Do you know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) both recommend that all adults participate in muscle strength training exercises at least twice a week? Besides improving overall fitness and balance, strength training will help protect you from back and other skeletal injuries. Many think that strength training means that they need to go to the gym, but that’s not true. In fact, isometric exercises can be performed easily pretty-much anywhere and isometric workout results have been proven to build muscle strength in less time than fancy gym machines.
Isometric Training Results Take Less Time Than Going to the Gym
It’s difficult for most of us to set aside a large chunk of time for exercise. In addition to the time you actually spend working out, you have to consider the drive to your gym, putting on athletic gear, and waiting for equipment to become available. Without at least an hour of free time, you can forget about the gym.
Isometric exercises don’t take nearly as long because your isometric gym is basically anywhere. Research shows exercising with isometrics can be much more efficient than working out with commercial weight-lifting equipment. An article published in the Journal of Applied Research shows that isometric exercises results in 4.1 to 15.9 times more muscle work in an equivalent time than a similar exercise on a weight machine. So if you’re short on time, isometric workout results may help you reach your fitness goals faster.
The Science Behind Isometric Workout Results
The Journal of Applied Research study shows that isometric exercise benefits muscles in several ways. Since dynamic exercises such as lifting weights require muscles to contract and relax, they pump blood back to the heart. Isometric exercise’s sustained muscle effort, however, temporarily stops blood from flowing freely.
Preventing blood flow deprives oxygen from your mitochondria and stimulates the production of free oxygen radicals. This in turn reduces the amount of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Since a lower concentration of ATP has been associated with building muscle strength, you can expect to get faster results from isometric exercises than dynamic exercises.
This may sound a bit complicated, but it’s just a scientific way of explaining why isometric exercises improve muscle strength faster than dynamic exercise. When you’re looking for quick results, it makes sense to choose an isometric fitness program because of how the exercises effect your muscles.
It’s Easy to Stay Interested in Isometric Exercises
Lifting weights can be boring. Even when you listen to fun music, it’s hard to stay interested in traditional exercise plans that keep you in the gym. Isometric training results can come more quickly and keep you more motivated.
The Activ5 from Activbody will help to keep you interested in working out. The Activ5 gamifies workouts, so you stay more engaged while you exercise. The amount of pressure you apply to the Activ5 device controls how your character moves in games. That mean great results while having fun. You’ll stay so focused on Activ5 games that you’ll breeze through workout sessions without feeling bored. Activ5’s mobile app also creates personalized isometric workouts.
Going to the gym is the most popular way for people to gain strength, but it isn’t the most efficient. When you want fast isometric workout results without spending a lot of money or wasting valuable time, isometric exercise is clearly the better option.
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adults/index.htm