Why do some people get stronger faster when they lift weights?
Changes in agonist neural drive, hypertrophy and pre-training strength all contribute to the individual strength gains after resistance training
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Neural drive explained more than half the variance in strength gains as a single factor (30.6%), more than muscle growth.
Most fitness content assumes hypertrophy is king. This shows that in the first 12 weeks, your nervous system is the primary driver—something rarely emphasized in gyms or YouTube videos.
Practical Takeaways
Focus on explosive, high-effort contractions in early training—think ‘push as hard as you can’ rather than ‘slow and controlled’—to maximize neural adaptation.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Neural drive explained more than half the variance in strength gains as a single factor (30.6%), more than muscle growth.
Most fitness content assumes hypertrophy is king. This shows that in the first 12 weeks, your nervous system is the primary driver—something rarely emphasized in gyms or YouTube videos.
Practical Takeaways
Focus on explosive, high-effort contractions in early training—think ‘push as hard as you can’ rather than ‘slow and controlled’—to maximize neural adaptation.
Publication
Journal
European Journal of Applied Physiology
Year
2017
Authors
T. G. Balshaw, G. Massey, T. M. Maden-Wilkinson, Antonio J. Morales-Artacho, Alexandra McKeown, Clare L. Appleby, J. Folland
Related Content
Claims (6)
When your thigh muscles fire more strongly during a max effort leg push, you tend to get stronger faster after doing 12 weeks of holding a knee extension position — and this muscle firing explains about 30% of why some people get stronger than others.
When you first start lifting weights, you get stronger not because your muscles grow bigger right away, but because your brain gets better at telling your muscles when and how to contract.
When guys get stronger from doing isometric leg exercises, their hamstring muscles don’t start working differently alongside their quads—so the way their hamstrings fire doesn’t predict whether they’ll get stronger or not.
When young men do isometric leg exercises for 12 weeks, their thigh muscles get bigger—and that bigger muscle size helps explain about 1 in 5 of their strength gains, even if their nerves aren’t getting better at telling muscles to work harder.
If you're already strong before starting isometric training, you won't get as much stronger compared to someone who started weaker — and this pattern explains about 1 in 10 of the differences in how much people improve.