The new frontier in training: the link between neurophysiology and sport

By Prof. Guido M. Filippi

INTRODUCTION

There is a separation, measurable in many decades of research, between the acquisitions of neurophysiology and sports training practices. Neurophysiological research, both for its complexity and for the apparent distance from the problems of the "field" of training, remains almost unrelated to sports training and its problems.

This does not imply that neurophysiology does not have to say, nor that sports training does not have very interesting ideas to offer to basic research.

Even today, most of the training turns only to the engine: the muscle. The muscle, in fact, is a real engine, which transforms the chemical energy of ATP into mechanical energy, as the engine of our car transforms the chemical energy of hydrocarbon molecules into mechanical energy.

The prevailing interest is therefore for the engine, the muscles, which are easier to build, but with two defects: the more the human machine grows the more it weighs and the need for a pilot, the brain.

In reality this is the crucial problem today, considering the levels reached by competition.

If "constructing" a relevant muscle volume is now a relatively simple problem, building a sample also requires the ability to manage these muscles, which means training in the Central Nervous System. Consider also that "fatigue", and the process known as "breaking fatigue", are primarily neurophysiological rather than muscular aspects.

To further illustrate the problem, consider the pairs of athletes shown in Figure 1; note, as physicists drastically different from the point of view of muscular volume can express similar results, or even how the less performing physicist can prevail, agonistically, over the larger one.

It is a common experience that in athletes higher muscle masses are not necessarily the expression of better athletic gestures. The speed of execution, the power, the precision of a movement, the resistance, appear to depend on something other than the muscle.

The nervous system is the author of the management of the available muscles and the oriental martial arts are a concrete expression of how control can be transformed into power.

The purpose of this discussion is to outline:

1. The role of the nervous system in determining muscle properties and the problem and advantages in optimizing muscle control (part I)
2. Today's possibilities to intervene with training directly on muscular management, performed by the Central Nervous System, in order to optimize neuromotor function and obtain superior muscular performance, avoiding, anyway, any intervention harmful to the athlete's health, or using only mechanisms neurophysiological (Part II) .

PART I

ROLE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN DETERMINING THE MUSCULAR PROPERTIES

It is part of the current teaching of medicine, and of all university and para-university biological courses, the assertion that muscular work is an essential condition for the development, strengthening and general improvement of motor function (Figure 2).

This statement is only partially true.

In fact, if from this statement it follows that physical work is directly responsible for the improvement of motor performance, the statement becomes wrong.

In fact, both the tropism and the metabolic properties of the individual muscle fibers depend on the quantity and the distribution over time of the nervous command that reaches the muscle fibers, on average, during the 24 hours. Neurophysiological research has demonstrated this since the 1960s (Principles of neural science. Eds Kandel ER, Schwartz JH and Jessell TM. Elsevier NY. 1991).