Mental Gymnastics!

"It sounds like a couch potatoes dream. According to research, just thinking about exercise can increase the strength of your muscles"

Volunteers were first asked to visualize exercising one of their little fingers, which was enough to increase its strength over several weeks. Then the research team tested the techniques on a larger, more frequently used muscle, the biceps.

They asked ten volunteers aged 20 to 35 to imagine flexing one of their biceps as hard as possible in training sessions five times a week. The researchers, whose findings are reported today (22nd November 2001), in the magazine New Scientist, recorded the electrical brain activity during the sessions.

To make sure the volunteers were not unintentionally tensing or moving their arms, they also monitored electrical impulses of their arm muscles. Every two weeks, the scientists measured muscle strength. The volunteers who thought about exercise showed a 13.5 per cent increase, and maintained that gain for three months after the training stopped. A separate group, who did not do the mental workouts, showed no improvement.

Dr. Guang Yue, an exercise physiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, unveiled his research at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego. He explained that muscles move in response to signals from nearby nerve calls called motor neurons. The 'firing' of these cells, in turn, depends on the strength of electrical impulses sent by the brain.

"That suggests you can increase muscle strength solely by sending a larger signal to motor neurons from the brain", said Dr. Yue.

The scientists are stressing that the discovery should not be used as an excuse to stop taking exercise in favor of just thinking about it. But they believe the technique could help patients who are too weak to exercise, to start recuperating from a stroke or injury. If it is shown to work in older people, they could use it to help maintain their strength. The researchers are repeating the experiment with volunteers aged 65 to 80 to see if they can get the same results.

Adrian Taylor, professor of physical activity and health at De Montfort University in Leicester said the results were interesting and had been backed up by other research projects. He added: "There's a limited amount of strength gain but there is evidence that mentally rehearsing a movement or an exercise can be of use. For the elderly, going through in your head the movement such as stepping up over a kerb, or what you would do if you fell, can only help. But it would be unfortunate if people took this as a reason to not exercise".

James Chapman. Science correspondent. Daily Mail. Nov. 22nd, 2001

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