Muscle Control: The Lost Secret of Ancient Strength (2023)

There is a story about Bruce Lee.

He was apparently with a friend when they noticed a giant gorilla built like a bodybuilder.

“The guy has a lot of muscles!” said the friend.

"But can he use it?" commented Bruce.

I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist.

Decades earlier, strongmen Maxick (Max Sick) and Monte Saldo developed a muscle-building system unlike anything we know today. One that didn't require weights and that taught the practitioners, the maxaldistas, total and conscious control of the main muscle groups of the body.

Devotees like Billy Ralph used this system to develop a physique that could rival that of some modern day bodybuilders long before steroids were freely available.

Others have used the techniques to perform incredible feats of superhuman strength. Even Harold Houdini may have used the teachings imparted by Maxick and his contemporary Joseph "The Mighty Atom" Greenstein to deliver some of his more unusual performances.

Although the precise methods were lost, the concepts survive to this day and are shared, in particular, among modern strongmen. shootingStan Lee's Super-HumansModern strongman and competitor of the then pound-for-pound strongest man alive, Denis Rogers discovered that he could recruit more muscle fibers than the typical man by flexing iron and expressing strength in other ways.

So what's up? And what can we learn from this for our own training?

An introduction to maxalding and muscle control

As I've discussed many times on this site in the past, having muscle is simply not enough. You also need to be able to use that muscle. This means being able to send a strong enough signal from the brain to actively activate the motor units. It also means being able to use the correct muscles to move your body correctly for the task at hand.

See too:What happens in the brain when you plan and execute a movement

Let's start with the last example, as it is much faster. This is proprioception: knowing where the body is in space and being able to consciously move it. This is important to be able to perform each movement correctly. For example, you can't deadlift or swing a kettlebell unless you know how to move your hips. Do you know how to tilt the pelvis? Can you retract your shoulder blade?

These seemingly random demands are essential to moving safely and avoiding injury. They are also needed to learn a variety of new skills. Unfortunately, due to inactivity, many of us simply don't know how to perform these actions, many people don't even know what they mean!

Muscle control of advanced athletes

The next "level" of this is the ability to create precise movement. For example, when throwing a punch, you need to do a series of smaller movements in the correct order. That means driving with the foot, rotating the hips and core, and delivering the punch. You must do this while relaxing the rest of the body, particularly the opposing muscles. This is something I struggle with, probably thanks to decades of bench presses and push-ups!

If you can relax your biceps during the punch, you will be faster and stronger than when fighting your own body's resistance. And when you can hit that shot in a straight line, you're more efficient, save more energy, and hit harder.

Over time we create engrams: mental maps of specific movements. The trained athlete will have very clear connections with little spillover. Only the correct motor units come into play. The untrained athlete's mind map will contain much more "noise".

Can the same logic be applied to deadlifting or Olympic lifting? Even a biceps curl? Of course you can!

And that way, you can generate more power with less muscle.

The "mind-muscle connection" in bodybuilding

A concept related to bodybuilding is the "mind-muscle connection". This is the ability to sense which muscles are doing the work during a movement. By developing a feel for what a muscle contraction should feel like, a bodybuilder can ensure that they are creating muscle damage, metabolic buildup, and mechanical stress in the target muscle. This leads to more growth and definition.

This could mean that the glutes are contracting during the kettlebell swing; o Be sure to work your abs on the leg raises instead of bending at the hips.

Muscle control takes this to another level. A maxaldista can go so far as to "explode" individual muscles by contracting them while all other muscle groups remain completely relaxed. It can be fascinating to watch demonstrations of muscle control as each muscle is contracted, flexed and moved.

The idea would be that they could apply this type of muscle control to training, so thatReallywould be able to isolate those muscles. Furthermore, by isolating muscle control, they could exert much greater and more efficient force.

Try contracting the tricepssinWhen you tense the biceps you will find it very hard. The opposite is also true. It shows how you fight your own resistance during moves like pull-ups and triceps kickdowns. When throwing a ball or a punch.

But if you can fully relax your opponent, you can muster a lot more force using a lot less energy.

In muscle control, the ability is complete.To relaxA muscle is as important as the ability to fully contract it. And that's probably even harder to achieve. Take a moment now to realize how much unnecessary tension you are carrying right now. How much energy is wasted doing this?

muscle fiber recruitment

But true muscle control goes further.

Because it's not just about activating and relaxing the right muscles, it's also about how much you contract those muscles.

Because a muscle consists of hundreds of thousands of muscle fibers, which are grouped together as "motor units". A motor unit is a group of muscle fibers controlled by a single nerve. Motor unit sizes range from small to large, with smaller motor units containing more slow twitch muscle fibers that are significantly more energy efficient and less prone to fatigue. Larger motor units are mostly made up of fast and super-fast twitches, but they tire quickly.

When you send a signal from the brain to activate muscle, the strength of that neural impulse determines the percentage of motor units used. But the order is always the same: from small to large. This is Henneman's size principle.

In other words, ALWAYS use the slowest, most efficient motor units. Just add larger ones as needed.

Imagine a selection of large and small ball bearings on a table. If you blow lightly on the ball bearings, only the small ones will roll. Blow a little harder and the small and big balls will move!

The subject? Most people can only recruit about 30% of their motor units. Trained athletes report this around 50%. This means that most of the power available in a muscle remains at the table.

