Overcoming Isometrics & Body-Fat Spot Reduction
Intro
Bud Jeffries Video
Spot Reduction & Related Studies
Who Benefits?
Possible Game Plan
OCI Timing Protocol
Wrap Up
Intro
I’ve always been active growing up due to the leadership of my parents. From there to my time in the military (part of that being in Japan) I’ve always been around leaner populations. I’ve never had problems with weight unless it was gaining it so take this post with some grain of salt compared to my others.
I’m a student of history and trends that have occurred all throughout our time on this planet. When there’s an issue that becomes more prevalent in the past few decades vs the past few centuries we should take note of that. This post will be about large-bodied individuals and ways that I can theorize how OCIs can help them.
My solution is always just to live more in line with our human nature.
Walking (especially over difficult terrain)
Good Food (especially not anything processed)
Good Sleep
Some Sun
& some fasting here and there
However, there are aspects of OCIs that might facilitate a quicker adaption in one’s body composition if they desire not just overall fat loss, but possibly in specific spots.
Bud Jeffries Video
From 2:20 - 3:25, you’ll find this guy by the name of Bud Jeffries talking about the possibility of spot reduction of body fat through the use of OCIs. Now, he hasn’t used OCIs in this fashion himself but there are those in the past who have. Enjoy!!!!
Interesting ain’t it? Logically it makes sense. With OCIs, one can condense dozens of repetitions of a dynamic exercise into a few seconds. This in theory would bring about greater change in less time. Not much energy is spent during the workout on technique or balance but on the contraction of your muscle fibers to a high degree. With dynamics, the tension in your muscles changes throughout the range of motion. This is why you may see people lifting weights with chains on the bar or strapping the bar to the rack using resistance bands.
The great part about it is that OCIs don’t exhaust you like other forms of training. They do the opposite.
There haven’t been many studies on OCIs but there have been some in terms of static contraction which is just flexing your muscles like a bodybuilder on stage.
Diet was used in conjunction with the training and the result was loss of fat and better body composition. Static contractions can be a beneficial tool in your training belt as long as it’s used correctly. However, for someone new, tension can be better used to build up the body if they use multiple other muscle groups simultaneously. It also saves time.
The body is a unit, it should be trained as such.
And if diet and flexing a handful of muscles can have benefits, what can throwing your whole body behind an OCI posture for half a minute do?
Other than Bruce Lee, Budd Jeffries mentioned Steve Justa whose book I have. Steve used OCIs to become pretty lean as you see from the photos. However, his OCI workouts were a marathon compared to what most of us in the OCI world do.
With the study I have above and Steve’s experience, we have a clear picture of the body composition-improving capabilities of Static Contraction/OCIs.
Let’s see if it can be more direct looking at related studies.
Spot Reduction & Related Studies
There are certain things you don’t say among a group of personal trainers and one of them is “Spot reduction.” You type in those words into Google and most of the results are declaring that this is a myth. But there are some diamonds in the ruff and I found some studies that point to this. One of them is another static contraction study!!!
The response to some of the studies like this is concerns over the measurement of fat tissue.
Was it a quality measurement?
Did muscle growth affect the sag of the skin being measured?
Will we find out why kids love cinnamon toast crunch?
I believe one thing to solve this in the future would be to do the measurements using something like an InBodyTest which does a good job of not only measuring your body fat but your muscle mass as well.
However, if a belief has been around for a long time, it will take a great deal of work to fight against it. For those studies declaring that spot reduction is a myth, were the methods and the analysis influenced by the bias of the researchers?
It’s called Overcoming Isometrics not Overgivingup Isometrics!!!!
Occam’s Razor, why wouldn’t high degrees of muscle tension in a specific area change the internal and surrounding cellular environment?
Who Benefits?
Another thing I was thinking about as I was writing this and that appears in many of my articles is who benefits from the “——————-” Narrative?
Who benefits from the “Spot Reduction is a myth” Narrative?
Personal Trainers
Nutritionists
Yall - “Hey, aren’t you a certified personal trainer?”
Me-
If someone, to get rid of fat can just do high reps of a dynamic exercise to tone up a specific area of the body we’ll be out of work. Have some people done this type of training and failed… I’m sure of it. But OCIs are a whole different ball game.
Possible Game Plan
If I was in a different pair of shoes and had some pounds on me I would try this by extending the force generation periods for all my OCI postures. I would have them in between the 20s and 40s range. That’s longer than what I’ve been training daily but remember, the intensity and the duration are closely tied together. So I won’t be going at 100% the entire time till my eyes pop out. It will be more like 65% intensity.
The rest period between joint positions will be between 15 and 20 seconds.
I’ll pick a handful of postures from bottom to top and do a 20 to 25-minute workout every other day with plenty of brisk walking throughout the week as well.
If you don’t know where to start go through some of my previous articles and pick out some overcoming isometric postures you may like…. or you can go can download a free overcoming isometrics PDF of mine by tapping on the announcement bar up top.
For longer-duration OCIs you can use a stopwatch but I also use another method that will help you to maintain the appropriate amount of tension as well as make it less boring…
OCI Timing Protocol
Wrap Up
The human body is capable of so many interesting things. If you can stimulate, muscle density increases and massive strength increases without moving, why can’t you also burn fat?
Thank you for making it to the end and let me know your thoughts below.
Until next time…