A Not-so Basic Topic You Need Understand
I want to begin by first stating that you don't have to follow my advice, you don't know me from the other ass in the gym giving you horrible advice. Neither am I going to attempt to convince you that what I am about to describe following is information that I wish I had received some 19 years ago when I first began training. Read this and filter it from your experience.
I first started weight training in my sophomore year of high school. It was my basketball coach that put us on the weights over the summer before junior year. I never went back to basketball. Long story short... after school job at a gym, personal training from age 17 to today (I'll be 36 in November), though today is simply online and very select clients. However, I must be honest and state that I did have a training hiatus during my years serving in the USAF.
I am providing you that background so that I can say that I've yet to meet a trainer in a gym, or an read an article in a magazine that offers the information I'm going to share. And I believe that is the case because nearly all individuals that begin working out what as immediate results as possible or the trainer wants to kick their ass in hopes in making the sale. With this mentality, the idea of education for building muscle success is an after thought.
So Caleb, get to the point.
Here it is, but make sure that you keep reading so that you can have context:
Learn this first - how to properly contract (flex) the muscle group before adding heavy, applied loads.
Most of us never really separate the concepts of weight lifting and hypertrophy (muscle growth). Most of us learn how to train an exercise, not necessarily how to train a muscle. A motion is repeated (trained) over and over to improve performance at that exercise. This is evident in power lifting, crossfit, and the father of 3 at LA Fitness working on his bench press. The exercise is performed with no critical understanding on how the muscle fibers lay within the muscle or muscle group. Does hand position matter when doing bicep curls to fully exhaust the fibers and solicit growth?
I could keep going, but you should understand where I'm going with that.
To induce growth, simply stated, we need to contract the muscle as hard as possible. More advance topics would follow this, but this is a simply introduction. So imagine performing a bicep curl with your arm at your side and lifting your hand toward your should in an arc. You can do this without fully squeezing the bicep. Now do it again and squeeze the bicep as hard as possible. This is part of the first steps in understanding muscle growth. To make my biceps grow, I need to repeatedly contract that muscle hard. Now, with no weight in my hands, I could probably repeat this some 20, 30, 40 times. If I add 10lbs to my hand, that contraction count decreases to maybe 15 to 20 times. If I change the 10lbs to 20lbs, now I may be limited to 8 contractions.
The point here is that applying weight to a muscle for growth should be conceptually thought of as a tool to induce muscular fatigue at a desired range of muscle contractions. It is not a matter of moving a weight from a desired point A to point B; this is just weightlifting. Studying this concept and taking the time to learn to contract a muscle will decrease your risk of frustration of lack of results as you set out on the goal to build muscle.
