All skeletal muscles consist of three main fiber types. These fiber types are:
1) Slow twitch fibers- Responsible for the strength and endurance of a muscle.
2) Intermediate twitch fibers- Possess qualities of both slow and fast twitch fibers.
3) Fast twitch fibers- Responsible for the speed of muscular contraction.
The fast twitch muscle fibers are responsible for giving you speed, agility, quickness, and power. Fast twitch fibers are 10 times faster than slow fibers.
Isometric training will isolate and condition your fast twitch muscle fibers and therefore increase your speed and quickness.
Isometrics using say a resistance bands is the ideal strategy for speed training. This is partly due to fact that the energy stored in a stretched band is much greater than gravitational energy used by weights. Therefore the faster acceleration of a stretched band is 'transferred' to the muscles when used with an isometric exercise.
The biggest advantage to isometric training is two fold.
First, by forcing your muscle(s) to hold a position for a certain length of time, your body will begin to recruit and activate more and more motor units to help maintain this contraction. Motor units that are rarely exercised within a particular muscle are now brought into use, perhaps for the first time.
Second, the motor units that are recruited are forced to contract continuously, time after time, with no appreciable decrease in force output. This allows your muscles to achieve a state of maximum force very safely and effectively.
The end result is that the entire muscle matures very quickly.
The fast twitch muscle fibers are often overlooked because they are mostly ignored for purposes of contraction speed in exercise routines where the muscle length is constantly changing, when doing multiple repetitions with weights, for example. As far as your muscles are concerned this is endurance training, the job of slow twitch muscle fibers.
The Athletic Quickness Speed Training Programs use those resistance bands to help isolate, condition and quicken various muscle groups in the body. The resistance band is ideal because its resistance will change depending on how far the band is stretched.
By utilizing the unique properties of the resistance band, and maintaining the muscle at a specific length by using an isometric exercise, the muscles will develop a fast twitch response.
This means, first, that the nerves and muscles develop the memory to accelerate instantly to the contraction point of the isometric exercise, and secondly, the fast twitch muscle fibers are conditioned to maximize the speed of the muscle contraction.
By strengthening the fast twitch muscle fibers, you have increased the speed at which the muscles contract or move.
When this application is applied to your thigh flexor and extensor muscles, for example, the result is an explosive increase in your running speed and power.
The same principle holds true for increasing the speed and power of any muscles that are critical to quickness and power in any sport specific activity.
In baseball for example that would be the muscles used in hitting and pitching. In basketball quickness and power are required by the leg muscles used in jumping and making quick reactions.
If this sounded a bit confusing, just remember these two things:
1. Fast twitch muscle fibers are the key to explosive speed and quickness.
2. Isometrics using say a resistance band is the secret weapon for isolating and conditioning the fast twitch muscle fibers.
Isometric training has been around for a long time and so it is nothing new. Many extraordinary results in muscle size and strength have been achieved in a very short period of time with this type of training.
Many "experts" disagree with isometric training for several reasons: 1) They relate isometrics with weight training; and, if that is the case, they are right. Isometric training with weights will do very little for speed. 2) If they acknowledge using resistance bands, they more than likely use them with a weightlifting strategy involving repetitions, which also is of no benefit for speed.
Training techniques that use repetitions or that last more than several seconds will not isolate the fast twitch muscle fibers and will therefore train for strength and endurance - and not for speed.
The end result it will help you get strong though out and help you lift heavier in the long run,which will result in getting bigger muscles.Any training is good training in my book.Tell your trainer you want to get bigger...??He should know what to do,with your isometrics.
The currents that determine our dreams and shape our lives flow from the attitudes we nurture every day.
