Man has done the best in technology and invention when it comes to making things convenient. In the process, things have only gotten more complicated. For example, when it comes to his fitness, a simple calisthenics routine with regular jogging or simpler aerobics will suffice. But we still want to go to fancy gyms with scientifically designed machines that require special skills and safety measures to execute. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sport of iron and I find lifting weights to be a very rewarding endeavor. However, that’s not really what I need to build my fitness or to improve my fitness.
The best part is that you don’t need to spend too much money and time going to the gym and you don’t need extra focus to ensure your personal safety. Better yet, you can save a lot of physical energy by going to and from the gym. You can use that time to complete a workout at home with an old school form of training used by legendary strongmen and wrestlers that gave them incredible strength, strength most gym goers today can’t. to show off.
The form of training that I am talking about is known as Isometric Exercise. It’s an obscure form of physical training and almost lost to the masses. Isometric training involves the contraction of muscles not provoked by successive concentric and eccentric movements (known as isotonic movements). Instead, the length of the muscle remains fixed while you are trying to move an immovable load or hold a heavy load in a particular position. You will find it used primarily by athletes and also by patients rehabbing from injury. However, this method is very effective even for a regular learner and, with proper use, can bring results beyond your wildest imagination.
History of isometric exercises
Do not believe me; Let’s take a look, for example, at the greatest strongmen in history and who could be a better example than Alexander Zass. A former weight training enthusiast, Zass built his physique and decent strength during his early years employing weight strength training methods. However, during the world war, he was captured and imprisoned by the Russians. Imprisoned in shackles and in solitary confinement in an Austrian prison camp, Zass found his hard-earned physique deteriorating, as anyone would if he stopped exercising. Frustration led him to start pulling the shackles and pushing the prison bars. The result was the rapid development of strength. He very soon developed enough strength to tear off the prison bars, bend them to form a hook in order to scale the prison wall and escape. After his escape, his new training technique became a basic method and he modified it to suit his needs outside of prison. He even developed it enough to sell it as a training discipline to interested bosses and serious trainees. In addition to Alexander Zass, there were other famous strength athletes who used isometric exercises to develop their bodies and strength, such as Joseph Greenstein, Tromp Van Digglen, and the renowned martial artist, Bruce Lee.
Types of Isometric Exercises
The beauty of this training method is that you don’t really need to wear prison bars and shackles or any fancy equipment to get a good workout. Simply applying opposing force using your own limbs can bring phenomenal results. The idea is to apply force to an immovable object and try to move it. This is called Overcoming Isometrics. Here you are trying to make an immovable object move by constantly increasing the effort.
The other method is when you try to hold an object and keep it from moving. A heavy bar during a bench press, for example, if you simply hold the load halfway through the movement and resist it the entire time, then this is called Performance Isometry.
Now, when you push a dumbbell or barbell eccentrically and concentrically, your body only uses a small percentage of its muscles to generate a movement. As a result, you need to work multiple sets to ensure maximum muscle stress and therefore strength and muscle growth. With isometric contraction, the body works to move the object, and when it realizes that it can’t, the body recruits more muscle fibers for the effort. The result is a greater ability of the body to activate the muscles when it is needed in the first instance. The most important aspect of this training method is its direct impact on the tendons. The tendons respond very well to isometric contraction and become stronger. In contrast, with the conventional form of weight and machine training, the muscles respond quickly and the tendons respond to a much slower degree. As a result, your body is subject to potential injury as you begin to train with heavy loads.
My own personal experience with Isometrics was kind of giving up. I used a piece of equipment called Bull Worker and found the gains to be quite good. However, back then I was training alone with a printed routine chart and no one to guide me along the way. Not knowing how far I could go with isometrics alone and having limited knowledge of the discipline, I turned to weight training, as that was the method endorsed by famous and successful champions like Arnold Schwarzenneger and Lou Ferrigno. Anyway, years later, I came across an article on Alexander Zass and read about his legendary feats of strength and how he had gained this strength by practicing isometric exercises. This made me refocus on isometrics. I didn’t fully take it until the end of 2012. It has a profound impact on my body and I started to feel muscle tension similar to lifting heavy weights within seconds of each exercise. This training principle is also largely mimicked by gymnasts in their static holds and conditioning exercises. This explains why so many of them who have never lifted weights before are able to lift mind-blowing amounts of weights in a very short time after starting weight training.
Isometric exercises are incredibly powerful and very efficient when it comes to building muscle strength and burning fat. You can build a total body workout with nothing more than your body weight and do it without the need for any expensive equipment.