There are 2 ways we get strong:

1. 💪 Muscle fibre adaptation: Stress (e.g. lifting a heavy load) causes micro-tears in the muscle fibre. The fibre then grows back stronger.
2. 🧠 Neural adaptation: Our neural pathways become more efficient at the movement pattern.

We can think of muscle fibre adaptation like upgrading to a faster car.

And neural adaptation like putting a better driver in it (to get more out of the one we have).

Combined, we get Daniel Riccardo in a Ferrari.

Both are important.

But I think the neural side of things is lesser known or at least, less intentionally trained. And interestingly gets us strong faster.

Neural adaptation brings about the idea that strength is a skill.

Here's how:

When we move or lift a heavy weight our muscle contracts.

That contraction starts with our brain sending a signal to our muscle fibres.

When we repeat a movement pattern, the muscle fibres get the same signal over and over (rep after rep, week after week, year after year). The muscle fibres start to learn what to do with the signal. And so can do it faster – contract!

(The process is called myelination – there's actually a physical change in the nerve that allows the signal to move quicker)

So we become more efficient at the movement.

But what's cool is the faster the signal, the more muscle fibres that actually contract.

So neural adaptation comes from both a more efficient neural pathway and more muscle fibre recruitment = ⬆️ strength.‍‍


‍So what's the best way to train neural adaptation?‍

Pavel Tsatsouline calls it "grease the groove" (because we are greasing the neurological groove).

So you'd pick an exercise. Say we want to improve our single-leg (pistol) squat. We can do 10 on each leg.

To grease the groove, we'd do a set of 5 on each leg. Then, rest for at least 15 mins. Do another 5. And continue doing that throughout the day.

Like any skill, the key is lots of quality reps. Fatigue and poor form are the enemy (hence doing half of what we can).

The problem is that this style of training isn't really practical. Not many of us have a barbell handy at work. Or the ability to duck out of a meeting every 15 minutes to bang out a couple reps 😂

The idea is just to do what you can. Bodyweight movements might work better. Like a push-up or pistol squat on WFH days.

Maybe you contract your core hard for 5-seconds whenever you check your phone.

Or something subtle like grip training (more on that soon).

Grease the groove is just an example of how to train neural strength.

But even just understanding neural adaptation as a concept can benefit us.

It might mean lifting at 50% of your usual weight when you're feeling crap. Or really focusing on nailing quality technique before we load the bar up.

Because training our neural pathways is critical to improving strength. So it can't hurt to get intentional about it.