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Friday, February 16, 2007
“Control the Weight, Don’t Let It Control You!”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When I say, “control the weight, don’t let it control you,” I’m usually talking to a client as they are lifting a weight going too fast. When you do the exercise too fast, you are at a risk of hurting yourself as you do the exercise. As you weight training, you are performing isotonic (don’t stay up late trying to remember that) contractions which involves two phases (two separate contractions).
One of the contractions is known as the positive (concentric) contraction and the other is known as the negative (eccentric) contraction. For example, when doing a biceps curl, as you curl the weight up you are doing the positive contraction. At this time the muscle fibers in your biceps are shortening. When you lower the weight, you are doing the negative contraction and the muscle fibers are lengthening. Unfortunately, it is during the negative contraction where most people will lose good form. (For a related article read Maximize Your Training Efforts.)
This is where the phrase (“control the weight…”) can have a double meaning. It is during the negative contraction that you develop true strength, improve muscle tone and most importantly, the ability to improve your metabolism (thus, controlling your body weight). To give your a real world example, look at any Olympic power-lifter. They are large and even strong, however, they are not lean and don’t have that much muscle tone. Yes, they are extremely powerful, but power has nothing to do with strength. In power-lifting, the only type of contractions involved are positive contractions.
Without getting too technical and talking about things such as the sliding filament theory and cross bridges in muscle fibers, just know that when you take your time in the negative contraction you will create more lean muscle tissue. When you create more lean muscle tissue, you increase your ability to burn more fat. Muscle is the only tissue in the body that uses fat as energy.
So, the next time you lift some weights, take your time. Don’t try to get through it as fast as possible. You will be less likely to hurt yourself and turn yourself into a fat burning machine (so long as you eat right and do cardiovascular exercise too).
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