On Wednesday we talked in a general way about fatigue and today we are going to dig a little deeper and talk about central fatigue and peripheral fatigue.

As we said on Wednesday in the blog, fatigue is understood as a set of changes that the body undergoes when we expose it to a job for which it is not adapted. Aspects such as stiffness, lower levels of strength, feeling of tiredness etc … are indicative of this fatigue.

We are now going to talk about central fatigue and peripheral fatigue.

Central fatigue : This fatigue is associated with functional alterations suffered by the central nervous system, affecting the nervous structures involved in the production, maintenance and control of muscle contraction.

Some of the causes of central fatigue can be:

• Neural activation failure.

• Afferent inhibition from neuromuscular spindles and nerve endings.

• Lower motor neuron excitability.

A poor excitability of the motor neuron modifies the electrical activation and therefore we obtain a less efficient muscular contraction and a lower production of force.

Peripheral fatigue: It is the fatigue that occurs at the peripheral level of the body and the structures that are involved in functioning at the peripheral level. It is located mainly on the muscular system, with greater muscular tension, a longer time for muscular relaxation and a lesser capacity for specific muscular contraction.