The true science of health: Do these exercises to activate your nervous system before every workout

There are many reasons to exercise. Being healthy and fit are the obvious goals, and there are other add-ons: These could be muscle and strength gain, injury reduction, weight loss, getting better at a sport, and of course, mobility and movement. But there is another underlying benefit that is as important as the others. And that is activating the central nervous system (CNS) through exercise.

This is the central processing unit of the body and controls almost every reaction, emotion, movement, and instinct. Not only is it important to activate it before a workout, but it is also something that is helped by regular exercise.

“The central nervous system has been thoroughly studied by anatomists and physiologists, but it still holds many secrets; it controls our thoughts, movements, emotions, and desires. It also controls our breathing, heart rate, the release of some hormones, body temperature, and much more. The retina, optic nerve, olfactory nerves, and olfactory epithelium are sometimes considered to be part of the CNS alongside the brain and spinal cord. This is because they connect directly with brain tissue without intermediate nerve fibers,” states a Medical News Today article titled All about the central nervous system.

Everything is connected in the body, but there are specific exercises that aid this interconnectivity. This is something known as cross education. The results of cross education—which started off as a physical rehabilitation programme—is also one of the most popular examples cited by scientists when it comes to decoding how the central nervous system works. If you train one limb, then over a period of time, the immobilised or untrained limb also gains strength. This is the simplest way one can explain cross education.

“What they’ve found is both odd and fascinating. Different parts of our body seem to talk to each other and influence each other, even when they are far apart and—one might think—unconnected. More than simply curiosities, these connections could have implications not only for how athletes train but also for how people should rehabilitate after an injury to one side of the body,” states an Outside article titled How (and Why) You Should Be Training Your Central Nervous System. The same results were seen in mobility of the lower body and upper body when only one half of the body was taken through a stretching routine.

This is the kind of evidence which also led to the popularisation of unilateral training, especially in the athletic community, which eventually found its way to the routine of regular fitness enthusiasts as well. There are certain exercises though, which are just built to activate the CNS, before getting into the main workout.

Fitness trainer Nick Tuminello’s YouTube page Trainer of Trainers has a video which is the perfect starter pack for someone who wants to know more about these exercises. Most of them, like jumping jacks, are well known warm-up drills. But there are some excellent warm-up progressions in this video to activate the CNS unlike just doing random warm-up moves. For example, Tuminello starts with the basic squat, which becomes a push squat with the body going up on the toes while moving up and eventually adding the hand movement to the squat as well. The final progression would be the jump squat.

Fitness trainer Jake Tuura has a Masters in Exercise Physiology and a certification in reflexive performance reset as well. He has a short video on how to activate the CNS in a particular order. “After a typical warm-up, you’re going to go into some explosive [exercises], and then into some isometric holds. This leads to a post activation potentiation (PAP). With this, every day you will get stronger, get more powerful, and jump higher.” He shows the routine in fast-forward and it is quite intense but you don’t have to do all of them. Pick one from every set of exercises (warm-up, explosive, and isometric) and start small before you get into an advanced activation protocol.

Science for Sport has an article on this kind of activation and while everyone’s PAP could have a different protocol, the science is very interesting. “PAP simply refers to an acute excitation of the neuromuscular system following some form of exercise (e.g. 5RM back squat). This acute excitation has been shown to improve subsequent explosive performances such as the countermovement jump and sprint speed. So effectively, by performing a five-repetition maximum (5RM) back squat several minutes before performing an explosive exercise, you could improve your performance. Interestingly, this training method has been shown to improve jumping, sprinting, throwing, kicking, and even change of direction speed performances.”

Warm-ups are great but they also need to progress. If you’re someone who feels that they have become drab and unexciting, then activating the CNS through various methods is the next step.

Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator and writer.