Workout Without Weight - Another Tip to Increase Intensity

Another way to increase the intensity of your workout without weights is to increase the time that you keep your muscles loaded with resistance. When you increase the relative duration of the muscle contraction, whether concentric or eccentric, a greater percentage of muscle fibers are recruited to hold the contraction.

It's important to train your muscles to hold a sustained contraction through out it's range of motion. This is because you actually get a deeper and more thorough workout into the total muscle. This can be added to any regular workout routine pretty easily.

Negative reps are one way of increasing the load time of a muscle contraction. A lot of fitness and exercise enthusiasts are familiar with the concept of negative reps. This is done during the eccentric phase of the muscle contraction. For anyone who is familiar with weight lifting, this is the movement when you are actually lowering the weight back down to rest.

Isometric contractions are another way of increasing load durations on specific muscles. With isometric exercises you basically contract your muscles for a certain length of time against an immovable object, or one that isn't moving. Such as a holding a push up position statically rather than going through the range of motion of the push up movement.

Dynamic tension exercises are yet another way to increase the time that your muscles are under load. When using dynamic tension, you basically contract all the muscles on an arm or leg and hold it rigid in space for a period of time. There is no movement or equipment needed because the force that is generated is that of one muscle group pulling against the opposing muscle groups.

I would like to tell you about another way to increase the intensity of your strength training program, especially your workout without weights. It's basically a slowed down version of the movements that you are already doing. A trademarked term for it is "Super Slow". I'll call it the "slow rep method". What ever you call it, the idea is simple: you slow the concentric and eccentric phase of the muscle contraction down to a target time of 10 seconds each so that one rep will basically take 20 seconds to complete.

In addition to slowing down the total rep time, you maintain a perpetual motion. This means that you don't rest between reps and you keep the muscles loaded not locking out the joints on the top or bottom end of the movement.

When using this slow rep method you don't focus on sets as you would with typical strength training routines. Your focus is on the time that it takes your muscles to fail. Generally, you will want to go about 2-3 minutes during one exercise. For instance, 2-3 minutes for squats. 2-3 minutes for push ups. 2-3 minutes for lunges, and so on.

What this does is increase the intensity of the motion, recruits a greater degree of muscle fibers during a workout, and trains your muscles to maintain a static contraction while at the same time building strength through out the whole movement. This is another way that you can add some intensity to your workout without weights exercise routine.

Bryan W. is a physical therapist and fitness professional. With over 16 years experience he teaches his clients how to maximize their fitness level using simple and effective training strategies. In addition he show his clients how to Workout Without Weights and maintains a blog at http://www.workoutswithoutweights.net