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Lift fast.
Every Friday night I run an informal session, “The Friday Night Club” where a bunch of my testosterone fuelled clients get together to prepare themselves for a weekend out on the town. Yes, there’s a lot of bench pressing and bicep curls. There’s even more not so subtle preening in front of the mirror but that’s a different story entirely.
Me being me, well - I get paid for it and they enjoy it so I don’t mind the rather shallow aim of the session but I do make sure the training is still effective and one of the key components of these sessions is we lift fast.
Fast lifting is often neglected, probably because it’s as tough as nails but the results are phenomenal. Fast twitch muscle fibres have more potential for mass, will make you stronger, faster and improves performance in all avenues of life. Put it this way. Do you sprint for the bus or take a slow jog?
The best lifts for fast lifting are the compound moves - bench press, squats, lunges and kettlebells. I love the traditional Olympic lifts but these take a lot of time to learn and perfect, whereas kettlebells have a much shorter training curve. These develop overall co-ordination and allows fatigue to be distributed all round the body rather than in one specific area. Give it a try. You’ll love it (then hate it the next day, but love it the day after that)
Rest Pause. Rest-pause is a simple principle that makes your weight training incredibly tough. The method is simple. You lift the weight. Lower, relax, and then lift again. When you typically lift each rep is banged out continually, and this makes use of the stretch shortening reflex. This is basically where, once a muscle is stretched, there is a natural tendency for it to contract again. So if, for example, you are performing a set of dumbbell bench presses, when you lower the weights the stretch will trigger a reflex to lift them again. Remove or minimise that reflex and you’ll find the lift that much tougher and this translates to better results.
Odd Lifting. If you get a chance try this quick experiment. Grab a 20kg weight plate and pick it up. Now find a 20kg bag of, well anything - sand, rice, cement - and lift the same. Which one is harder? Yep - the bags are much harder to lift. This is because the shape and constant shifting of weight distribution force you to dynamically change the effort you use to lift and this leads to stronger stabiliser muscles and more effort used in the lift. Odd lifts can be done with anything, your shopping for example. Kids are great but I don’t recommend you swing them about. Sandbags, kettlebells, water pipes - these all make the lift harder, and more effective.
There you go - three ways to boost your workouts, something we all need after a month in the gym! Hope these keep your motivation up.
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