Bodybuilding Static Contraction Training

Static Contraction Training


Static Contraction Training - Maximum Overload in Minimal Time!

Static contraction training is a unique a form of strength training that maximizes muscle growth, and strength gains, while dramatically reducing the "amount" and "length" of your exercise routine. Static contraction training, instead of focusing on amount of exercise and frequency, emphasizes intensity of the workout session. This is done by working with weights that are far in excess of what you would use during a traditional strength training workout routine. We will explain more below.

In order to understand the theory behind static contraction training, you must first understand how muscle's work, and what causes muscles to grow. Each muscle in your body contains a variety of fibers. Without going into detail for our purposes, each fiber type becomes involved in physical activity at different levels of stress. In other words, if the physical requirements of a particular activity are very light, only certain muscle fibers of the involved in muscle group may be needed to complete that activity. If the physical demands are more strenuous, the muscle may require the involvement of an additional group of muscle fibers. If the physical demands are very strenuous, the muscle may require involvement of all muscle fibers simultaneously. In other words, the muscle fibers in each muscle are recruited into activity based on the amount of and for required to complete the activity.

Muscles get bigger when the body senses, through messages sent to the brain, that your body is unable to handle the load currently being placed against it. When the body determines that it needs to be stronger to complete a particular activity in the future, it signals the growth of additional muscle. Once additional muscle growth has taken place, the body is able to handle an increased load when the stimulating activity is resumed again.

What static contraction training does is to signal the body through intense activity that additional muscle growth is necessary. And, it does this in a way that is very different from traditional strength training methodology. Most of us have been taught to workout with the weight with which they are capable of performing 8-12 repetitions, and to increase the weight when you can do more than 12 repetitions. You then continue to work with the new weight until you can do more than 12 repetitions with that weight. In this traditional approach to weight training, those first 11 repetitions are for the most part simply a preparation for the final repetition which should be very difficult to complete. That is the one that signals the brain that you need to be stronger the next time. This form of weight training, while it works, takes much more time to generate the same results that can be achieved through static contraction training, and here's why.

Instead of trying to take a muscle group to failure through the use of repetitions, static contraction training teaches us to simply hold the maximum weight we can handle (Isometric exercise), in our strongest range of motion for a particular movement, for a maximum of 5-10 seconds, and not to perform any repetitions with that weight. For example, if you normally bench press 150 pounds, you might actually workout with as much as 300 lbs., but instead of attempting to perform repetitions, you would simply hold that weight at the strongest point in the range of motion for the bench press, which would be approximately two to 3 in. before you are able to lock your elbows. Holding that weight in position for five to 10 seconds is all that is required in order to stimulate the brain that additional muscle growth is necessary.

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A static contraction training workout involves only five exercises per workout. Typically, you perform your five exercises in less than what amounts to a minute, not including the time it takes for you to set up the machines, and short breaks between exercises. I know this sounds rather extraordinary, and may be causing many of you to think that it sounds too good to be true. I thought the same thing when I first heard about static contraction training. As a result, or I was for cynical too. But, because the routine had been recommended to me by someone with whom I was very familiar, and for whom I have a great deal of respect, I was willing to investigate further and tried for myself. You can find out more about my own personal experience, and the results that I have accomplished by referring to my personal workout routine located on this web site. To make a long story short, I am a firm believer in static contraction training after participating in this routine for only 60 days. I have seen dramatic improvement in both my strength, muscle size, any dramatic reduction in the amount of time I spend attempting to get results.

Practice:

Maximum overload

Static contraction training is designed to deliver the maximum possible overload to each targeted muscle or muscle group. This goal is accomplished by using what are known as "strong range partials". Using your strongest range of motion means operating (in most exercises) in the last inches of your reach. This is the range where you can handle the most weight and are least susceptible to injury. While the most important steps in beginning a static contraction training workout routine is to determine your "sweet spot". This is the maximum weight that you are capable of handling in each of the exercises that you will perform in the routine.

