During my gym session this morning, I was thinking about why I feel a natural impulse to screw up my facial features during particularly heavy lifts.
If I consciously decided not to let my features distort I can more or less left heavy with relatively calm features but why is the natural inclination to ball up our face like a baby with wind? Does it actually provide any kind of benefit?
In: 97
All your muscles are linked and we flex them for more power and to stabilize our bodies to prevent injury.
For more power, like in sports, analysts will talk about the kinetic chain. Run faster pumping your arms, throw faster by stepping into it, swing harder by twisting your hips.
Stabilizing your body. Tensing up will help prevent injuries like pulling or tearing a muscle. So you flex muscles you don’t think are directly linked to the work but they are. Like aww I kinked my neck pushing a stalled car for an old lady. Your shoulders flexed and pulled on your relaxed neck and now you have a strain.
But why my face? Humans are fine motor control fiends. We have devoted much of our neurons to our appendages. So we are really good at wiggling toes, picking things up delicately, using tools, typing but not so much with our faces. Hence we have fewer neurons controlling more muscles in our face compared to other parts.
During heavy exertion your body is providing the most protection with the least mental effort by flexing the muscles in your face.
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