When to Squeeze Your Muscle While Strength Training?
The other night while I was working out at my fitness center, I stopped to take notice of how many people were performing exercises incorrectly. With the random sampling of people of saw, maybe 50% were doing something wrong. Either not breathing properly or at all, performing the movement way to fast, or squeezing the muscle at the end of the movement. What was that last one? Squeezing the movement at the end of the movement before lowering the weight to get a full contraction? Most people think this is the correct way to perform a repetition, however, it is not correct. The correct way is to squeeze the muscle at the midpoint while performing a strength exercise. You see, muscles are in their greatest, force producing position toward the middle of the movement, not at the end of the move when the muscle is at its shortest length. Squeezing the muscle at the end of the move serves no real purpose. You’ll get better results by emphasizing the squeeze at the midpoint of the repetition move. See it in your mind as you visualize the whole move. Let me know how this works out for you … Louis
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