In the fitness room, I see many friends who blindly pursue training weights. Even if they sacrifice correct posture, they have to lift dumbbells and barbells that they can't handle... These friends will actually gain muscle, but the muscle-building efficiency is relatively reduced. The risk of injury is significantly increased, so why bother? The most important thing to train safely and effectively is to learn to feel your muscles contract!
Fitness ≠ Weightlifting
For those of you who are fitness-oriented, what you pursue is the growth of muscles and the appearance of lines. Therefore, when we go to the gym to train muscles, not to lift weights. We use appropriate weights and techniques to train target muscle groups in order to grow muscles, and weightlifting is just a method to achieve this goal.
Muscle training - learn to isolate the target muscle group (use your chest for chest training, and use your back for back training)
In fact, it is impossible to completely isolate a group of muscles, but at least you can use one group of muscles to complete a certain action.
After doing bench presses, do you feel no sensation in your chest muscles but suffer from triceps pain for 2 days? Have you tried deadlifting but your hips are still strong but your back is sore for 3 days?
These examples prove that you will not isolate the target muscle group you want to train, but instead overuse other auxiliary muscles.
What is the reason?
1. Can’t feel the contraction of the target muscle group, just want to complete the action;
2. Wrong technique and posture;
3. The resistance weight is too heavy, Therefore, the target muscle group is not strong enough and needs the assistance of other muscles to complete the movement.
In fact, not feeling the muscle contraction will directly lead to the cause The emergence of 2 and 3! Because you can’t feel the muscles, you don’t know whether you have used the target muscles, and therefore you cannot detect errors in technique and posture.
Similarly, you don’t know the target muscles. Is it tightening during the movement, so I don’t know if the weight is too heavy, and whether other auxiliary muscle groups are used to complete the movement.
How to learn to feel the muscles? The two most important methods:
a. Understand what muscles are used in each movement, and keep in mind the target muscles
For example, the main movement of pull-ups is During exercise, the latissimus dorsi muscle contracts and drives the humerus (upper arm) closer to the body, so the body rises upwards
Concentration of thoughts (like sexual fantasy). : When you do pull-ups, you should concentrate on thinking about the latissimus dorsi muscles. When exerting force, you should feel the latissimus dorsi muscles contracting and exerting force. When your body descends, you should feel the pulling sensation of the latissimus dorsi muscles. In other words, you should The whole set of movements must be done with the latissimus dorsi in mind.
If you don’t have the strength to do pull-ups, you must first train the pull-down and learn how to exert force in the latissimus dorsi.
Multiple groups of muscles are involved, so pay more attention to the latissimus dorsi
b. Choose light weight rather than heavy weight
Please remember, you have to learn to feel the contraction of the target muscle, not just complete it Action, so the choice of weight is simply to choose light rather than heavy, which is especially important for beginners!
Take the bench press as an example. Many novices ask me why I always do three heads when benching. The muscles are tired first, but the chest muscles don't feel much. This is because the strength of the chest muscles is not enough to cope with the weight you choose, so in order to protect itself, the body has to use the triceps to help lift the weight. The mechanism isIt's important because our bodies are designed to cope with sudden challenges and dangers. Just imagine if you can only use your lower body when jumping high, and your upper body needs to remain stationary, how high can you jump?
So, to learn to feel the muscles tighten, you must adjust the weight to a level that your target muscles can handle. If it exceeds, you may be misled by the signals sent by other auxiliary muscles.
How to adjust the weight?
Look for the feeling and slowly increase the weight until you can no longer feel the muscle weight throughout the movement, then just go one step lighter!