Last week we discussed the basic contraction types of our muscles and had a little look at the force/velocity spectrum.
Today we'll look at contraction types in further depth where we looked at basic eccentric, isometric and concentric contractions in part 1.
All 3 actions are performed in pretty every movement you do. When you kick, your hip flexors perform an eccentric contraction as the lengthen when the leg swings back.
Once the leg has gone back as far as you're range of motion allows then it momentarily stays in the one spot which is the isometric contraction of the hip flexors. If you didn't perform an isometric contraction then you're leg would simply keep going back like a piece if spaghetti!
As the leg comes forwards the the hip flexors go through a powerful concentric contraction as the muscles shorten and kick the ball.
Each portion is extremely important.
Think of muscles as rubber bands - the further you lengthen the band upon pulling it back (eccentric), the further it will go once you release it (concentric).
Rubber band like muscles have great reactivity which is another word for elasticity which is another word for bouncey-ness that all refrer to what you think is the ability to jump high (legs like pogo sticks, springs etc).
Training with weights using deliberate and slow rep speeds builds great tension which is great of you're looking for hypertrophy as time under tension is high, but sucks balls for building reactivity which is what all the great athletes possess.
The image up top is of a bloke I play footy with who as you can see can hide behind a point post but is 101% reactive and takes mark of the year every week...well he tries anyway!
When you train to create tension then when you want to be reactive then you're body has a hard time releasing the tension as that it is all it knows.
Worst of all, trying to push a tense boy into reactiveness will probably result in an injury of some kind.
What you can do in the gym is to perform your reps with a greater focus on 1 or more of the muscle actions rather then a slow deliberate speed for the entire rep.
Here are some ways you can do this:
Fast Eccentric (Drops) - trains force absorption which is the pulling the back portion of the rubber band analogy from earlier so the further you pull it back, the more force you can put out in the concentric.
Overspeed Eccentrics - if the faster you can drop results in the more force you can exert then if you can overload the eccentric portion of the rep, then you'll put out even greater force:
Fast Eccentric + Isometric - you pretty much can't perform a fast eccentric without an isometric anyway as you saw from the fast eccentrics video above but you would add a times isometric when training to improve your stabilisation from eccentric to concentric.
Fast Eccentric + Isometric + Fast Concentric - this is a progression from fast eccentric + isometric where you are now trying to develop rate of force development out of the isometric position.
Fast Concentric - this should be a given for 99% of your training, always focusing on the performing the concentric portion as fast as you can. Even if bar speed doesn't literally look fast, your intent should.
Fast Eccentric + Fast Concentric - these would be used in a peaking phase with the aim being to perform as many reps as possible in a specific time frame but no longer then 10secs. Without building great eccentric, isometric and concentric strength as well as being able to release tension during the lift, then these would be pretty much useless to you.
Rebounds - this uses the drop and catch but then you push the bar back up as fast as you can using continuous reps which improves your ability to release tension and momentarily relax your muscles. Sprinting is the equivalent to this for lower body but here's an upper body version:
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