Weight Training Isometric Programs
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There are three types of contractions when it comes to exercising and use of your muscles. Concentric, eccentric and isometric. Most of the time, we turn our attention to the concentric and eccentric contractions because that’s what we know best. Lifting and subsequently lowering the weight with each rep is all about those two types of contractions. Concentric contractions occur when the muscle shortens or, using a bicep curl as an example, you bring the weight up. Eccentric on the other hand is when the muscle contracts while lengthening, for example during the lowering phase of a bicep curl. Now these can be manipulated to tap into a concept known as time under tension, but that’s a whole other topic.
“Train 10 minutes a day and increase your strength by over 30 percent in 10 weeks,” claimed one popular isometric training system. Others claim that isometrics have about as much value as the Belarusian Ruble (one dollar is nearly 10,000 BYRs).
The third contraction, isometric, we seldom concentrate on. I mean outside of the occasional plank, how many times have you thought about training with an isometric contraction? I’m sure you haven’t. But you are probably doing it anyway. Think about any time you brace your abs to do a plank, or to brace when doing any other exercise.
That’s an isometric core contraction meant to stabilize your spine. But how can we use isometrics to get in better shape? How is it possible to get fit without moving a muscle?. The best example that everyone knows when you think of an isometric exercise is a plank, so let’s start there. First and foremost, you want to do your planks with good form, meaning neutral spine, slight posterior pelvic tilt, and elbows under the shoulders.
Then lift your body off the ground and hold by contracting your abs, glutes and a whole lot more. What you are doing is building core strength & endurance by holding this static position. I prefer to maintain these for 10-20 seconds and make it a point of emphasis to get as hard of a contraction through my body as possible. There are many ways to progress a plank, but the key is to hammer down the basics before you move on to more challenging variations. Wall Squats There are wall squats and there are wall sits.
When you think of wall sits, you picture sitting with your back against the wall with your at 90 degrees and your quads burning and screaming. The Wall Squat is far different than the wall sits that you may be thinking. This drill puts you into a great squat pattern, all while teaching your glutes to fire against a mini-band. The key to this exercise, which is slightly more corrective in nature, is pushing your knees out by using the glutes all while getting as much depth on the squat as possible. Scaption Holds This is a great exercise to help and rotator cuff. It’s important to not be a hero on this exercise.
Go with a really light dumbbell as technique is vital for the correct muscles to be activated. Raise the dumbbells in front of your chest in a wide V while squeezing your shoulder blades together. Once you hit shoulder level, hold for 10 seconds. Flexed Arm Hang Most clients, especially women struggle with.
Isometric Weight Lifting
It takes a lot of upper body strength to perform one solid rep. What the flexed arm hang teaches is engaging the necessary muscles required for a pull-up/chin-up, but doing so in an isometric hold. Think back to gym class and the Presidential Fitness Test. You could either bang out some pull-ups or choose to hang over the bar for as long as you could. Both were pretty tough. Set yourself in a good pull-up position with your chin over the bar.
Make sure you’re engaging the correct muscles before you pick up your feet. Once you feel you’re in a good starting position, step off the box you’re on and hold. While holding, squeeze your armpits to your sides and keep a strong posture. 10 seconds is a good place to start from, and you can progress from there.
Overhead This may look simple, but it is incredibly challenging for your shoulders, upper back muscles, and core. We tend to live in a flexion world where our shoulders round forward and we lose strength in our back and shoulder muscles. What this exercise does is recruit all those ignored and weak muscles and brings strength back to them as well as mobility through the shoulder joint.
At first it may be difficult to keep your arms in the correct position, but over time, your strength and mobility will develop. Be sure to contract your abs, think about tilting your ribcage towards the floor. It’s a natural tendency to allow them to arch up towards the ceiling, simply to accomplish the position pictured here.
Glute Bridge Iso Hold The glutes are important to maintain posture and help alleviate low back pain, so this isometric hold is a great way to not only strengthen the glutes but also helps with activation. This can also work as a recovery exercise after a workout to take pressure off the low back. Try to concentrate on doing the work as the hamstrings have a tendency to take over. If you start to feel like your hamstrings are going to cramp, then your best bet is to reset and perform the bridge again. Iso Hold Another exercise that looks simple at first, but once you are in the correct position; you realize how wrong you were.
We tend to ignore rotational movements or in this case, anti-rotational and it’s a vital part to our everyday movements. Just think about how many times you twist and turn during the day. Takeaway Most weight training exercises engage your muscles and joints through a specific range of motion, meaning there is a beginning point and an end point. Are completely static however, you are still contracting your muscle(s) against a force while keeping your joint at one specific angle. Adding these into your routine is a good idea if you’ve begun to plateau in certain lifts, or if you’re looking to break through a certain stick point. Isometrics can also be beneficial for corrective and activation exercises.
List Of Isometric Exercises
While the concentric and eccentric contraction type exercises will make up the bulk of your training, as they should, throw some isometrics into your program to build greater strength. In addition to the exercises listed above that are purely isometric, you can also incorporate pauses into other exercises like squats and presses to push you past certain sticking points that you may have. With pauses, you must maintain control of the movement, which can lead to greater muscle activation and recruitment in order to complete. Chris Cooper, NSCA-CPT, LMT is a personal trainer with 10 years of experience in the fitness profession. He is co-owner of Active Movement & Performance, a training facility on Long Island. In addition to being a trainer, he is also a New York State Licensed Massage Therapist, which has allowed him to blend the two worlds to not only get his clients stronger and in better shape, but to also fix dysfunctions to make them better movers overall.
His firm belief in education is manifest as an educator for Fitness Education Institute, presenting at their yearly convention.