Physiology Year 3 Week 8
Physiological adaptations to resistance training
Aims
● Understand influence of resistance training on muscle strength
● Highlight contribution of neuromuscular adaptations
Resistance training is a form of PA that is designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a
muscle or muscle group against an external resistance
Strength gain
● Neural
● Architectural
● Cross sectional area
Muscle type
● Circular
● Convergent
● Multipennate
● Parallel
Neural adaptations to resistance training
● Surface electromyography
- Agonist (muscle being activated)
- Antagonist (muscle stabilizing, less activation)
- Torque (force output of muscle)
Motor learning occurs much quicker than isometric strength gains
- Learning the muscles to coordinate the activity increases strength more so than
isometric strength of the muscles
- Cross sectional area increases at much slower rate than strength and EMG activation
- Increased strength with standing tricep extension did not translate to supine lying tricep
extension, we gain lots of strength because of learning and neural drive
Changes in muscle architecture
- An increase in pennation angle increases the number of fibres attaching to the
aponeurosis. This allows more muscle fibres in parallel to attach to aponeurosis,
allowing force to be transferred to the tendon
Physiological adaptations to resistance training
Aims
● Understand influence of resistance training on muscle strength
● Highlight contribution of neuromuscular adaptations
Resistance training is a form of PA that is designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a
muscle or muscle group against an external resistance
Strength gain
● Neural
● Architectural
● Cross sectional area
Muscle type
● Circular
● Convergent
● Multipennate
● Parallel
Neural adaptations to resistance training
● Surface electromyography
- Agonist (muscle being activated)
- Antagonist (muscle stabilizing, less activation)
- Torque (force output of muscle)
Motor learning occurs much quicker than isometric strength gains
- Learning the muscles to coordinate the activity increases strength more so than
isometric strength of the muscles
- Cross sectional area increases at much slower rate than strength and EMG activation
- Increased strength with standing tricep extension did not translate to supine lying tricep
extension, we gain lots of strength because of learning and neural drive
Changes in muscle architecture
- An increase in pennation angle increases the number of fibres attaching to the
aponeurosis. This allows more muscle fibres in parallel to attach to aponeurosis,
allowing force to be transferred to the tendon
