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WATER BAR FITNESS
Selena DeLeon Certified Personal Trainer
Thursday, July 02, 2009
If you want to try a new, innovative strength workout then you are reading the perfect article. I heard about this new Water Bar from a trendy fitness club in Manhattan and decided to try it out. I capped one end of a three-inch PVC pipe, filled it with six pounds of water, capped the other end.and VOILA! Not only was it cheap and easy to make, its benefits to my regular strength training routine were very surprising.
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I got a TOTAL body workout while doing my regular squats, lunges and upper body work, just because the constant movement of the water caused me to have to balance using my core stabilising muscles. Having to hold the bar steady as the water moved across the bar from one end to the other caused NEW muscles in my body to become activated. Every muscle, from one side, through the centre of my body and over to the other side, was working, simulating the movement of the water, in waves. Adding the "complete core" work to the same exercises is a stroke of genius and has changed my workouts forever!
"TRICK-TRAINING"
Tricking your muscles is a well-known way of keeping you challenged and avoiding hitting a plateau. Using different mediums, lifting techniques, exercise genres and resistances will allow your strength and muscle gains to thrive consistently.
Testing out new resistance mediums, like a band, a water bar or a weighted ball, can challenge your muscles in a new way, activating different types of muscle fibres, which yields different results, until your muscles become conditioned to that activity. For example, lifting a 10-pound weight quickly, concentrating on the concentric phase of the action (the lifting of the weight), shortens the muscles while lifting the weight slowly and concentrating on the eccentric phase of the action (lowering the weight) lengthens the muscles. Varying the lifting technique will allow for greater rewards, so do change it up!
MUSCLE MEMORY
The way muscle memory works is, you perform exercise repeating an action many times almost without thinking, and it is written down in muscle memory, so that you can do that action again in the same way using the same muscles, but next time a little better. Individuals rely upon the mind's ability to assimilate a given activity and adapt to the training. As the brain and muscle adapt to training, the subsequent changes in the muscle's strength, size and ability are a direct representation of its muscle memory.
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Conditioning and tricking on the same day is a really bad idea for two reasons. Firstly, when you're already tired from conditioning and then "trick-train" differently while tired, you're bound to get an injury. We also know that when you exercise muscle is broken down, and then it rebuilds itself stronger than before. But if you break it down too much, it won't be able to heal again quickly enough. This leads to fatigue and makes your muscles lose strength rather than gain it, defeating the whole purpose of the strength training.
So, what do you do? "Trick-train" for short amounts of time more often. Twice a week you should incorporate a "trick" workout into your programme. These workouts should be shorter than your normal strength-training session, starting with 20-minute bouts, then incrementally increase the duration as your muscles adapt, and then the "trick" workout will then become a regular conditioning workout. In the beginning you can follow your "trick" workout with cardiovascular training to complete your workout. A good example of tricking your muscles is, if you normally use weights while doing lunges, eliminate the weights and do fast jumping lunges, powering up off the ground alternating legs, to get more speed training, cardiovascular benefit, and activate new muscles in a new way.
Slow-twitch vs fast-twitch muscle fibre activation
You may not know it, but there are two different types of muscle fibres, slow and fast-twitch.
Slow-twitch muscle fibres contract for long periods of time but with little force, and are favourable for aerobic, endurance type activities, while fast-twitch fibres contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue very rapidly, such as in anaerobic, heavy weight-lifting activities. Humans are genetically predisposed with a larger percentage of one type of muscle group over another. An individual born with a greater percentage of Type I muscle fibres would theoretically be more suited to endurance events, such as triathlons, distance running, and long cycling events, whereas a human born with a greater percentage of Type II muscle fibres would be more likely to excel at anaerobic events such as a 200-metre dash, or weightlifting. So now you may be thinking, "How do I get more of this fast-twitch muscle fibre stuff?". You don't, sadly.
If you are not born with it, then you must work with what you've got. For example, there are people who are genetically strong, are usually naturally very muscular, and are built with a large volume of fast-twitch muscle fibres, but if you put them on a track they would not last long. They have to train themselves very steadfastly for cardiovascular and endurance goals which may seem much easier to someone who has more slow-twitch muscle fibres at their physical disposal.
What a bummer, right? Well, no worries, you might not go to the Olympics for the 1500-metre race, but you can learn to "trick" even if you naturally have a whole ton of fast-twitch muscle fibres. What you need to do is capitalise on what slow-twitch muscle fibres you do have. You can't get more of a muscle fibre type but you can exercise it and cause those muscle fibres to grow and become stronger. The key to all of this is in the way you exercise, begin to target train a particular type of muscle fibre by getting creative in how you train, how you trick and keep changing the types of exercise that you do. Live strong.
Selena DeLeon is 32 years old and has been a certified personal trainer, kickboxing instructor and spinning instructor for six years. She is also a weight loss consultant and counsellor. An active mother of two, she has a passion for fitness and health, languages, travel and the anatomy. Over the years, she has helped many persons find their full physical potential through sharing her training and motivation.
bodybyselena@hotmail.com
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