It sounds simple enough, but for those of us who have engaged in traditional strength training routines, it can takes in getting used to. The reason is that you will be surprised at how much weight you can actually handle in your strongest range of motion. It will be dramatically higher than what you are used to working out with. For example, as I was trying to find my sweet spot, I started out working with 400 lbs. on the leg press machine. I realized right away the weight was much to light for static contraction training. I raised the weight to 500 lbs. and that was still to light. I raised the weight to 600 lbs. and began to find that I was reaching my sweet spot. I added 85 lbs. more and that was a weight with which I could only perform a 10 seconds hold before failure. That became my sweet spot for the leg press machine.

You will need to find your sweet spot for each of the exercises that will be performed in the routine, and it may take you a workout or two to figure that out. Once you have identified your sweet spot, the next most important consideration is "progressive overload". This simply means making sure that you are making progress in each workout by either being able to handle more weight, or being able to hold the last weight for a longer period of time. If you are working out at the highest intensity possible you should see improvement in either your hold time or your weight or both, each time you workout.

The Basic Workout Routine:

The basic Static Contraction Training workout routine consists of 10 exercises. You perform 5 of the exercises in one session, and the other 5 in a separate session. Here's what it looks like:

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Mondays: Workout Routine A

1) Shoulders

2) Trapezius

3) Triceps

4) Biceps

5) Abdominals

Thursdays: Workout Routine B

1) Lower Back

2) Chest

3) Upper Back

4) Legs

5) Calves

How to perform the exercises

In static contraction training you will merely be holding the weight (Isometric exercise) at approximately 2 to 4 inches before completion of the lifting motion. For most exercises, this is the strongest range of motion for that exercise. You will need the assistance of the spotter to move the weight in that position since it is unlikely that you will be able to lifted by yourself, especially if your working with a weight is appropriate for this exercise routine. Your goal is to hold the weight for a minimum of five seconds and a maximum of 10 seconds. If you can hold the weight for longer than 10 seconds, you should increase the weight on your next workout.

Beginners should workout performing one set for their first six workouts. Intermediate trainers should do one to three cents per exercise, depending on how you respond to multiple sets. What we mean by that is if the weight with which you are working allows you to perform three sets holding a minimum of 10 seconds each, you are probably better off to do three sets but also to raise the weight for your next visit. Advanced trainees should perform three to five set per exercise.

Intensity versus Duration

One thing that is important to remember about strength training is the high intensity training cannot be sustained for long periods of time. In other words, you can either workout at a high intensity, or you can workout for a long duration, but you can't do both. Take the example of a sprinter and a distance runner. The sprinter is engaged in a high intensity activity, because sprinting is very strenous when done correctly. By default, that activity is relatively short lived because no one can sustain a sprint for very long. A long distance runner, on the other hand, works at a much lower energy level starting out, and therefore can sustain it for a much longer duration.

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Static Contraction Training when done correctly, simulates the situation of the sprinter by getting maximum intensity out of the workout, which by definition makes the workouts brief. So, if you are able to sustain longer workouts, you are probably not working at the appropriate intensity level.

Frequency of Workouts

Also related to the insensity/duration principle is the principle of workout frequency. As the intensity of your workouts increases, your body will require more time to recover, and that is why the frequency of workouts is dramatically decreased in the Static Contraction Training routine. For the first six or so workouts, you should be working out no more than 2 times per week, and then after that, you should be switching to once per week, assuming you are working out at the proper intensity level. This is a must on this workout as your body must be given adequate time to recover AND grow between workouts.

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Training With PrecisionUnderstand what we are trying to do here! Try this experiment next workout!

(This is an article I wrote for Ironman magazine many years ago. You can see how the principles logically led to the development of Static Contraction Training a few years later.)

