Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Powerful Principle in Resistance Exercise That Increases the Strength of Your Body Muscles

Activities do not necessarily bring about progress in exercising. To successfully build your body muscles, it is important that you have the understanding of the basic principles that would help you build strength faster and better. Also, you should be able to determine which method best suits you and can easily fit into your personality and lifestyle. Resistance exercises, today, are aimed at increasing muscular strength and tone. Thus, you need to engage in resistance exercises two or three times in a week to develop a healthy body composition.

The powerful principle in resistance exercise that helps to build strength in your body muscles is referred to as 'overload principle'. The overload principle is common in other fitness exercises also. It generally involves gradually increasing the load (resistance load) you lift or move as you exercise. This will help your muscles withstand more and more heavy weight during and after exercise.

There are 3 major overload principles used in exercising:

Isometric Resistance

This involves pulling against a stationary object whereby you pull with progressively greater effort against a stationary object. Here, your muscles contracts against an unmovable object and thus develop. This method is discouraged for hypertension patients.

Isotonic Resistance

Many people engage in this form of resistance exercise. It involves lifting weights (for example dumb bell and other traditional free weights) of increasingly greater heaviness or loads. Unlike isometric resistance exercise whereby muscles contract against a stationary object, here, muscles contract to combat the weight of the lifted objects.

Isokinetic Resistance

Isokinetic resistance exercise involves the use of machines like 'cybex' (which may be really expensive) to gradually overload muscles during exercise. Usually, this principle is employed by professionals alone.

Should You Use Machines or Free Weights to Build Strength?

This question is best answered by you. The choice of the method of resistance training depends on your pocket and lifestyle. Some people just really like adding more weights by themselves instead of allowing a machine to automatically fill up the resistance weights.

Moreover, the use free weights can be blended into many exercises; and this is a huge advantage that many people take into consideration.

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