vital systems of the body will desist to function properly. The biochemic salt Kalium Phosphate is an essential factor of the human nervous system for without it the brain would lose its ability to concentrate. Symptoms of Kalium Phosphate deficiency include hyperactivity disorders (ADD, ADHD), memory loss (Alzheimer’s, Amnesia), insomnia, nervous exhaustion and other neurological disorders. Another biochemic salt called the Natrium Muriaticum maintains water balance at the cellular level. The tissue salt plays a critical role in the excretion of cellular waste products while providing fluid requirements. A deficiency of Natrium Muriaticum triggers severe headaches and may even lead to cases of chronic depression. Calcium Phosphate on the other hand is essential in routine cell regeneration since its deficiency would result to rampant cell deterioration that likely renders the human body good as dead. An imbalance or loss of any of the mentioned biochemic tissue salts in the body would surely be a horrifying ordeal.

Exerts from this blog were originally written by: Owen Anderson from pponline.co.uk and articlesbase.com

Tagged as: Cardio, MMA, Nervous System Training, Stamina