You might shake when you dance primarily because your muscles become fatigued, triggering a specific response from your nervous system.
Dancing is a form of exercise that requires repetitive and often strenuous use of muscles. As the muscle fibers you're using start to tire out, your body has a natural way of compensating to keep you moving.
Understanding Muscle Fatigue and Shaking
According to Accetta, shaking during exercise, like dancing, is directly linked to how your muscles and nervous system work together when fatigue sets in.
- Muscle Fatigue: As you continue to dance, your muscle fibers get tired. They become less efficient at contracting.
- Recruitment of More Fibers: To maintain the required movement, your body needs to recruit additional, less-fatigued muscle fibers.
- Increased Motor Neuron Activity: Stimulating more muscle fibers requires more motor neurons to become active. These neurons are like the electrical wiring that tells your muscles what to do.
- Nerve Impulses: The motor neurons send electrical impulses down through your nervous system to the connections where nerves meet muscles (neuromuscular junctions).
- Twitching and Shaking: These impulses, particularly when many motor neurons are firing to compensate for fatigue, can cause the muscles to twitch and shake.
Essentially, the shaking is a sign that your body is working hard to maintain muscle function despite fatigue, by increasing the nervous system's stimulation of muscle fibers.
What This Means While Dancing
When you're deep into a dance session, especially if it's long or intense:
- Your muscles are constantly contracting and relaxing.
- Over time, they lose efficiency.
- Your brain and nervous system work to push those muscles, recruiting more help.
- This increased neurological effort manifests as the physical shaking you feel.
It's a common physiological response to muscle fatigue during sustained physical activity.
