Thursday, October 8, 2020

Hypertrophy | Turning isolation into full body

Summary
With isolation movements that have little to no injury risk, start strict and end sloppy.

Not so summmary
Sometimes you try something and think - why the fuck haven't i been doing this already? Years. Wasted. Should have sent a poet.

For the past few months, Ive been ending each workout with a gauntlet of quasi isolation. Something like:
- band rows
- bw tri extensions
- band curls
- band one arm overhead extensions
- ring rear delt raises, face pulls
- band two arm overhead extensions
- band rear delt raises

This takes all of 8min to run through. It's the icing on the cake of an already complete workout, but i enjoy it and see a visible difference when i neglect it.

Ive noticed a solid pronounced increase in performance (on main lifts) and size when i started to cheat every movement once i could no longer complete a strict full range of motion rep. Lemme say: YOU SHOULD BE DOING THIS ON ISOLATION. Especially when bands are involved and the most tension is at the end of each rep.

You have little to no increase on injury risk, and unless youre a psycho you arent trying to enhance performance on these tiny movements. Turn each isolation movement into a full body movement once strict isolation can no longer happen.

Example: band bicep hammer curl
Grip low on the band, strict reps
Grip low on the band, cheat reps
Grip medium on the band, strict reps
Grip medium on the band, cheat reps
Grip high on the band, strict reps
Grip high on the band, cheat reps

6 sets where your biceps are being challenged without risk to your biceps or back.

I wouldn't suggest using this method with dumbbells or barbells. There is too much risk involved once you get fatigued and start to put in sloppy reps. Likewise, most bodyweight movements are probably not great choices for the same reason as barbells, but with the added bonus of ingraining shit form for movements you actually want to be competent at.

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