I know you may be thinking, “What do you mean? I do the job, that’s what counts, right?” Yes, it will count, and is certainly better than sitting on the couch, there is however more. There’s connecting your mind towards the muscle that’s lifting the weight after which lowering it. Activating that muscle. Feeling the contraction of the muscle doing the work. Manipulating the movement.
Muscle actions control the movement from the body. Without getting too technical I want to briefly touch on a number of the muscle actions.
Muscle actions
1. Eccentric
Occurs whenever a muscle develops tension while lengthening. The muscles lengthens since the contractile force is less than the resistive force. An excellent illustration of this is the 2nd a part of a biceps curl or when the arms are lowering to the starting position. Also known as deceleration or negative because work is being carried out around the muscle instead of the muscle dong the job.
2. Isometric
Occurs once the contractile force is equivalent to the resistive force. Also referred to as a pause during a strength training exercise between your lifting and the lowering phases.
3. Concentric
Occurs when the contractile force is greater compared to resistive force. Characterized by the shortening the muscle and visual joint movement. A great example of this is actually the first a part of a biceps curl or during the lifting area of the exercise.
Read about how our clients applied this to her workout
“Every time I am going through a strength training session, I learn or realize new things. ?(Or possibly – because I’m “old-ish” – I’m re-learning something. ?That’s possible!)
When I had been during a workout session the other day, it dawned on me which i was type of just studying the mechanics from the exercise instead of intentionally concentrating on muscle or group of muscles that I was working on. ?I felt like I had been on “auto-drive”, which meant I wasn’t really investing in your time and effort that I should have been doing. ?Once I realized that, I intentionally shifted my focus. ?And I remembered what my trainer keeps reminding me when I exercise together with her: ?it’s not only about the initial (concentric) movement part of the exercise; ?it’s just as important to feel the resistance in the eccentric part of the exercise. ?So when I’m doing biceps curls, basically focus only around the lifting but then let the weights drop to my sides, I’m missing out on 1 / 2 of the advantages of that exercise. ?Instead, I have to lower the weights slowly, feeling the resistance and i’m doing that. ?So for the rest of my workout, I set my mind to pay attention to doing that – also it made a massive difference! ?My legs and arms could really tell that I had exercised – and I hadn’t really increased any weights. ?I simply focused on both concentric and eccentric movements, and that had a significant effect on the way i felt about getting in a strong lifting session.
Hopefully I can sustain this focused approach within my upcoming sessions!” – L.S.
Knowing what we now know, think about the way you have been weight lifting. Are you studying the motions or are you really concentrating on the movement?
