Ever wonder what's the perfect workout for you? After researching various health, wellness, and fitness trainers and experimenting with their suggestions and my self made methods, unfortunately I can't say I found one yet. However I found something that may be close.
Here's a little background so you understand where I'm coming from. In my school's Biology classes, we learned that muscles grow by repairing themselves. Or, the more you strain and hurt them, the better they grow. When I did further research, I found that you need to get proper nutrition in order to have the building blocks for growth.
Nutrition is another topic, but the question that we may have is, "How do we best strain our muscles?" Over the years I tried numerous methods to break my muscles past their point of failure. I've gone from endurance to weight training, but those lasted only one day. But one day I came across multiple trainers who suggested that I use muscles other than the main ones in my workouts and to extend the range of motion. So I decided to try it on something I was familiar with; hip flexors. For those who may not know, that's the machine where you sit down, bend you knees to 90 degrees, and move your legs in an inward or outward motion. The main muscle set would be the inside and outside of your thighs, but I considered what other muscles I could add.
Even though my feet couldn't move since they were locked in position, I could still exert a force on them in a new direction other than inward/outward. I knew that I didn't try extending my knees or contracting them like I would if I were to kick something, but I thought it would be worth a shot to bring in some extra muscles. What I found out surprised me. Instead of being able to max out the machine like I normally do, I struggled while in complete pain all over my thighs as I tried this workout with just half the maximum weight. Eventually I got to the maximum weight again but by that time I couldn't walk properly anymore.
How did this happen? Besides that I overextended my muscles, I redirected part of my muscles to work in the secondary direction, in this case the kicking motion. This forced the muscles in the main direction, inward/outward, to work much harder to make up for the muscles working in the secondary direction. In the case of overextending my muscles, that stretched and contracted my muscles beyond what they originally familiar with, thus straining them more than if I were to not include the secondary direction.
I thought this was a fluke at first until I went to the lateral fly machine. That one you extend your arms and pull some levers to your side parallel to the ground, arms straight in the process. I tried seeing what would happen if I turned my palms outward, inward, and down in each set. I could barely move half my original maximum weight in that workout too. When my palm faced inward, it forced my laterals to work (mid back), when down, a bit more of my shoulder, when facing outward, my whole shoulder plus a bit of my neck. In the few minutes I stayed there, I felt the effect of a half hour workout. It wasn't as painful as my leg workout, but I'm sure if I stayed as long as I did for my legs, my whole backside would be in pain and I wouldn't be able to breathe without hurting myself.
Lesson of the story? It may not be how much weight you move, but how much you can utilize other muscle groups to work in a secondary direction as well as the weight machine's primary direction. I never got beyond 1 day worth of pain with the repeated pull ups and even that 1310 lb leg press. As of this time I write this entry, it's been close to three days and my legs are still in pain even though I haven't worked them since.
This is still a recent development in my workout adventures, so stay tuned for what other mishaps I will come across. Until next time, God Bless.
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