Muscle building is a science in itself that requires a proper understanding of movements & their impact on your body parts. Different skeletal muscles of your body have the ability to contract(or shorten) & to hold & support weight. These muscles have capacity to lengthen, stretch & un-contract. These muscles have two movements/actions: Concentric (or positive) & eccentric (or negative/lengthening) movement.
Concentric ( or positive) muscle action moves towards the centre of body & eccentric(or negative) moves away from the centre of the body. Let us take an example of barbell curl. When you move the barbell rod upwards towards shoulders, the movement is called Concentric muscle action. Moving the rod down from shoulders towards thighs is called eccentric muscle action.
The principle of weight lifting follows Newton’s law of motion. When you do positive or concentric motion, for instance when doing barbell curl you have done positive movement of moving the rod towards shoulders, the rod moves back by force of gravity. By exerting muscle force against this gravitational movement, it can be prevented from moving downward. It takes more force in lengthening or negative movement than shortening or positive movement, making a strong case of both muscle building & fat loss.
30-10-30 is one of the most effective ways of building strong muscles as well as burning excess & unwanted fat. Slowing down the negative muscle action exerts more force on the muscle tissues & tires the muscles.
I shall again take example of barbell curl to explain how 30-10-30 principle works. You put together 80% of resistance required for normal 8 to 10 repetitions to utilize towards slow negative movement. Once you have moved the barbell rod towards the shoulders, you do slow 30 seconds negative movement moving the rod downwards towards highs. This tires your muscles & exert more force on muscle tissue. Immediately after with same resistance you do normal 10 repetitions – 1 second on positive & 2 seconds on negative. Now your biceps are fatigued but you do not stop here. You do last slow 30 second negative muscle movement.
This is a high intensity training. The idea is to move towards momentary muscular figure in between positive negative repetition & finishing negative.
In my next blog, I shall share illustrative examples of exercises on which this principle will work well. I shall also detail out how to perform those exercises.
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