2024-07-29 12:33:21
Meanwhile, the record for the heaviest weight ever lifted by a man is held by Canadian strongman Gregg Ernst, who in 1993. picked up two cars with driverswhose total weight was 2422 kg.
Naturally, these astonishing feats beg the question: What is the heaviest weight a human can lift?
Experts say it’s likely that athletes are still working their muscles at sub-maximal capacity – and it’s unclear what the limits of human strength might be. Because it is difficult to measure the maximum muscle capacity of a particular person.
Bradley Schoenfeld, a professor of exercise science at Lehman College in the US, says muscle strength can be measured with an electromyography (EMG) machine. EMG works by recording electrical activity in the muscles, which is produced by nerve cells and contracting muscle fibers. Such tests can only be carried out in a laboratory – moreover, the EMG machine monitors only a certain set of muscles, so it cannot evaluate the muscle capacity of the entire human body.
“It’s hard to define that limit,” says E. Todd Schroeder, a professor of clinical physical therapy at the University of Southern California who studies how to increase strength and muscle mass in older adults. The only way to truly determine your muscle’s capacity is to train consistently — setting new personal bests and seeing if you can beat them, he says.
“If someone says: oh, I can lift 200 kg, I say: great, but I know you can lift more,” says the scientist. “We just don’t know how much more.”
Physically, a person’s ability to support weight depends on actin and myosin, the two proteins that allow muscles to contract. These proteins are found in different types of muscle fibers, including “fast-twitch” and “slow-twitch.” Human muscle mass and the ratio of these fibers depends on the training regimen, as well as biological factors such as genetics and gender. The more muscle mass you have, the more force you can generate.
Elite weightlifters push themselves to the limit by constantly increasing their muscle mass – but the returns to strength diminish as muscle mass continues to increase, and eventually the muscles reach their limit.
Sometimes just building muscle isn’t enough, says ET Schroeder. Paradoxically, sometimes people with a lower body mass lift more weight than those with a higher body mass.
One factor that powerlifters must overcome is “neuromuscular inhibition,” which limits the force with which a muscle can contract to prevent injury. Research has shown that this limit can be increased by resistance strength training.
Another piece of the puzzle is that, in addition to the physical training, weightlifters must overcome psychological blocks to lifting increasingly heavy weights, says ET Schroeder. The best weightlifters are those who are able to overcome these inhibitions and get into the right mental state to recruit every muscle fiber.
“If I tried to lift the maximum force I can, say 90 kg, and then I was able to go into a state where I remove the nervous brakes, I could lift 130,” the scientist gives as an example.
This effect has been proven in 2020 in a study published in the journal Impulse. The researchers tried to determine whether positive visualization, a technique in which you mentally rehearse positive outcomes, had an effect on strength training. They divided 133 university student-athletes into two groups. The first ones asked to imagine themselves lifting 110 percent. your stamina by listening to motivational music for at least five minutes a day. The second group did not.
After three weeks, the athletes returned to the laboratory. Athletes who practiced positive visualization increased their lifting capacity by at least 4.5 to 6.8 kg, compared to an average of only 2.2 kg for athletes in the control group.
“In a way, you can lift a lot more than you think if you have the right mindset,” says Schoenfeld.
“There always seems to be something that could be a little bit stronger and a little bit better,” he says. In the world of weightlifting, this is manifested in athletes who repeatedly break their own records in competitions. “I try not to be surprised,” ET Schroeder says of these repeated record achievements.
Parengta pagal „Live Science“.
2024-07-29 12:33:21