“With a sound of groaning metal, the chassis eased upward a few inches. ‘Mister, mister, higher, higher,’ Holtrust screamed. Boyle braced himself, took a deep breath, and heaved. The front end lifted a few more inches.”
“‘OK, it’s off me,’ the boy called out, his voice tight with pain. ‘But I can’t move. Get me out!’ The driver of the car, 40-year-old John Baggett, pulled Holtrust free. At last, about 45 seconds after he had first heaved the car upward, Boyle set it back down again.” In the book, Wise describes Boyle’s unbelievable feat as the result of what is known as the “fear response.”
Fear response is caused by moments of intense pressure and acute stress. The adrenal glands, located right above the kidneys, can excrete high amounts of cortisol and epinephrine (or adrenaline) directly into the bloodstream. This in turn causes blood to be shunted away from our gastrointestinal system and redirected toward our muscles. As blood pressure levels continue to rise, the heart begins to beat quicker, sending oxygen to the muscles, the brain, and stimulating the breakdown of glycogen into glucose in return for large amounts of energy expenditure in the form of a powerful force.
Dr. Vladimir Zatsiorsky — professor of kinesiology at Penn State University, where he is a specialist in the biomechanics of weightlifting — differentiates between the force that our muscles can theoretically apply (known as absolute strength) and the maximum force that they can generate through a trained and skillful exertion of will (known as maximal strength). According to Zatsiorsky, an ordinary person can only summon roughly 65 percent of their absolute power in any given moment, while a trained weightlifter can exceed this percentage.
However, under fearful conditions, whether this is stimulated by intense athletic competition or witnessing someone suffering, a trained athlete may perform as much as 12 percent above that figure. The heaviest barbell that Boyle (who weighs 280 pounds and is 6 feet 4 inches tall) has ever lifted weighed 700 pounds. But the Camaro that Boyle lifted and held up for 45 seconds on that warm summer evening in 2006 weighed 3,000 pounds.
Mysterious stories similar to Boyle’s have been around for decades and usually consist of panicked mothers lifting cars off their trapped children. In 1982, Angela Cavallo of Lawrenceville, Georgia, is said to have lifted a 3,500-pound Chevrolet Impala off her son’s body after it had slipped off the jack while her son was working on its suspension. And in 2012, 22-year-old Lauren Kornacki is said to have saved her father’s life by lifting his BMW off his body after it too had slipped off a jack.
However fascinating these stories may be, many physiologists and biomechanical researchers are still extremely skeptical. Even though fear may in fact allow us to exert a force closer to our absolute power, there is still no way of physically exceeding this limit. A woman who can lift 100 pounds in the gym may be able to lift 135 pounds in a moment of maternal frenzy, but not a 3,000-pound car. Whether these stories are true or not, scientists are still wondering what hormone or neurotransmitter would be able to even catalyze such enormous bouts of strength in such a small amount of time.
Adrenaline, which seems to have powered the sudden fear-driven strength of both Mr. Boyle and Mrs. Cavallo, may not be able to reach muscles quickly enough to work these so-called miracles. A study published in the Italian Journal of Neurological Sciences found that it may instead be norepinephrine that is secreted into the bloodstream by the adrenal medulla and which can directly invigorate skeletal muscles over a timescale of seconds.
During a stressful event, norepinephrine can be released by an area of the brainstem called the locus coeruleus and be projected out to a wide range of regions, including the cerebral cortex (associated with thought and action) along with the limbic system (associated with emotion and memory construction). When released from the sympathetic nervous system, this chemical plays a key role in facilitating the fight-or-flight response in various body tissues. But one of the most fascinating processes along with the excretion of norepinephrine that may contribute to our ability to exert superhuman strength during stressful situations is called the “analgesic response.”
Stress-induced analgesia (SIA) is a process by which the body undergoes a reduced pain response after a stressful situation. A study lead by Dr. Pinar Yilmaz used functional MRI to assess the brain mechanisms associated with SIA in 21 healthy individuals. A mildly painful pressure stimulus was applied to each test subject, and each was given a set of basic mental tasks to perform while noise was increased throughout the room to act as a stressor.
The team learned that following a stressful situation pain thresholds and tolerance were in fact significantly higher when compared to pre-stress levels. The fMRI data showed that as the subjects adapted to their fairly unpleasant scenario, they showed increased activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, anterior insular cortex, and secondary somatosensory cortex. The increase in pain tolerance correlated significantly with activation in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, and pain unpleasantness with activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.
Even though these findings may help researchers better understand what actually occurs during episodes of superhuman strength, the ethical and experimental limitations of testing such a phenomenon keeps it in the realm of scientific mystery. It would be unethical to comprehensively test such a phenomenon, since superhuman strength seems to come about with extreme stress — moments of compassion-driven fear or anger. Repetitive states of hyper arousal can be detrimental to our immune system and even cause cardiovascular disease. But in order to tap into the superhuman powers that we can sometimes exhibit, we don’t always need to enter battle in a berserk frenzy, or lift a car. Instead, it can sometimes happen in the simplest of ways — like carrying a lost little girl over hot sand back to her mother.
This article was originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of Brain World Magazine.
