Central Nervous System Fatigue

Type “does heavy lifting fry your CNS?” into Google and you’ll get a wall of confident answers. Yes, obviously — that’s why you need 48 hours between heavy sessions. Your central nervous system is a battery, and every hard set drains it. It’s one of the most repeated claims in the gym. It is also, as a mechanistic claim, substantially wrong — and the way it’s wrong matters, because it leads men over 40 to train around a threat that isn’t the real one. ...

Here’s a feeling every lifter over 40 knows, even if they’ve never named it. You show up. Your muscles don’t even hurt. Your warm-up feels fine. Then you get under a bar that you moved easily last week — and it feels like it’s bolted to the floor. Your coordination is slightly off. Your drive is gone. You grind through it anyway, because that’s what men do, and the number still won’t budge. ...