Japanese neuroscientist explains whether Dragon Ball’s gravity training would actually work

“Dragon Ball Z” fans can finally know the answer to the age-old question, “Can I train like a super Saiyan?”

Stacks on stacks: On Friday, Professor Yutaka Hirata from the Department of Robotic Science and Technology at Chubu University answered how high gravity would affect you, if it would make you stronger and what’s the best way you could train without breaking every bone in your body, according to the official Dragon Ball website.

• For our battle-hardened heroes who train daily, this is a cakewalk, but not everyone is gifted with a warrior bloodline. Characters Goku and Vegeta were able to endure hundreds of Gs (gravitational force) from their training rooms and exposure to planets with denser Gs than Earth’s, but even Hirata himself set his limit to 2G.

• “I'm telling you 2G is no walk in the park. Your body weight suddenly doubles, so the strain is immense. Just lifting your arm to scratch your nose is a challenge, and if you don't sit with the right posture, your hips and back start to crumble,” he said.

• An average human cannot withstand 3G (three times heavier than usual) because they will keep repeatedly fainting from the lack of blood flow to the brain—and that’s what happened when he and his participants tried.

• To put it into perspective, Hirata explained that when Goku was jumping on King Kai’s planet, which already had a base level of 10G, it would be like jumping with “nine of yourself on your shoulders,” which he declared is “impossible for most people.”

Key findings: At the 100G and 300G levels that Goku and Vegeta went through in the show, all your bones would break unless you were somehow able to disperse the force horizontally.

• Hirata believes that “beings raised in a high-gravity environment would naturally evolve to become stronger than those raised in a low-gravity one.”

• When training in high gravity, you’re optimizing your brain’s neural network in the cerebellum and the precision of your control over your muscle movements. That is what sets apart a regular athlete from one at the top.

• Bright light improves motor skill training. If you can get a training area like the Room of Spirit and Time, which is entirely stark white and intensely bright, then all the better.

• Headgear equipment like tDCS, or direct electrical currents, and TMS, a magnetic field, can stimulate the neurons in your head to perform even better when it comes to motor skills.

• Moderation is vital. As Masayuki Kato, a science teacher, writer and biologist summed up: “[Train] in a bright room, with just the right level of increased gravity, with some device producing an electric current on your head,” then you’ll be one step closer to training like a super Saiyan.

Featured Image via MR DB Animation (left), Ruben Brugel (right)

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