Overcoming Isometrics, a Training style to Increase Strength

The training you never heard of but need

Bruce Lee was a film actor who was known for popularizing martial arts in the 20th century. You may have seen him in films such as Fist of Fury or The Big Boss. Besides filmmaking, Bruce Lee was also known for his incredible physique and his abilities as a fighter. He had a unique style of training that allowed him to be able to perform some crazy moves such as the dragonfly. One important aspect of Bruce Lee’s training is overcoming isometrics.

Overcoming isometrics is a unique style of training in which your muscles aren’t contracting or lengthening. They’re kept in a static hold to allow you to exert as much force on an immovable object as possible. An example of this is loading the bench press with a weight you cannot lift then exerting as much force on it. This allows for the maximal amount of muscle recruitment of both your HTMU(high threshold motor units) and LTMU(low threshold motor units). These are just your fast(HTMU) and slow-twitch(LTMU) muscle fibers. Fast-twitch muscles fibers allow for explosive strength but fatigue quickly, while slow-twitch muscles fibers allow for more of an endurance-based style of training.

Training

I’m not going to go too into detail about the different types of exercises and training methods involved in Bruce Lee’s workout, because this article is specifically geared towards overcoming isometrics. If anyone would like me to do an in-depth article on him comment down below.

Throughout Bruce Lee’s career, he had many different training styles, always experimenting in order to get better results. Here’s an example above of one of many of Bruce Lee’s workouts from the book, Bruce Lee the Art of Expressing The Human Body. It’s not clear how frequential he worked out per week, but a good starting point for anyone would be 3x per week.

Pros and Cons of Overcoming Isometrics

There are both cons and pros to performing overcoming isometrics, let's start with the pros. Overcoming isometrics is very beneficial when it comes to building a maximal amount of strength. It’s a lot like performing your one-rep max sense you're exerting as much force as you can on an object. The downside to overcoming isometrics is that it’s a static type of training. There’s no muscle movement meaningless hypertrophy. In order to combat this issue, it’s best to incorporate overcoming isometrics at various positions in order to get the maximum amount of results. For example, if you are performing bicep curls hold the position at the top, middle, and bottom.

Final Words

If you’ve never heard of overcoming isometrics, give it a try I promise you won’t be disappointed. And if you are at all interested in Bruce Lee’s training and would like me to do an in-depth article leave it in the comments below.

— Thanks for reading!💖