It’s All About Tension
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Your muscles are stupid, they only know how to one thing. how to create tension. The more tension they create the higher the force output. For example, a 50 lb curl will create more tension in the biceps then a 30 lb curl. It doesn’t matter whether the resistance is a 50 lb dumbell, 50 lb sandbag, 50 lb anvil, 50lb stone, a bodyweight pull up, or whatever. Muscles are stupid, they don’t care what your lifting, they only know how to generate force. As your muscles get stronger and learn how to create high tension, they develop a higher resting tone. That is, their resting tonus, or tension will be greater, thus creating the image of rock hard muscle. Only if you don’t have body fat covering that muscle will you be able to achieve that toned, ripped looked. This is why heavy weights get you toned, light weights do nothing but make you weaker. Try this experiment..feel the arms of someone who only does tricep kickbacks, and lousy resistance band curls, and then feel the biceps of someone who does pull ups, deadlifts, and push ups, I guarantee there will be a world of difference. Look at gymnastics and how well developed the upper bodies are of some of the guys. Ive read that most of them can walk up to a bench press and press 2x their bodyweight with ease, without ever bench pressing! It is because they do movements on the rings, pummel horse, etc that put their body’s at extreme leverages and their muscles must great extremely high forces. Just look at the iron cross.
Impressive to say the least! I also want to point out that these guys are not huge, just well developed. They are just making the muscle that they have extremely strong and not intentionally putting on unnecessary amounts of non functional muscle. So next time your lifting try to create that intramuscular tension in your whole body, and see how it feels. Remember, the weights will always win if you don’t stay tight and overcome that resistance.
I also want to give a link up to Ironworks Gym, which is located in Chenango Bridge. We finally have a blog up and you can check it out here.