So, you will ask yourself, how have these muscle building workouts been discovered?
A little bit of history:
After suffering from a knee injury, bodybuilder Pete Sisco returned to the gym for the first time in what he thought was way too long. To his surprise he achieved a personal best after having had 6 weeks off. Can you imagine that? A bodybuilder who spent hours and hours per week in a gym, and then had 6 weeks off - and the result was a personal best! Believe me, that made Pete think about the value of his muscle building workouts! <>BR>
Well, he teamed up with another bodybuilder, John Little and started a research project that lasted many years. They have studied rest periods, duration of exercise, weights, workout intensity, movement of muscle required for maximum benefit - the works.
And their research resulted in two very amazing findings:
The first finding:
Muscle growth is created by high intensity of short duration and progressive overload! That means, to grow muscle it is not important to do an exercise with a lot of repetitions (and low weights). It is far better to use a very high weight over a very short period of time (about 7 seconds), performed in the strongest range of motion of the trained muscle.
Hey, you don't need to do 20 repetitions and 5 sets! You just do one very short and very intense push/pull against a resistance and your muscle will know that it has to grow!
The second finding:
Pete and John found out that the stimulation of development was only half of the puzzle. The second half was to make certain that the rest period (recovery time) between muscle building workouts was long enough. They found that the necessary rest period between workouts grows quickly as people grow in strength and ability to generate muscle. Think about this: They found out that it is better to rest longer! They found out that with weight training, less is more! Doesn’t that sound great?
'Why?', you ask? Good question!
Because: 'Every day is kidney day' says Pete Sisco.
Look, normal strength training routines usually consist of two different muscle building workouts, where in each workout you train only half of your body, e.g. one workout you do upper body, the other workout you do back and legs. And this is to not overwork you muscles. But think about your heart, your lungs, and your kidneys! They train each workout, yes, they even train EACH EXERCISE!!!! Each time you push up this bar, your heart and your lungs get a boost, as well as your muscle. When do they have time to recover? You guessed it – they don't get this time, when you are working out three times a week!! And what happens then? You plateau!
To get around a plateau, you would normally change the exercise, wouldn't you?
Pete and John found a much better method:
They found out that you need to rest LONGER!!
So, how do you know how long your rest periods have to be?
The only way to know that you have rested long enough is to compare your results from your muscle building workouts – as long as your numbers are going up, your rest period is perfect. One the day you discover that your numbers are result cannot match up with last workout's results, you know: "STOP!!! I have to rest longer!"
You see, your muscle building workouts stimulate the muscles, then you allow them to recover and after the recovery period they grow. By continuing this pattern and increasing the intensity of the stimulation you can continue to grow the muscle avoiding the plateau period most fitness solutions ultimately experience.
And these two findings became officially known in 1992 as the new strength training method: Static Contraction Training (SCT)
1. High intensity, short duration stimulation of the muscle and progressive overload
2. Infrequent workouts
3. Only use of the most intense exercises that promise best muscle growth
Well, so far, so good. If you had found out in 1992 about SCT, you would have had to use real weights to do this type of training.
Luckily it’s 2008 – and Tony Reno, an American inventor, has created a unique equipment to enable you to do Static Contraction Training without using any weights! Explosive Fitness was born!
And then, we here in New Zealand thought that this will revolutionise the way the world is doing their strength training - and we wanted to be with the first group to help to make it happen - and here we are - 7SECONDS Fitness!
If you have any questions, comments, issues about these muscle building workouts - or to request a demo session (if you are in New Zealand :-), click here to contact us
Have a wonderful day!
Heide and Tim