How many times do you see people in the gym, lifting weights that seem too heavy for them by using many different muscle parts to lift it? A common example would be gym users doing the barbell bicep curls. You will see this guy who is carrying too heavy and he jerks or bends his back backwards to assist the lifting (using back muscles). Developing such a habit of weightlifting will not only produce lousy results, it will put you at risk of injuries.
*Muscle Isolation
One of the beautiful secrets of muscle growth is muscle isolation. The key principle of muscle isolation is to isolate the muscle group that you are targeting and to prevent the other muscle parts from assisting too much in the exercise. Positioning of the exercise will help you cut off assistance from other muscle groups.
How should you lift?
1. Muscle isolation – concentrate on target muscle for growth.
By isolating the selected muscle group of your choice, you are actually focusing on the specific muscle for growth. If you had read about muscle building workouts or muscle building routines, you should know how to plan your workout to determine which muscle groups to workout in different gym sessions. There are muscle building workouts and routines at the end of this article for you!.
An example of a muscle building routine.
Day 1 – Chest and Biceps (what exercises, how many sets and repetitions)
Day 2 – Shoulders and back (what exercises, how many sets and repetitions)
2. Slow and constant pace – Bouncing reduces effort.
Bouncing and jerking are the common ways used by people in the gym to lift weights beyond them. Bouncing and jerking are 2 bad habits of using momentum to lift weights. By using momentum, you actually reduce the effort required by your muscles to lift the weight. This results in lifting heavy weights for lousy results. Would that make any sense to you? Lifting slowly and at a constant pace would reduce momentum and maximize your results. By lifting slowly, your body would find it impossible to make use of any momentum for lifting. However, by lifting at a constant pace, your body conditions itself to a regular pattern.
Example, in a long distance run, you will find it easier to maintain your constant pace as your body gets conditioned to the regular running pace.
3. Do not lock your arms.
Do you realize that you lock your arms after finishing every repetition? Locking of arms is a another commonly found bad habit that you should stop practicing. By locking your arms, you are resting them by taking the pressure off the targeted muscle! Try the bench press without locking your arms and you will really feel them working out. Pressure will be totally on your chest muscles instead of your arm joints.
4. Increase weight with every set.
Our body adapts to weightlifting and you wont see results if you keep working out with the same muscle building routine and weights! After weeks of muscle building workouts, weights that once got your muscles aching will be lifted effortlessly and you will need to continuously challenge your body by increasing the intensity of your muscle building workouts.
Options to increasing intensity:
1. Increasing the number of times you workout a week
2. Increasing the weight that you use for your muscle building routine in kilograms or pounds.
3 Increasing the number of repetitions for each muscle building exercise.
4. Increase number of sets of exercise for the same repetitions and weight.
5. Decrease rest time between particular exercises and every set of exercise. (Increases time under tension)
do you want to build muscles as quickly and effectively as possible?
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