After yesterday’s newsletter on elastic bands and how they emphasize the contracted position at the expense of stretch, I wanted to mention an efficiency tweak.
If you’re using them to simulate a contracted-position exercise, like triceps pushdowns, you want to do full range of motion—all the way down to flex the triceps.
Contracted-position exercises have been shown to produce some area-specific muscle hypertrophy, so you don’t want to ignore them. However…
If you’re using bands to train around an injury on either ideal or stretch-position exercises, like lying or overhead triceps extensions, you can train only the bottom third of the stroke to emphasize that optimal growth range…
Move from stretch to just shy of halfway through the stroke…
In other words, you don’t have to go to the full-range finish position—which is the hardest with bands. So on a move like curls, you pull up to only the halfway point.
That will allow you to use a thicker band for more resistance—more load through the important stretch range. You can go “heavier” because you’re not pulling all the way to complete contraction…
And you still won’t get too much resistance at the injury-irritating full stretch.
Note: For a chart of stretch-position exercises for each muscle, as well as the IDEAL and contracted-position moves, see pages 42 and 43 of Old Man, Young Muscle.
Sculpt your perfect physique: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best stretch and contracted add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos, and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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