|
No matter what your fitness level, everyone should know about muscle action. It is important to learn how the body functions so you can perform exercises properly and safely.
Understanding muscle action will help you work out more efficiently and get the most benefits from your exercise routine.
Once you know muscle actions, you can tailor an exercise program to help you reach your goals. Familiarize yourself with the proper names of the major strength training groups, where they are located in the body and how they create movement. This will give you a better idea of how and where you should feel each exercise that you perform.
There are 3 different type of muscle actions: Concentric (the groups shortens), eccentric (the groups lengthen) and isometric (exercise is held actively at a fixed length). All 3 of these are important in your fitness program. All contractions occur in every exercise for each group. For example, in a bicep curl, you are shortening the biceps when you curl the arm and you are lengthening the triceps when you are straightening the arm.
It is also important to the specificity of exercises. In order to increase size or strength of any area of the body, you must cause damage to that group.
For example, if you want to increase the size of your calves, you would do calf raises, not shoulder presses. You also need adequate time for recovery in between workouts (about 48 hours) and all areas should be stretched for 30-60 seconds at the end of your workout.
|
