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3 CNS Fatigue Myths

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You know how squats and deadlifts tire you out so much?

Why it takes days to recover after a heavy squat or deadlift workout?

How you have trouble sleeping after a heavy workout?

Why compound and high intensity exercise are more fatiguing than isolation work and higher rep sets?

That’s central nervous system (CNS) fatigue… supposedly. CNS fatigue is a topic riddled with broscience. Many people invoking
CNS fatigue in their arguments can’t even explain what it is. Let’s start there.

What is CNS fatigue?

As the name suggests, CNS fatigue occurs in the central nervous system: the brain and the spinal cord. If your CNS is fatigued, it
has trouble activating your muscles. So even while your muscles are capable of producing a lot of force, they may not achieve this
potential, because the CNS isn’t giving them the proper instructions. More formally, central fatigue occurs when the excitation
supplied by the motor cortex and/or motoneuron activity decreases. In other words, CNS fatigue is a decrease in voluntary muscle
activation.

CNS fatigue is distinguished from peripheral fatigue, which occurs outside the CNS. Muscle damage and metabolic stress within
your muscles are an example of peripheral fatigue. Their effects are local and speci c to the muscle in which they occur. If you tear
a hamstring, that won’t inherently affect your quadriceps. In contrast, CNS fatigue can affect your entire body.

 
 Central vs. peripheral fatigue

Myth 1: The higher the exercise intensity, the more CNS fatigue you induce
CNS fatigue is commonly said to occur from exercise with large neural demands, namely high intensity exercise. So the theory is
that low reps induce more CNS fatigue than high reps. It sounds very plausible. The higher the training intensity, the CNS activation
is required, the more fatigued the CNS gets, right?

Wrong. It’s completely the other way around. Low intensity, high duration exercise causes far more central fatigue than short,
high intensity exercise [2, 3, 4].

CNS fatigue is readily observed after endurance exercise, like marathons, but scientists often really have to go out of their way to
reliably induce central nervous system fatigue with strength training. As an example of a ‘strength training’ study that found
signi cant central fatigue, Smith et al. (2007) studied a 70-minute biceps contraction. I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I
train my guns. A similar study found central fatigue after a 4-minute dorsi exor contraction.

A more realistic training design compared 3 sets of 12 with 1 minute rest in between sets vs. 5 sets of 3 with 3 minutes rest in
between sets. Which caused more CNS fatigue? Trick question. Neither workout caused any CNS fatigue. Other research has also
failed to nd CNS fatigue during resistance training regardless of the intensity used.

In fact, in both of these studies there was upregulation of central motor output, presumably to offset the peripheral fatigue. So not
only was all the fatigue peripheral, the CNS was actually working overtime to compensate for the local fatigue.

 
You may object that most of this research was in weak individuals performing isolation exercises. How about some guys and
ladies that actually lift heavy iron? We’ve got the perfect study on this. Howatson et al. (2016) studied the neuromuscular recovery
of elite athletes. The guys were were squatting well over 8 plates (190 kg) and running the 100 m in 10.44 seconds. For reference,
the world record is 9.58 seconds, set by Usain Bolt in 2009. The ladies were rocking an over 4 plate squat (108 kg) and running the
100 m in 11.73 seconds. The world record is 10.49 seconds, set by Florence Gri th-Joyner in 1988 (ludicrously ahead of her time).
These elite athletes then performed one of their typical workouts, consisting of 4 sets of 5 reps for the back squat, the split squat
and the push press: a total of 12 sets of heavy compound work. Split squats are a strong contender for the most brutal exercise in
strength training. Push presses involve the entire human kinetic chain from feet to hands and involve more musculature than
squats or deadlifts. Even in this case there was no central fatigue. Voluntary central nervous system activation did not decrease
from pre- to post-workout and was still stable 24 hours later. Of course, there was signi cant neuromuscular fatigue, as evidenced
by reduced contraction power of the muscles (MVIC) and an insigni cant trend for lower jump height (CMJ). There was also
metabolic stress, as measured by an increase in blood lactate. But the nervous system had no trouble activating the muscles. The
muscles were simply fatigued themselves, presumably from the damage of the workout and the metabolic stress. The fatigue was
local, within the muscles, not in the central nervous system.