Have you ever seen this guy training at the gym? He walks over to the dumbbell rack, pulls off a couple, without noting the exact weight, does a dozen or so reps - without actually counting - then sets them down just when its getting difficult to continue. He does another set or two the same way then puts the weights back on the rack. Next he looks around for a piece of equipment that is not in use, anything will do, and sticks in the selector pin of the weight stack around the halfway mark of the stack. He bangs out twenty or so reps with the unknown weight, rests a bit, then does another set. He uses the same method of exercise throughout his entire workout, then heads for the change room.

This guy is positively doomed to failure; either by undertraining, overtraining or otherwise spinning his wheels until he gives up due to lack of progress. If he's really unlucky he'll spend a couple of thousand bucks on nutritional supplements thinking they will provide the gains his training will not deliver. If he is like most people he'll quit training within a few months, if he's really tough minded he'll train this way for years and chalk up his lack of progress to being a "hardgainer." The really sad fact is, this is how most people train!

The same used to be true in aerobics. Thirty years ago people would perform exercises like jumping jacks, twists with a pole or, my personal favorite, lie on their backs and pedal their legs in the air. They had no idea how long to perform these exercises, how to control the intensity of them or how to measure progress. All exercises, no matter how silly, were viewed as about equally beneficial. I said this was true - because something happened that changed everything. Dr. Kenneth Cooper wrote a book called "Aerobics". The main benefit of his book was it gave precision to cardiovascular training.

Suddenly, there were clear physiological objectives such as reaching the "aerobic threshold" and "age adjusted target heart rates" to be achieved and maintained for specified times. Now the relative effectiveness of different workouts could actually be measured. And guess what? Not all workouts were equally productive. Lying on your

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back pedaling was a joke compared to cross-country skiing and running. Precision is what made cardiovascular training a more perfect science just as precision makes medicine, engineering and space exploration more perfect sciences. It's what naturally happens to any science as time goes by and rational people try to improve the accuracy of their results.

What can be done to give strength training more precision? Well, for a start, we can examine the two physiological requisites involved in getting your body to increase its muscle size and strength. Firstly, the muscles must be worked and that work must involve a high intensity of muscular overload. That's why lifting weights builds new muscle, it creates a lot of overload per unit of time. Secondly, the muscular overload must be progressive from workout to workout. If it isn't progressive there is no reason for your body to grow more muscle. It’s the progression of overload that keeps triggering new growth.

How high is high intensity? Arthur Jones, the creator of Nautilus exercise equipment, defined intensity as "the percentage of momentary muscular effort being exerted." This definition has stood unimproved for over twenty years. While basically correct, this strikes me as both vague and subjective on Jones' part. A percentage is measured on a scale of 1 to 100, so the question is how do you know what 100% of your effort is? You can't, it's logically impossible. There is always the possibility that a person could have lifted more weight were it not for some unknown impediment or missing motivation. Also, 100% of your effort is irrelevant since when you are recovering from pneumonia, for example, your 100% effort will be quite insufficient to trigger muscle growth anyway. Even when you are tired from lack of sleep or from overtraining 100% of your effort is meaningless since it will be too low an intensity to trigger growth. Without an absolute standard for 100% what does 50% of effort mean? To compound this problem is the inherent vagueness of momentary. How momentary? A millisecond? A second? 14 seconds? Why wallow in all that vagueness?

There is a far better way to measure intensity. Muscular effort by intensity of lifting, like light, sound and heat, to name a few, can be precisely measured. Scientists measure the intensity of light, sound and heat by objective standards such as lumens, decibels and calories. Why not use the same precision when measuring the intensity of muscular output? Why used "perceived" effort when we can use absolute effort? Why use "momentary" when we can use seconds and minutes? According to the laws of Physics, the intensity of lifting is simply the amount of weight lifted per unit of time; measured in a unit I call the Power Factor (if distance were included we could use Horsepower or Watts as units). Lift 200 pounds 10 times in one minute and you have a Power Factor of 2,000 pounds per minute. That is the intensity of your lifting. Want to increase the intensity? Lift more pounds per minute. Not "perceived" pounds or "possible" pounds but real, objective pounds. Not for "moments" but for real, objective minutes.

