Opul's workout basics and hints

Basics of physical workout


Most important is to understand what you are doing while working out. So this should be like a manual for your body (of course only part of it...otherwise this would be a few hundred pages long).

Training Methods


Positive Dynamic Training:
Positive dynamic training is work through muscle shortening (e.g. lifting of a DB). Besides the gain of power the interplay of nervous system and muscular system is being improved which increases the coordination abilities.
Negative Dynamic Training
The muscular system serves as break and thus performs declined, delayed muscle-work (e.g. lowering of a DB). That allows to train over the actual power performance, because you can work with more weight in a lowering way than in a lifting way. This method is essential in rehabilitation because muscles can be build in very short time.
Static Training
Also referred to as "isometric contraction", meaning that a specific position is being held for a certain time. The stress of the muscles is increased but the length won't change. This method is the fastest to gain power. The disadvantage is though that the motive coordination is not trained so the movement of the muscle has to be learned afterwards. Again this is a method always! used in rehabilitation.
Mixtures of Positive & Negative Dynamic Training
  • Isokinetic Training
    Here during the shortening of the muscles the same stress is put on them all the time. This can only be accomplished to 100% with a computer. This balances the stress which normally is not constant at all because of the leverage. Just try making DB curls and you'll see how it is harder in the middle part, than in the beginning and in the end. Some gyms have those Hi-Tech machines.
  • Plyometric Training
    The classic mixture of positive and negative dynamic training. The positive dynamic part is equal to the negative dynamic part of the movement. This is what most BBers do, especially if you work with free weights.
    • Mixtures of Dynamic & Static Training
  • Contrary Training
    A static part of the movement is followed by a dynamic part. That increases muscle stress. Very useful for elasticity training.
  • Intermediate Training
    Reciprocal sequence of static and dynamic training. E.g. bench press: you lift a bit, hold for 5 secs, lift a bit, hold for 5 secs....until you are all the way up.

    • Breaks to Success

    Through physical effort the organism sonner or later (depending on your training shape) reaches an exhaustion phase, which continues after the end of training until it is relieved by a recovery phase (medical explanation for stuff like that can be found on many of the nutritional pages). So we have to watch the length of break very well:
    Break is too long:
    The extra nutrient storage the body built is decreasing again. That's when you plateau, meaning that your power will level and not increase.
    Break is too short:
    The organism didn't have enough time to fill the extra storage. The result is earlier exhaustion and sometimes even sickness (hospital!!). The power will decrease, go back.
    Break is optimal:
    The nutrient storage was expanded and allows more accomplishment.
    It takes some time to find out about the correct break time, but those rough figures should help you see quickly whether you do it right or not and what the reason is. A beginner should basically take off 2 days, advanced BBs usually only need 1 day rest.
    Muscle soreness always has loss of power as a result!! So if you haven't trained for some time do not work with more than 60% of your Max. Or if you are sore after some extreme workout I would lower the weights as well...some people like to feel pain the next day as kind of a warranty of having worked out well...but through that you only reach the opposite of what you want.

    Stretching & Warming up....

    This is another topic that must not be underestimated. Nobody really likes (I suppose) to stretch . It is boring and doesn't seem to have too much sense. WRONG!! Most pulled and ruptured muscles result from lacking warm up and stretching.
    First of all it is very important to hold at one position while stretching and not to bounce. Bouncing causes the negative effect = opposite. Before the workout begins you should warm the whole body up. You can either do a cardio-vascular training (which you should be doing after your workout for sure, but twice can't hurt) or just swing those arms and legs...a bit and make some reps with really low weight. And most important: stretch every muscle before you work on it, at least before each exercise but better before each set. Just hold it for about 8 seconds to prevent any pain or injury and CATABOLISM!!!
    Also it is essential to breathe correctly. Exhale during the stress and inhale during the relieve . Try not to hold your breath at any time (hard to do but at least try to hold it as short as possible). If you cannot breathe during the stress then your weight is definitely too high.

    Watch your back!!

    It is very important to exercise correctly, meaning not to put too much stress on your spine and so preventing serious spine damage. I am one of those who already have spine problems, but not from wrong workout but I guess inherited (Not everything you inherit from your dad has to be good :Þ). I had to go to the doctor already because I couldn't move anymore and had a hard time breathing, because my spine blocked everything back there. So now I really make sure that I exercise the right way.
    It is kinda hard explaining everything in words and so I hope I can scan in some pictures. But here a few of the most important exercises which put too much stress on your back and can even injure it:
    Bench Press
    Lift your legs in a 45° angle to your body like for ab crunches. This avoids wrong pressure on your spine. Since I did this I never had any back problems anymore!!
    Abdominals
    For almost all ab excercises I want to say NEVER lift your whole body up, only the shoulders . This is by far enough and won't put too much stress on your spine. "Normal" situps as they have been done some years ago are very bad for your back. Also try to find alternative movements to ab crunches and so. There's tons of them out there, you just have to watch carefully in a gym.
    Major rule for abs: First work the lower abs, then the sides and last upper abs.



    If you have any suggestions, comments, complaints.... e-mail me 
    Go back to my Weightlifting Page
    Go back to Main Page