A little discovery

[xenonomicon]

This is more of a warning than anything. I've been doing nothing but iso-power flex exercises for the past 2 weeks. Each day for 1 contraction @ 10 seconds per exercise. My muscle strength and size have made an improvement greatly. However when I do any lifting at work I feel the stress from the weight on my tendons. This has lead me to believe that Iso-flexing will build great muscle strength and size however doesn't stress the tendons enough. So starting sunday I'll begin my split routine.

Sun, Tues, Thurs Isometrics 1 rep 10 seconds per (the king of tendon builder)
Mon, Wed, Fri: Power flexing 1 rep 10 seconds per (same thing weights do but better)
and keep up with the walking.

Anybody know a good way to kill sugar addiction?

I like the new board.

[gruntbrain]

Try flexing while walking; it'd at least help burn off the sugar & ramp up your heartrate

[Royce]

The about questions whether or not DVRs build tendon strength has come up repeatedly.

I?m going to re-post my previous post on this matter.

From a previous post by Royce:
You can?t exercise a muscle without its tendons coming into play. Conversely, you can?t exercise tendons without the muscle coming into play. They work as a unit.

As I have pointed out in the past, when people have had a little too much stimuli given to a muscle during electro shock therapy, a number of things have happened: tendons have been torn from their attachment points on the bone; the bones have broken, or the muscles have torn.

Assuredly, the tendons have been involved once the muscles have been stimulated. We concur that DVRs work the muscle; therefore, they also work the tendon. If you stress the tendon, it will grow stronger as will the muscle to which it attaches. Both the tendons and the muscles are stressed. Under strong enough stress muscles sometimes are injured; at other times, tendons are injured. Some folks appear more prone to muscle injury, while others tend to incur more tendon injuries. Others are pretty much injury free. It?s hard to know all of the factors involved.



The assertion that you have to pick up heavy things if your are going to develop the power to move or lift heavy things simply isn?t true. Both DVRS/isokinetics and isometrics train your body to move or lift heavy things.

Consider the various isokinetic, mechanical exercise apparatus: Exergeni, Mini gym, Kaiser machines. All of these devices have proven themselves.

Then, although they aren?t isokinetic devices, we have various elastic apparatus and steel cables. Train with any of these devices, and you will be able to move heavy things.

But let?s continue to focus on DVRs/isokinetics. There are endless numbers of studies to prove their efficiency. Certainly, if the only thing you want to do is pick up iron, you can make a valid argument that some specificity advantages comes into play when using a barbell. I will grant that. I used weight training for many years, and it has its good points. If we are talking about boxing, wrestling and other sports the training effect of weights may well be inferior to isometrics and DVRs, because in those sports DVRs/isokinetics provide more specificity. Example: resistance supplied by a DVR/isokinetic straight jab is more like a real punch than one in which resistance is supplied by a dumbbell. I invite folks to try and then tell me the results.


However, as I have mentioned, Jon Cole used isokinetics/DVRs and broke deadlift records. Isokinetics/DVRs supply the power to compete in the ?iron game?. All sorts of rehabilitation has been done with isokinetics, and after rehab, those who wish to go back to weights find their strength levels high. To a very large extent, resistance is resistance.

I can tell you from my own experience that I have not lost strength over the past year and a half since stopping all weight training save for a few brief tests that I have run on myself.

It?s also worth noting that no one has come up with a way to solely test tendon strength. All we have is the assertion that someone?s tendons are or are not strong. Certainly, the fact that someone injures a tendon isn?t solid proof that it was weak; rather, it is simply evidence that it was in some manner over stressed.Tendon strength

[gs300tx]

This is more of a warning than anything. I've been doing nothing but iso-power flex exercises for the past 2 weeks. Each day for 1 contraction @ 10 seconds per exercise. My muscle strength and size have made an improvement greatly. However when I do any lifting at work I feel the stress from the weight on my tendons. This has lead me to believe that Iso-flexing will build great muscle strength and size however doesn't stress the tendons enough. So starting sunday I'll begin my split routine.

Sun, Tues, Thurs Isometrics 1 rep 10 seconds per (the king of tendon builder)
Mon, Wed, Fri: Power flexing 1 rep 10 seconds per (same thing weights do but better)
and keep up with the walking.

Anybody know a good way to kill sugar addiction?

I like the new board.

Xenonomicon, when you say you performed 1 contraction for exercise, does that mean that you worked out each muscle once? E.G Did you do something like, Bicep Powerfelx, then Tricep Power Flex etc etc, or was it multiple "sets" for each body part?
Thanks

[MikeNY]

Royce well thought out post and very good information. Isometric Powerflexs should build both muscle and tendon.

[blackbelt]

I have to wonder.

Is the stress you are feeling in your wrist area???

When performing DVR's, it's easy to place more focus on the "major" muscle being worked, and neglect the forearm muscles used for gripping.

[xenonomicon]

Just 1 flex per muscle. As for the original post I know that the tendons are worked in both isometric contraction and raw muscle conraction (flexing) however it is the degree of stress placed upon the tendons or muscles. Isometrics done either classic or against an unmoveable outside source (iso-gym) will place the bulk of stress on the tendons equal to the contracting power of the muscles worked. Just peak flexing places more stress on the muscle itself than on the tendons. That whole intermuscle tension thing.

One other thing I do not use dvr's. I use muscle control and isometrics, which are done on my iso-gym.