Using this absolute standard you can measure the intensity of your muscular output to discover that 100% of your effort can vary immensely. Speaking for myself, I once foolishly ate a bag of peanut M&M's before a workout and quickly discovered that 100% of my effort (momentary and otherwise) was about 70% of my known capability. Exercising to momentary muscular failure with a bag of M&M's under my belt was meaningless, and a waste of time, even though it met Arthur Jones' definition of high intensity. Identifying poor workout performance because of a bonehead move like eating M&M's just before a workout is easy, but more subtle stresses like overtraining, lack of concentration, lack of sleep, personal or work-related stress and a host of other factors can and will rob you of intensity. Without an objective measurement of that intensity you'll

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never know the whole truth regarding the two most important factors of your training; high intensity and progressive overload.

The precision inherent in this measurement puts many of bodybuilding's vague intangibles right on graph paper where they can be analyzed. Objective measurements lead to objectively verifiable progress, or lack thereof, and provide a means to compare the relative efficiency of training systems. High intensity and progressive overload, the two indispensable conditions of muscular hypertrophy, can be measured mathematically. Now, just as in aerobics, specific objectives and goals, measured in all-important intensity and progressive overload, can be set and achieved. And, importantly, the various strength training and bodybuilding "systems" can be accurately and fairly measured to determine the intensity of overload they deliver to individual muscles, their rate of progression, and their ability to avoid and compensate for overtraining. The effect of nutritional supplements can be measured the same way

Getting back to our man in the gym, now you can see how blindly he is operating. This guy is a ship with no rudder doing figure eights in the open sea. He doesn't know his intensity from his last workout, where it is today or where it should be next workout. In order to measure the intensity of his muscular overload he needs to keep track of the exact amount of weight that he is lifting and the exact amount of time it takes him to lift it -- remember, that's a law of Physics. He knows neither. To ensure he is creating progressive overload he must engineer his next workout in such a way that his intensity increases. This requires knowing the inter-relationship of the weight on the bar, the number of times he can lift it and the time it takes him to do it. Operating blindly he doesn't have a prayer of making consistent progress. He might as well lie on his back and pedal in the air

Try this experiment on your next workout: pick one exercise, say the Bench Press, and time exactly how long it takes you to complete the exercise from the first rep of the first set to the last rep of the last set. For example, suppose that you performed 4 sets of 10 reps all with 200 pounds. Each set took 45 seconds to complete and you rested 60 seconds between sets. That's a total time of 360 seconds or 6 minutes. In that 6 minutes you lifted 200 pounds a total of 40 times (4 sets of 10) producing a total weight lifted of 8,000 pounds. The intensity of your lifting was 1,333 pounds per minute. That's a precise measurement

Now you've got a benchmark of your performance. You know you are capable of benching 1,333 pounds per minute, so if you want to make progress you need to increase that number. If you come back to the gym too soon the number won't increase because your body didn’t have time to recover and grow. Keep coming back to the gym too soon and that number will actually decrease because of the energy debt created by chronic overtraining. Think about that - when you are overtraining you can work out with "100% of momentary muscular effort being exerted" and yet you will not be able to bench 1,333 pounds per minute. Even though at the end of your last set you went to total muscular failure, you were "pumped," and you "felt the burn." You met Jones' definition of high intensity yet you have zero chance of making progress because you are operating at an output that is less than what you already have identified as your capability. No progressive overload, no progress. Period. But once you have precise benchmarks of your muscular ability in every exercise you can immediately determine whether or not you are making real, objective, measurable progress or just spinning your wheels. That's how it’s done in aerobic training, thanks to Kenneth Cooper, and now the same is true of strength training.

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Train Smart!

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Bodybuilding Static Contraction Training