Welcome back to Fit Body Happy Joints. My name is Shannon. So today we are talking about your nervous system and how your nervous system always wants to keep you safe and how this ultimately affects your workouts.

Something I've talked about before is this idea. affects your

workouts. ultimately influence how your body moves and how your body feels.

I've talked about this on the podcast before in the context of tightness and how you will

tighten up when your body feels unsafe or unstable.

And this could be because of underlying inflammation

in a joint or in a tissue, or maybe a small tissue injury

that's healing, or if your body is unfamiliar in a certain position.

All of those things will lead to signals of feeling unsafe.

If you want to learn more about tightness and stretching in particular,

Dr. Payton and I discuss that topic about stretching and

tightness in greater detail and that's episode number 68 if you want to learn

more about that but today I want to discuss the concept of stability

and why your nervous system can produce better

muscular output when you choose a more stable exercise.

This is something that we do in Evelo all the time

and that we're talking about all the time.

So I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the Y today.

So let's first discuss the branch of your nervous system,

the somatic nervous system, that is responsible for contracting muscles.

The somatic nervous system plays a key role in our ability to activate and effectively

contract muscles. Your somatic nervous system controls voluntary muscle movements. You want to flex your bicep and so your somatic nervous system helps wire the connection from your muscle to your brain in order for you to flex that

...