If you think about it, it makes sense that the central nervous system doesn’t easily fatigue. Muscle fatigue is easy to imagine: it can
occur mechanically. Muscle bers can literally tear from the tension of hard contractions. For the CNS many people speak of
‘neural fatigue’. How does that work? The CNS is more similar to a computer than a muscle. A computer doesn’t fatigue with use.
Sure, it can overheat and over the years it can become slower, but it doesn’t fatigue acutely. It doesn’t become slower and slower if
you use it for a long time in one sitting. So how would the CNS fatigue? Some researchers have questioned whether CNS fatigue
exists at all. The vast majority of what was previously thought to be central fatigue can actually be explained by local fatigue.
However, as we’ve shown above, central nervous system fatigue is real. CNS ‘fatigue’ probably occurs via other mechanisms. For
example, it may be neurochemical: due to the effects of neurotransmitters. Or it may be metabolic: muscular ammonia production
during exercise can leak into the blood and cross the blood-brain barrier, causing neurotoxicity [2, 3]. In any case, high activation
of the brain’s motor cortex by itself doesn’t cause CNS fatigue, so low reps do not cause more CNS fatigue than higher reps.

Myth 2: The more compounded the exercise, the more CNS fatigue it causes
Conventional bro wisdom is that deadlifts are the bane of the CNS. Heavy deadlifts cause so much CNS fatigue that you can only
do them once every so often or you’ll overtrain. Next up are squats, then most other compound exercises. Isolation exercises don’t
cause CNS fatigue.

Science says:

The heavy push press, squat and split squat workout above didn’t induce CNS fatigue. Yet several of the studies that did nd CNS
fatigue used leg extensions or biceps curls. So clearly isolation exercises can cause CNS fatigue and compound exercises do not
necessarily cause it. How about a direct comparison in the same study though?

Barnes et al. (2017) directly studied the claim that deadlifts cause more CNS fatigue than squats. They had trained men perform 8
sets of 2 reps at 95% of 1RM with 5 minutes of rest in between sets in the squat and deadlift on separate occasions. These heavy-
duty powerlifting workouts indeed resulted in central fatigue, though not all that much: a 5-10% reduction in central neural output.
In spite of the higher weights used, greater amount of musculature involved in and greater total work performed during the
deadlifts, the deadlifts did not result in more central fatigue than the squats. There was also no signi cant difference in
testosterone or cortisol production.

In conclusion, the research does not show any relation between the amount of musculature involved in an exercise and the amount
of CNS fatigue it induces. Isolation exercises can cause CNS fatigue and compound exercises do not always do. If there is any
relation at all, it’s certainly not nearly as strong as commonly claimed. This comes back to the CNS being more like a computer
than a muscle: harder tasks do not necessarily fatigue it more.

Myth 3: CNS fatigue takes longer to recover from than muscular fatigue
You commonly hear the saying that while your muscles may be recovering in between workouts, your CNS may not. Over time this
accumulation of fatigue could result in overtraining. Cool theory, but let’s see some data.

Latella et al. (2016) studied the time-course of CNS recovery after strength training. They managed to induce a whopping 46%
decrease in corticospinal excitability (measured by motor-evoked potential). This means major CNS fatigue. How many days do
you think it took for the CNS to recover?

It took 20 minutes for the CNS to recover. There was already no more signi cant loss of MEP after 10 minutes. Other research
con rms that CNS fatigue is only evident directly post-workout even though muscle soreness and peripheral neuromuscular
fatigue took over 3 days to recover from. This probably explains the lack of CNS fatigue in the elite athletes study we discussed
earlier: Howatson et al. measured CNS fatigue 10 minutes post-workout. That may have already been too late. Interestingly, Latella
et al. also found evidence that there was upregulation of the CNS rather than fatigue in the days after the workout: see the graph
below. MEP = motor-evoked potential, which is roughly the strength of the signal sent by the motor cortex to the exercised muscle.
A decrease suggests that the CNS can no longer fully activate the muscle, i.e. CNS fatigue.

Time-course of CNS fatigue

All other measures of central fatigue in Latella et al’s study (ICF, LICI and SICI) showed no impairments at any point during the
studied 72-hour recovery period. Even directly post-workout they were unaffected. So only certain aspects of CNS functioning seem
to be susceptible to fatigue.
  

In conclusion, CNS fatigue is largely acute. It normally doesn’t take days for the CNS to recover. The CNS can recover within
minutes.

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About the author

Menno Henselmans
Formerly a business consultant, I've traded my company car to follow my passion in strength training. I'm now an online physique coach, scientist and
international public speaker with the mission to help serious trainees master their physique.

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