From mental power to muscle power: gaining strength by using the mind
Ranganathan and colleagues trained thirty healthy young volunteers for twelve weeks, fifteen minutes a day, five days a week: eight imagined contractions of the little finger, eight imagined elbow flexion, six trained the finger with real contractions and eight were untrained controls. Strength rose by about 35 per cent in the imagery finger group, about 13.5 per cent in the imagery elbow group and about 53 per cent in the physical finger group, with no significant change in controls. The authors attributed the gains to stronger signals from the brain to the muscles.
Ranganathan and colleagues trained thirty healthy young volunteers for twelve weeks, fifteen minutes a day, five days a week: eight imagined contractions of the little finger, eight imagined elbow flexion, six trained the finger with real contractions and eight were untrained controls. Strength rose by about 35 per cent in the imagery finger group, about 13.5 per cent in the imagery elbow group and about 53 per cent in the physical finger group, with no significant change in controls. The authors attributed the gains to stronger signals from the brain to the muscles.
Written from the abstract as served by the Europe PMC record (PMID 14998709), checked 2026-11-02, plus Crossref bibliographic record.
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Ranganathan, V. K., Siemionow, V., Liu, J. Z., Sahgal, V., & Yue, G. H. (2004). From mental power to muscle power: gaining strength by using the mind. Neuropsychologia, 42(7), 944-956. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.11.018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.11.018