The Semi-Ultimate Overcoming Isometrics Breakdown (Static Strength)
Everyone has a paradigm, a worldview, and a lens through which they view things. Some paradigms are more difficult to alter than others. Speaking for myself in most cases it takes a while. I read something, the seed is planted, and then a few months(or years) later a light bulb goes off.
I stumbled upon overcoming isometrics around the early 2010s. Applied some of it for a bit, then threw it to the side not touching it till years later in Okinawa, Japan.
What caused me to shift my focus from mainly calisthenics to allowing overcoming isometrics to take the front seat?
“Contact”
A solid paradigm or approach to an issue should be able to withstand most things thrown at it. If not, then it may need to change. In high school and being involved in weight lifting, I was confronted with the fact that the strength I had developed in the weight room could be negatively affected by taking a week or two off. I depended on the weight room for continued progress. Even if I had had a weight room at home I would be affected by my separation from it when I went on a vacation somewhere with my family. Seeing how the consistency with my workout approach could easily be hindered opened up my mind to other possibilities.
I stumbled on Progressive Calisthenics during this period of open-mindedness. Progressive Calisthenics is the art of taking a simple bodyweight movement and ratcheting up the difficulty over years to build more strength and muscle. Instead of being limited by a weight room, all I was limited by was maybe a pull-up bar. I say maybe because there are ways around training some of your pulling muscles without a bar. What I found in Progressive Calisthenics was greater freedom.
I kept using progressive calisthenics for years but I felt like something was still missing. After going down a rabbit hole of workout books mainly around overcoming isometrics I revisited the old concept that I had stumbled upon back in college to great effect.
Overcoming isometrics is the straining against an immovable object for a period of time, at a specific joint angle, and for a certain intensity.
It can either be for an isolation movement, or for your whole body
It can improve your mood and is sometimes better than coffee
It can be against a wall, pillar, rope, or chain
It can be done to alleviate joint pain
Overcoming isometrics or any form of training that builds upon and improves the mind-muscle connection or the efficiency with which your brain sends signals to your muscles, was the last piece of the puzzle for me that made things just right.
What to use
They can be performed anywhere or on anything just as long as it's sturdy. This can be a tree, pillar, park bench, fridge, vehicle, etc. They can be performed with anything as well just as long as won’t break or rip.
This freedom that overcoming isometrics affords helps you to maintain your fitness progress to a greater degree. Also, the number of things overcoming isometrics can be performed on or with trains you over time to look for possibilities everywhere.
Which I believe can improve your creativity and overall adoption of an abundance mindset.
Warm-Up
Despite this being a static form of training it is still important that there’s some type of warm-up prior to the workout. Whatever you do for a warm-up once finished the question needs to be, are my muscles ready to activate in a powerful and efficient manner? If you feel whatever warm-up you usually do works toward this goal keep with it. For myself, I like warming up by going on a brisk walk for a few minutes to get my heart rate up and get my body a little warmer than it was prior. If I’m short on time I do some overcoming isometrics at a lower intensity as I’m still satisfying the principle of getting my muscles ready to activate.
Once one jumps into an overcoming isometric workout there are a few things one should be aware of…
Aspects Of OverComing Isometrics
Breathing - As with any workout breathing is important, and with overcoming isometrics it takes the central stage as one will be aiming at exerting a large amount of force. I’ve covered some of this in previous posts so I’ll move on to some other aspects but the TLDR is to breath-in prior to exertion while increasing tension, then exert that tension while slowly breathing out, then relax and breathe back in.
Intensity/Tension - When one is exerting force against an object, the intensity will correspond with the adaption one is trying to bring about. High intensity for strength and a low intensity if one is going for endurance or warm-up. The intensity of the overcoming isometric will go side by side with time as well. Over time, you will gain a better sense of how hard you are pressing or pulling.
Time- The intensity of the overcoming isometric will correspond with the time. Shorter durations(6-12s) for raw strength, longer durations(1 min and beyond) for endurance. However, it is important to note that there are other adaptions that take place not just in strength and endurance.
Overcoming isometrics will also improve your joint strength. If performed correctly they are an easy way to build up your joints and make them injury-proof. The longer the duration the better adapting there is to your joints. In addition to this time duration, the joint angle will also provide its own adaption.
Joint Angle - Given that this form of training is static and requires little coordination there were concerns about its effectiveness in developing strength through the whole range of motion.
Research from 1993 & 2019, and a few others demonstrate that performing your isometric at a long muscle length will have the most benefit across the entire range of motion. What this means is that think of any stretch you do for any muscle. The overcoming isometric you perform will have that muscle(s) in that stretched or long position. Not only will this provide better strength adaptions than other muscles it will also strengthen one’s tendons.
When I train I usually prioritize the stretched position but training at shorter muscle lengths still has its benefits as there is a, “Spillover” effect in strength outside of the shorter joint angles.
If new to overcoming isometrics I’d recommend doing three positions where the muscle(s) that are being trained are in the short, middle, and long positions. Once you get more advanced you can probably fool around in see what positions work best for your goals.
Reps - Overcoming isometrics are different from your standard “Repping it out protocol” as no matter what time duration one is generating force in, it’s likely that most of your muscle fibers would have been activated as opposed to something close to a majority. Therefore in most cases, especially strength, one 8-second contraction at a given angle is all that’s needed per day.
The Effects
The main effects that come from overcoming isometrics are strength, power, and stronger tendons. This will offer improvement at a faster rate than with any other modality and will leave you feeling weightless sometimes. It will also bring about denser musculature meaning that your muscles won’t get big, but they’ll feel firm. As far as building muscle to compete in the next bodybuilding competition I don’t believe isometrics is up to the task(at the moment). But if one wanted to use isometrics to pack on a few pounds on a lean frame, I believe this to be possible and will experiment with this.
Thankyou for making it to the end. If you have any questions send them my way. Until next time…
