Iso-Extremes: Try Iso-Push to Reach New Levels in Your Bench Press

A recent study comparing the level of muscle activation during isometric, concentric, and eccentric muscle actions found that a person can recruit over 5% more motor-units/muscle fibers during a maximal isometric muscle action than during either a maximal eccentric (lowering) or maximal concentric (lifting) action; that’s 95.2% for isometric compared to 88.3% for the eccentric and 89.7% for the concentric.
The Iso-Extreme Series Iso-Push is am exercise to be used with max “pulling” force into the deep push up position in order to get the anterior horizontal pushing muscles to fire at a much higher rate of force production than normally possible by using the body’s defensive mechanisms to over-stabilize (if that’s a word) the joint with all its active tissues. You will actively “pull” yourself into that position, hold the elbows out at 45 degrees to the body, keep the elbow pointing directly toward the ceiling and the body completely straight (in plank position) and completely still. One needs to channel all their efforts into the active pull and keep maximal tension on those muscles. Remember… POSITION IS EVERYTHING! If one wriggles around, huffin-n-puffin like crazy, yelling out in pain, collapsing position every chance they get… the result will be very diminished. Stay focused! This is very difficult to do, especially since I haven’t told you the intensity and volume yet. One must strive for FIVE MINUTES OF TOTAL WORK! Yes, 5 minutes folks. Russian (it always comes down to the Ruskies doesn’t it?) research states over and over again in their iso-extreme studies that 5 minutes is the magic number. Why? Even they couldn’t really define WHY it worked, but suffice it to say they state that they tried everything from 30 seconds to 10 minutes and the applicable result was always the most efficient and effective at the 5 minute mark. One set all that is needed one each training day, although one can perform this protocol multiple times per week (up to four) with no real signs of overtraining. Give it a try in your workout as a prime movement or as a finisher.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 29th, 2010 at 7:51 am and is filed under All things STRENGTH... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.