Unless you train your muscle control and learn to move your muscles individually. Unknowingly, this is what many modern strongmen train to achieve; That's how Denis Rogers achieves his incredible feats.

Think of it this way: just as you currently can't squeeze the triceps alone, you probably CANNOT squeeze the triceps either.quiteTriceps to contract during movements. You saw that it is possible to create a better connection with the muscle. There's a lot more room to grow.

Is muscle control really the key to greater strength?

This publication is not intended to provide a practical and useful strategy. Rather, I wanted to provide insight into a completely different approach to training and a potential source of additional strength. It is worth noting that Maxick and his ilk were merchants and businessmen. They partially promoted strategies for selling books.

And even those who have claimed success with these methods freely admit that they combined the strategies with heavy weight training.

But the whole concept is based on sound logic and has some very interesting parallels with other practices. Muscle control in particular has a lot in common with internal martial arts such as Qi Gong and even Tai Chi.

External martial arts also teach this, to a lesser extent.

These practices can sometimes seem esoteric to an outsider, but they actually teach very similar concepts. It's not about how the movement looks from the outside, it's about the movements of the muscles and the way the exercise is performed.

Tai Chi, Qi Gong e controle muscular

For example, in Tai Chi there are the "Four Energies of Tai Chi": Peng, Liu, Ji and An. They describe four types of quantitiesPush🇧🇷 "Peng" is an "uprooting force" that comes from a source. Imagine how you could get under a heavy ball to throw it. The upper body is relaxed and the power comes from the legs, which must maintain the structure. Imagine an Olympic weightlifter standing on the weight with his arms crossed over his head after the last catch.

"Ji" is oppressive energy. Imagine the moment you release a light ball from one hand to throw it: you explosively expand your fingers to propel the ball. This example, like the others on this list, is from a blog post by Dan Kleiman; I'll link his blog below.

"Lu" means "to absorb energy". Here you remain unreachable, letting go of all tension: like the willow swaying in the wind.

Finally, "An" is a "condensed" energy. The perfect example Dan gives here is the way you get up from a chair by placing your hands on his arms behind you. Not only are you pushing down as hard as you can, but you're also creating tension in your back so you can push yourself up.

Kung Fu has structure in its strikes. Qi Gong goes much deeper, using seemingly static poses with focused breathing to gain greater control over the body. I don't pretend to understand much of this, but practitioners claim that they can even control their organs and hormones.

Hey, if Whim Hoff can control his sympathetic nervous system, why not?

Controlling the fascia has been speculated to allow for some of the body's most impressive strengthening techniques.

Houdini and muscle control

And this is where the Houdini Connection comes into play. Houdini learned to regurgitate certain objects by swallowing them in a string and then pulling them up, and he took the opportunity to feel how his abdominal muscles worked and gradually gain control over them. In this way, all performers perform this act.

A similar technique taught by the Mighty Atom allowed him to contract his abdominal muscles enough to deliver a punch.

Like a Shaolin monk.

Another connection can be seen in the way Houdini and others escape handcuffs. This trick can be performed by contracting the muscles in the forearm to make it thicker when punches are delivered. The performer can then relax the forearms so that they protrude during the performance.

Coincidentally, Bruce Lee also demonstrated the ability to contract individual muscles in his forearm at will. Again, this suggests that Bruce was at least aware of Maxalding and similar techniques.

First steps with Maxalding and muscle control

So how do you develop this muscle control? Well, now we have 1,800 words and it's getting late...

So how about you sign up and I'll make a follow-up video?

In the meantime, I will also make a blog post for you to check out.

But for now I will say this: the muscular control demonstrated by the Maxalding system is extremely impressive, but I really think it only scratches the surface. I think that by applying a more modern understanding to these concepts we could go further.

Furthermore, it would be great if some of the ideas in Qi Gong and elsewhere were more freely communicated in a way more in line with modern sensibilities. I think Vahva Fitness is doing some really interesting work in this area.

Maxalding's techniques involve placing a hand on the muscles during the movement to get a better idea of ​​how they feel when they contract. Muscle control is then practiced in many cases in front of a mirror. The smoothest muscle control is combined with maximum contractions. Body blocks, a form of calisthenics, are performed with great attention to practice this control.

The original texts by Maxick, Otto Arco and others are freely available and are not copyrighted. I also highly recommend the Golden Age Bookworm YouTube channel.

Again, isometrics can be very effective. Overcoming isometry is a perfect tool for increasing neural drive as it allows for a much longer peak contraction. Ballistic isometrics can also be very useful for this purpose and you can check out my old video on the subject.

Meanwhile, quasi-isometries (extremely slow repetitions) are useful for teaching much finer and more precise control over the amount of force you choose to exert. It's about adding just the right number of motor units to create small changes in power output. What I call "Strength-Finesse".

With a passive quasi-isometry, you target ONLY those muscles that are absolutely necessary for the movement and relax everything else. Sound familiar?

See too:Advanced Isometric Training: Ballistics and Quasi-Isometry

Also, just practice being more aware of your precise movements during the exercise. The next time you do a push-up, ask yourself which areas are contracting and whether they are needed to perform more efficiently.

And I will say that to get the most out of all of this, you also need to develop your working memory, to allow for greater awareness that various muscle groups are working in unison.

I'll come back to that.

The purpose of this post was to serve as an introduction to what I believe is a very unexplored path to improving human performance. to be super functional.