How to maximise your muscles

Muscle is not just something you want for posing on the beach it is actually a very healthy thing to have. You need muscle for stability, posture, to maintain metabolism, and to have the strength required to do certain things. The question is not whether you need muscle but how you can build it. Weight bearing exercise of course is the key and one of the options many people choose is to lift weights in the gym but, according to a new study, the way you lift your weights has a big influence on what you are doing for your muscles.

According to a new study, the way you lift your weights has a big influence on what you are doing for your muscles.

The new study involved healthy male subjects in their 20s who had not done lower body strength training for at least 18 months. The subjects did weight lifting using the quadriceps muscles and were divided into two groups; one group used explosive contractions with the contractions lasting less than one second and the other group performed the more traditional contractions that lasted at least three seconds. The force produced by every contraction was prescribed and monitored. Each group trained to perform 40 contractions three times a week for three months. A range of performance and physiological measures were used to assess changes that took place.

It emerged that explosive contractions resulted in greater strength and functional capacity of the muscles whereas the more sustained contractions showed greater increases in muscle mass.

According to the researchers the explosive contraction method causes the nervous system to switch on more effectively and activate trained muscles. So if you don’t care about massive muscles but want muscles that do their job, then short explosive training might be a time efficient way to go.