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A new study examining the difference
between lifting heavy weights, as opposed to a lighter load, to the point of
muscle failure, has shown that there is no difference in the way your body
responds to the weight usedi.
The key to increase muscle and
improve fitness lies in working your muscle to fatigue, but you don't need to
lift heavy weights to do so.
There is a Goldilock's zone,
however, where the weight is heavy enough to bring you to fatigue within a
certain amount of repetitions, but not so heavy that you cannot complete the
set within a minute or two.
Principles of Super-Slow Weight Training
There is a type of training called
super-slow weight training, which actually produces many of the same health-
and fitness benefits as high-intensity interval training.
But instead of using a stationary
bike or elliptical machine, you're lifting weights . These two forms of
exercise may at first sound like complete opposites—super-slow versus
high-intensity—but the combination of slowing down your lifts and lifting to
failure turns it into a high-intensity exercise. Metabolically speaking, both
forms are very similar to each other, because you're producing metabolic
byproducts of that fatigue.
One such byproduct is lactic acid.
Whether you're doing high-intensity interval training on an elliptical or doing
super-slow weight lifting, the lactic acid produced generates a cascade of
metabolic adaptations that improve your muscle strength and fitness level.
Your genome governs how large your
muscles can become, and how responsive your muscles will be to exercise.
However, regardless of how large your muscles become, your body will get stronger as a result of these types of
exercises. Some people can be enormously strong without looking like
Schwarzenegger, and some who are very muscular might not have great strength.
Another adaptation that occurs is
the improvement of your glucose storage capability. Regardless of the increase
in actual muscle mass, your glucose storage capability will increase, and that
is a very important factor for overall health. And, just like high-intensity
interval training, super-slow weight training promotes the production of human growth hormone (HGH), aka "the
fitness hormone," which plays an important role in maintaining optimal
health, fitness, and longevity.
How to Perform Super-Slow Weight Lifting
To summarize, by aggressively
working your muscle to fatigue, you stimulate muscular adaptations that improve
the metabolic capability of your muscle, which causes it to increase in
strength and size.
Use four or five basic compound
movements for your exercise set. These exercises can be done using either free
weights or machines. The benefit of using a quality machine is that it will
allow you to focus your mind on the effort rather than your form. The following
five movements are a good place to start:
1.Pull-down (or alternatively chin-up)
2.Chest press
3.Compound row (A pulling motion in
the horizontal plane)
4.Overhead press
5.Leg press
Next is a summary of how to perform
each exercise. If you're using the appropriate amount of weight or resistance,
you'll be able to perform four to eight repetitions for each exercise set. When done properly, your workout will
take no more than 12 or 15 minutes.
1.Begin by lifting the weight as slowly and gradually as you can. The first inch should take about two seconds. Since you're
depriving yourself of all the momentum of snatching the weight upward, it will
be very difficult to complete the full movement in less than 7-10 seconds.
This super-slow movement allows your muscle, at the
microscopic level, to access the maximum number of cross-bridges between the
protein filaments that produce movement in the muscle. When pushing, stop about
10 to 15 degrees before your limb is fully straightened; smoothly reverse
direction
2.Slowly
lower the weight back down
3.Repeat until exhaustion. Once you
reach exhaustion, don't try to heave or jerk the weight to get one last
repetition in. Instead, just keep trying to produce the movement, even if it's
not 'going' anywhere, for another five seconds or so
4.Immediately switch to the next
exercise for the next target muscle group and repeat the first three steps
When Pushing to the Point of Failure is Just
Too Much
For those of you who feel that
pushing yourself to the point of muscle failure is just too much sometimes,
there's another study out that explains that too. In this study, researchers
found that the old adage, "it's all in your head" is true in that,
typically, it's your mind that limits you from pushing to failure, not your
bodyii. It's taken more than a century for
scientists to figure this out, and to explain how your brain works in
conjunction with your body to ensure that you stop exercising before physical harm develops—a
key to overall improvement in your exercise routine.
The Importance of Recovery
The idea that fatigue is an
important regulatory function to maintain physical homeostasis makes the advice
to make sure you fully recover between workouts even more important.
So when should you back down on your
exercise?
An important piece of information is
that as long as your intensity is high enough, you can cut back on the
frequency of the exercise without diminishing the results. In fact, if the
intensity is really high, the frequency may need to be reduced, in order to continue
improving.
For example, as a weak beginner, you
can exercise three times a week and not put much stress on your system. But
once your strength and endurance improves, each exercise session is placing an
increasingly greater amount of stress on your body (as long as you keep pushing
yourself to the max). At that point, you would be wise to reduce the
frequency of your
sessions to give your body enough time to recover in between.
Once you're fit, you don't need the frequent spurts
of growth hormone production. At that point, recovery takes precedence as being
more important, and your recovery period could be anywhere from three to seven
days. In fact, we strongly recommends NOT exercising too frequently once you
are in fit condition, in order to avoid over-taxing your adrenals.
Super-Slow Weight Training Automatically
Decreases Risk of Injury
Since we're discussing your body's
innate intelligence to prevent you from injuring yourself, by making you feel
fatigued, it's worth mentioning that super-slow weight training is a much safer
form of exercise than regular strength training. The slow movement actively
prevents you from accidentally harming your joints or suffering repetitive use
injury, as the forces are dramatically reduced.
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