For longer than we care to remember we have been preaching safe exercise, safe strength and how mainstream fitness fads can lead to injury. It is just tough to see because the quick movement stuff looks athletic which is what people want and trying to explain the difference between being athletic and getting athletic let alone staying athletic as you age is pretty cumbersome.

With that in mind we embark on a blog series which we think will help drive a point home through action more than words. With our client and willing friend Michel Boulet we will follow his journey with a program which is pretty much the polar opposite of explosive, bounce and sweat routines. The hope is to show rather than explain how movement brings nothing to the table and is just a necessary evil in exercise.

We use these type of ‘static’ techniques all the time and now we will stick to them on whole for an extended period and see how it goes. We’ll post all his workouts and they will speak for themselves. We are taking measurements before and after and will also have him report his point of view compared with his standard workouts.

Workout 1: On and off’s – 10 second holds/10 second rests ( with 20 to 30 second finishing holds). Here we targeted upper body with a focus on arms and shoulders. The pictures show the hold position and the rest position. We will also add video in future workouts for more clarification.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We kept the movements straightforward on day 1 to make learning the technique easy. Basically each exercise was held in a good muscle contraction position followed by a rest period to allow blood flow to clear metabolic waste products.

Holds are kept to short time frames to minimize cheating (bracing, balancing, out-roading to non-targeted musculature).

As always during this on going study/story feel free to ask questions if you wish to know more detail.

Be well, be strong,

Andrew and Tierney