The difference between dead muscle and live muscle

Strictly speaking, there is no distinction between dead and alive muscles, but many people feel that there are certain differences in muscles. People often call inflexible and uncoordinated muscles dead muscles. In order to avoid the formation of dead muscles, we need to do some stretching exercises after exercise to adjust the tension of the muscles. In this way, the trained muscles can become active muscles and be more coordinated with the body.

After a period of bodybuilding training, it is true that explosive power and agility decrease. The fundamental reason for the decrease in muscle explosiveness is not the slow contraction speed of a certain muscle, but the decrease in the coordination ability between muscles.

According to the different functions of muscles in the same action, they can be divided into prime movers, antagonists, fixators and neutralizers. Prime mover: A muscle that directly completes an action by actively contracting. For example, a boxer's triceps when throwing a straight punch. Antagonist muscle: A muscle that acts in the opposite direction to the prime mover. The biceps brachii acts in the opposite direction to the triceps brachii when throwing a straight punch. Fixator muscle: A muscle that fixes the prime mover to the bone. The deltoid muscles, pectoralis major muscles, etc. in the straight punch action. Neutralizing muscle: When the prime mover has two or more functions on the fixed bone, in order to effectively perform one of the functions, other muscles are needed to inhibit the other functions. The other muscles here are called neutralizing muscles, which play the role of offsetting (neutralizing) a certain function.

When completing an action, different muscles have both division of labor and cooperation. Without or lacking this kind of cooperation, the action will be difficult to complete or extremely uncoordinated.

For example, when you throw a straight punch, the triceps brachii, the prime mover, contracts to cause the arm to flex and then extend, while the biceps brachii, the antagonist muscle, contracts to cause the arm to flex and then extend. If the coordination between muscles is poor and the antagonistic muscles are overexerted when punching, that is, the biceps are tense, it will create resistance to arm extension and lead to a decrease in punching speed. Of course, if the fixing muscles and neutralizing muscles are not coordinated, it will also affect the speed of the shot. The external manifestation of this phenomenon is a decrease in explosive power and agility.

Reason: In fact, in most training, such as athletics, swimming, gymnastics, and free fighting, the whole body's strength is often fully utilized to complete the movements, especially the core strength, which is itself an exercise to train muscle coordination. In order to stimulate local muscles as much as possible and make the muscles fully fatigued, we usually use isolation training, emphasizing not using leverage to complete the movement, and doing our best to contract a single muscle to complete the movement. Therefore, isolation training will inevitably lead to a decrease in coordination between muscles.