MASTER CLASS : Pulsing quick way to tire muscles
Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008
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Exercise programming is like an art form, requiring creativity, planning and most importantly, flexibility. Your fitness program obviously serves as a road map to success, but it’s also vital that you don’t become too rigid about its prescriptions.
This week, I’ll discuss common “on the fly” adjustments and introduce an exercise with one such adjustment.
Even the most seasoned of fitness veterans can begin to feel grumpy when they can’t perform a planned exercise because the machine is already in use. Crowded machines are especially a problem for people who choose to exercise during a gym’s peak hours, which are typically from 5 to 8 p. m. Monday through Thursday.
If this scenario sounds familiar, the first thing you should do is find a dumbbell rack.
In almost all cases, an exercise can be re-created with the use of an adjustable bench and a pair of dumbbells. The movement will change to a degree and become more or less difficult, but you’ll often be able to target the same muscle group in nearly the same fashion.
Another common issue that derails workouts is a time crunch. Your workout normally takes 45 minutes, but today you only have 20 to spare. Rather than skipping the session, I recommend increasing the intensity of a select few exercises by utilizing a repetition technique I like to call “pulsing.”
Pulsing begins by cutting a repetition into halves, which essentially means you have a top half of the repetition and a bottom half. Once you’ve figured out where your halfway point will be, try performing only the top-half of repetitions 10 times, then do five full repetitions.
This technique is often used by elite athletes to pre-exhaust the muscle and hasten true exhaustion. In this case, you’re using it to maximize each minute of exercise.
When engaging in pulsing, you want to make sure you don’t ignore the other half of the repetition. In the above example, set No. 2 would begin with 10 pulses on the bottom half of the repetition before performing five full ones. This allows you to fully fatigue the muscle throughout the range of motion.
This week’s exercise is a lateral raise with pulsing. This exercise lends itself to pulsing because the deltoid muscle in the shoulders activates more completely during the top-half of the lateral raise.
1. Stand with your left shoulder facing the weight stack of a cable machine. Adjust the pulley to the lowest setting and a light weight.
2. Grasp the single handle with your right hand and either place your left hand on your hip or allow the arm to hang down without moving.
3. Maintain a slight bend in the elbow and perform a normal lateral raise until your arm is at shoulder level.
4. From here, lower your arm about four inches and then quickly return your arm to the ending position of the exercise (parallel with shoulder ).
5. Repeat this little 4-inch pulsing repetition 10 times, then do five full lateral raises as you would normally.
6. After resting for 60 seconds, perform a second set with the pulsing at the lower portion of the repetition (from your hip to approximately chest level ) before performing your five full reps.
7. Do two sets per shoulder.
This technique is also very useful for individuals who have reached a point where 15 repetitions is not enough, but they can’t quite move up to the next level of resistance on a particular exercise. The pulsing allows for a more complete fatiguing of the muscle group without changing their current set / rep ratio. Former Arkansan Matt Parrott is adjunct professor of Health and Fitness Management at Clayton State University in Atlanta.