You can strengthen the muscles just thought?

It sounds like science fiction but it isn't, according to Vinoth Ranganathan. At a symposium held a decade ago by the American Society for Neuroscience, this researcher from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, in the United States, presented an experiment that proved that healthy individuals can significantly increase the strength of the abductor muscles. fingers and elbow flexor muscles through mental training . That is, thinking about exercise without actually practicing it physically.

In their trials, 30 healthy volunteers between the ages of 20 and 35 focused on learning how their muscles functioned during maximum strength physical training. They then performed mental contractions of the abductor digiti minimi or elbow flexor muscles for 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 12 weeks. To check that the muscles weren't actually moving, the scientists used electromyography. After the experiments, the finger abduction force increased by more than 35% and the elbow flexion force increased by 13.5% in the group that performed the "imaginary" exercises, compared to the reference group .? In addition, post-training functional MRIs of their brains showed higher and more concentrated activity in the prefrontal cortex compared to pre-training images.