Believe it or not, not every athlete wants to build massive muscles. Think about wrestlers, MMA fighters, gymnists or athletes who use their own body weight as their primary resistance, they need the strength, but the additional bulk can be a hindering than helpful.
What’s important to consider is that strength is not solely a property of muscle, but rather a property of the motor system (brain and neurons). So going for the pump, total muscle exhaustion and complete muscle annihilation is not the name of the game here. You should focus on training methods that target adaptation of the nervous system that increase your relative body strength and explosive power. Your body increases its strength by a) recruiting more muscle fibers in a particular muscle group and b) increasing the firing frequency of your motor neurons (neurons and muscle fibers). You can’t consciously control these two mechanisms, but focusing on the tips below will do the trick.
Read the rest of my article over at Men’s Fitness HERE.
