Strength Training

Hi,

This week I want to get back on to my common thread about vibration training and strength. I want to talk a little about strength training from a nerve and brain perspective.

There is a lot of debate about what the best strength training programmes are such as high weight/low rep vs lower weight/high rep. It really depends upon what you are training for. To develop strength heavy weights have to be lifted at least some of the time. Your muscles now are capable of developing a lot more force than your brain and nerves will allow you to use. To increase your strength first you have to retrain the nerves, which you can only do by lifting almost all you can a small number of times.

If you lift lower weights more times then your nerves will adapt to do that very well, but it won't necessarily lead to large increases in strength. The key is training the nervous system the way you want it to work. But if you want to increase muscle mass then higher reps are advisable.

Some people may start worrying about injuries, but most injuries happen when the body is fatigued, high weight/low rep doesn't fatigue the body and concentration should be better. I think the risk of inury is less with higher weight training. The key to strength, like with vibration training is increasing the quality of the stimulus, and reduce the quantity.

This could be why vibration is so effective, the neural stimulus is much higher so the nervous system adapts giving you access to your unused strength.

Now combne this with youbreathe use to increase growth hormone and you should be on to a winner. Your training should also leave you energised, not exhausted, and should be done more often.

OK, I have been promising you a strength training manual for your youbreathe device, please click on the link below to download it. It is important that if you have high blood pressure or any cardio-respiratory disease to check with your doctor to make sure this is a safe form of training for you.

Strength Manual

See you next time.

Fit-flop

Hi,

Thought I would write about something different this week. Something called Fit-flop is gaining massive media attention and has even been shown on the Oprah Winfrey show. This is quite a good idea. It is the brainchild of Dr Dave Cook and Darren James both of London South Bank University.

Their idea was to take a flip-flop and make it ever so slightly unstable during the mid-phase of walking i.e. after the foot has made contact with the floor and before the foot pushes off floor for the next step.

The results are great, it really does make the legs work harder during walking and will also increase resistance to injury, similar to walking and running barefoot (actually wearing sports shoes is not very good for our health!).

I have spoken to Dave and Darren about these things and they are a really inspirational pair with lots more fantastic ideas for footwear and training devices.

I hope you enjoyed the variety to this weeks blog.

See you next time.