Isometric training is a very practical way to gain strength, muscle or preserve muscle mass if you workout at home with a limited variety of equipment. Isometrics is basically when you exert force, but without movement, a static contraction.
Trying to move against a very heavy, immovable object, like a wall, a tree, a car, that exceeds your capacity builds massive strength through high muscle tension which traditional bodyweight exercises often lack.
The Advantages of Isometric Training
Build Muscle with Isometrics Through Blood Occlusion
Isometric training fatigue the muscle through time under tension. Without movement, there’s no rest within a set with “easy phases” at end joint angles (like the top position of a squat or a bicep curl). That keep your blood vessels compressed, causing oxygen deficit within the muscle, triggering anabolic signals.
Isometrics to Build Strength
Strength-wise, when you strain at an immovable object you reach max force, which means all muscle fibers will turn on, provided there’s a max voluntary effort. That’s when the surrounding muscles, and eventually your whole body tense up, which is a recipe for serious strength gains!
Isometric Training Strengthens Neural Pathways
Static positions have the advantage of allowing more time to focus on certain points only. As opposed to dynamic training where descending, ascending, and the continuous change in force vectors often distracts attention, isometrics not only reduce factors, but allow the prolonged presence of a stress, specific to the given position and joint angles. This allows the perception of the exercise to “stick better” and also improve mind-muscle connection.
Easy on the Joints
Since there’s no movement involved, no speed, acceleration, or deceleration, of which latter phase most sports injuries occur, isometric training is somewhat less strenous on the joints. Also, involves fewer overuse injuries, wear and tear on the tissues are minimal.
Fast Recovery
Soreness is typically the result of when a muscle has to lengthen under tension, aka the eccentric, or negative phase of a lift. Since isometric training uses static positions, there’s less muscle damage which means no soreness, pain, and stiffness the next day. Faster recovery means you can train more frequently.
Isometrics Drawbacks
The main drawback of isometric training is that you cannot really measure your force production to plan and track progressive overload. Fortunately, there are dedicated isometric platforms like the Isochain to come around this flaw.
A Word of Caution
It’s quite easy to overload your central nervous system with isometrics. That means even though you’re not sore, muscles feel ready for battle, your central governor may not be in the mood. A balanced nervous system in sports is a pivotal point in injury prevention.
How to Perform for Best Results
It’s been covered already that isometrics build both strength and muscle mass quite effectively. Depending on what your goals are, some methods work better than others.
There are two types of isometric training:
With the so-called yielding isometrics, you hold a weight or a position statically, that does not exceed your strength, and normally you could move for repetitions, aka you have control of. Typically pushups, pull-ups held at halfway for time or holding a plank, etc. These types of isometrics are best to fatigue the muscle metabolically, also great for focused controlled isolation.
Unyielding isometrics on the other hand involve non-movable objects, and therefore max force production. Naturally, you won’t be able to hold a max effort squat against a chain as long as a partial range push-up, hence it will emphasize strength gains via stronger neural signaling and muscle fiber recruitment.
To stimulate muscle growth
Choose a body angle where you have the least mechanical advantage and press or pull until your muscles fry. This method works especially well for isolation exercises. Think of a bicep curl, where your arms are bent in 90-degree flexion, at the least advantageous force angle. It is practical because put another way, you have to work the least there to get the most, which is what all of us lazy home workout aficionados look for.
To build strength
On the other hand, if you are after building general strength, choosing an angle with the biggest mechanical disadvantage would be less optimal. This is simply because you won’t be able to exert as much force as you would, had you opt for a more stable position. It’s quite similar to the often mentioned bad example of Bosu ball training, where your nervous system is too busy fighting against instability to produce the meaningful force necessary for strength gains.
Though I don’t mean to say that isometrics were meant to be used only in a certain way. If your sticky point, where you struggle the most is the bottom of the squat, then it really makes sense to train isometrically in the squat bottom position to bring up strength deficit at that specific angle. On the other hand, max force production and whole-body tension would better be achieved in the athletic position, at around 125 knees and 145 hip angles.
How to Program
Although you can train isometrics every day, in that case, keep the volume low, the total net muscle work should not exceed 10 minutes/session.
Also, you should test your strength in all the positions you wish to make progress with so that you can precisely plan your progressions based on those max holds.
Once you have your numbers, (time-wise or force-wise) you can alternate between light, moderate and hard days. Obviously, the recommended times down below are not precise measurements but should give you a rough estimate on the adequate intensity level.
- On light days, choose a variation of the exercise that allows you to hold it statically for a time barely reaching over 20 seconds.
- On moderate days, shoot for a variation that you can hold for around 12 seconds.
- On hards days, you either go with the unyielding method or choose the most difficult version of the exercise and try to hold it for around 6 seconds.
- Isometrics work very well with both whole-body compound exercises (squats, pushups, presses, deadlifts, etc.) to build strength, and also with isolation exercises to build muscle, like a bicep curl, triceps extension, pec fly, delt raises, etc.
- Volume and voluntary effort depend on your goals. For a real burn occlusion type of training aim for 20+ seconds, but avoid going until failure unless that’s specific to your goal.
- For the best of both worlds, strength, and hypertrophy, 6-8 second max tension holds are the golden mean for 5-10 sets.
- Beginners should start with low volume sets of 3-second holds and rather increase the number of sets before aiming for longer reps.
