FORGOTTEN, IGNORED AND DISCARDED TRAINING TECHNIQUES Part 1: Understanding Isometrics

Isometrics: what is it? Does it work? What does it do? Can it be used for hypertrophy – gaining muscle mass? Can it be used to develop or improve maximal strength – performing a single repetition with a maximal weight? How do you do it? And what kind of results can you expect if you do isometrics?  All reasonable questions. They are the questions you should be asking about everything you do in the gym.

Isometrics is a subject that is poorly understood and has a controversial history. I could discuss how isometrics became a craze in the 60’s and how it soared in popularity and then collapsed into the dust bun of training techniques that came and went, but you don’t care. It’s all sort of interesting, but you want to get to the heart of things and find what it can do for you, if anything.

What is isometrics?

Imagine you are lying down on an exercise bench. A bar is set at the midpoint of your bench press and the bar cannot be moved. You grip the bar with your usual grip and press upward as hard as you can for between 6 and 8 seconds, and then you relax. You have just performed an isometric “exercise.”

Isometrics is pulling or pushing an immoveable barbell in a position that the trainee has selected, with as much muscular force as you are capable of exerting, for a fixed period of time. With isometrics, a person can practice exerting muscular force in a given position, and over time, improve their ability to exert muscular force in that position. 

These simple statements summarize what isometrics is and what it does. The question which has bedeviled exercise enthusiasts is simple: does this do anything useful for a person who lifts weights?

Does/do isometrics work?

When you practice, over and over, pulling or pushing "as hard as you can" in a given position, your "ability" to pull or push in that exact position will improve. This was shown again and again. There is no question this happens. In fact, your maximal exertions in the positions you choose to practice will improve.  As the great Olympic weightlifter Bill March wrote,  

At the bottom line of getting stronger is coaxing the body's nerves and muscles to produce stronger and progressively more powerful contractions. Forcefully pursued, the type of short range and hold rack work I did encourages that scenario.

Is the practice of isometrics beneficial to you? Should you invest the time?  

 If it helps you reach your goals, then it’s worth your time, and if it doesn’t, then it’s not for you. People have confused expectations about what they can get out of isometrics. It can be very useful, or it can be useless and a waste of time. It depends upon your goal and how you integrate isometrics into your training. 

Does practicing isometric movements increase muscle size?

This is a tricky question. Let’s divide our population into two groups: untrained people and people who have been training a while and have gained some muscle.

There are people who maintain that an untrained person will gain some muscle mass from the practice of isometrics alone. Hmmm. Let’s be practical.

The real questions are whether any untrained person would choose to do isometrics by themselves and why. It has never been a logical choice and still isn’t. A person who has never trained with weights isn’t going to perform full body workouts with isometrics alone to gain muscle mass.

In my long, long experience - isometrics does not put on size in people who work out regularly and are using isometrics to overcome a sticking point or gain additional strength. Muscle growth is stimulated in an entirely different way for non-drug users, and this does not do it. Are there some people who will experience growth? Probably. There are always outliers who will respond to anything, but their numbers are small. Most people will be disappointed if their goal is to gain muscle mass. 

Did York say you will gain size from isometrics?

Sometimes. Did Dr. Terry Todd? Yes.

Does an improvement in your ability to exert maximal force in an isometric position “transfer” or “carryover” to full range movements, and will it increase your maximal lifts? 

This answer is tricky. The answers to this question that you read online are very simplistic and usually wrong. 

Let’s pretend you have set a goal of pressing your bodyweight for a single rep with a barbell. This is a very basic goal. If you are doing low-rep heavy presses and the bar stalls in your max attempts in the same spot consistently, that may be your "sticking point." For example, if you drive the bar well from the shoulders, and the weight repeatedly stalls at your forehead, you have information you can use. 

That is a point in the range of motion where isometrics MIGHT help. You can set the bar to the height where you are failing and practice pushing as hard as you can at that spot. You will get stronger in that position. You may find that you can lift more weight in a max press by becoming stronger in that position. If so, isometrics worked for you.

Many Olympic weightlifting experts suggested breaking down a movement like the barbell press into 3 positions and practicing each position. That makes sense for lifters trying to improve maximal lifts. A person's ability to push or pull "as hard as they can" will absolutely improve in all three positions. 

There are articles online promising “huge” strength gains from isometrics. An untrained person is going to get stronger if that person practices isometrics faithfully 2 or 3 times per week. And people who work out regularly – especially people who do not ordinarily perform maximal lifts – will also experience gains. The reasons are simple: if you rarely, if ever, exert yourself maximally, you have a lot of room for improvement.

Pretend we are able to measure how much force an untrained person can exert in a given position, and it’s 20 pounds. Months later they can generate 40 pounds. They have doubled their strength. These kinds of percentages support outlandish claims for improvement that don’t hold up for people who work out regularly. If you regularly perform maximal lifts, your body is conditioned to exert itself. In these individuals, the gains may not be as substantial.  

You can see how a writer could make amazing claims in an article or a book about isometrics that might be true for complete beginners and ultimately disappoint seasoned trainees. This is a good part of why isometrics didn’t last. The claims that were made were ridiculous and people who tried isometrics were disappointed.

The fact that people were disappointed because of over-promising is a familiar story in weight training. Over-promising, followed by disappointment, is the main reason that worthwhile training techniques are tossed out and get a bad name as being worthless.  

What if you are doing a press exercise for reps to build shoulder mass, and you run out of steam on rep 8? 

You will not know your personal "sticking point" in a maximal lift based on an 8-rep set. So, here is the first place that people go wrong. Isometrics is not helpful to people interested in improving their “ability” to do more reps on an exercise. To be even more clear, if you are trying to get from 7 to 10 reps on the press, isometrics is not the tool to choose.

COMING SOON

In installment number 2, I will discuss the method of choice for performing isometrics which does not involve a stationary bar; and how to incorporate it into your workouts. In installment 3, I’ll discuss the tensolator aka the “BULLWORKER.” In number 4 we’ll talk about partial repetitions. And in article 5 we’ll discuss “supports.” 

Note: all articles are updated. Pictures, videos and additional information may be added at a later date, When they are, announcements will appear in the newsletter and on facebook under jpcarlsonwriter.

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