6 MUSCLE BUILDING TRAINING TERMS
In order to achieve your fitness goals you should learn these terms! These terms will help you reach your goals by saving you time and energy. The sooner you learn and understand these terms, the easier it will be to gain muscle mass. Here are the terms you MUST understand and implement to gain muscle mass!
Total body tension- Creating tightness throughout the full body during exercise. Creating total body tension without losing focus on what you are doing will allow you to generate more force and power!
-For example, if you are bench pressing driving your feet towards the floor and keeping your core braced will allow you to generate more power, force, and muscles!
Time over tension- the amount of time a muscle is held under tension or strain during an exercise set.
-Let’s say you are curling 40 pounds for 2 seconds on the positive and negative stage. On the following week, if you curl the same weight for 3 seconds on the positive and negative stage, you will able to grow muscle because you put the muscle under more strain with time. This is another way to progress or stimulate progressive overload.
Progressive overload - is when you gradually increase the weight, frequency, or number of repetitions in your strength training routine.
-Let’s pretend you are carrying a baby bull on your shoulders. You pick up this growing bull every day. You will get stronger over time, and your muscles will get bigger because your body is responding to heavier weight & volume over time.
Mind & body connection - The ability to visualize or be mindful of the muscles you are training during your exercise.
-It is important to understand what muscles you are trying to target during your exercise. Let’s say you know you are supposed to be targeting your lats and biceps during a barbell row. Making sure you feel those muscles activate during each rep, it increases the likelihood of getting those muscles stronger and bigger.
Tempo - How fast each rep is performed during the positive and negative phases of the exercise.
-We talked about the positive and negative phases on a bicep curl earlier. If we take 2 seconds on the positive, contract the muscle for a second, and 2 seconds on the negative the tempo is 2-1-2. Using tempo reps can allow you to strain the muscles more effectively and help control the weight.
Concentric & eccentric- During eccentric contraction, the muscle lengthens as the resistance becomes greater than the force the muscle is producing. In a concentric contraction, the muscle tension rises to meet the resistance then remains stable as the muscle shortens.
Since we have been talking about the bicep curls, lets continue with that example. The concentric contraction involves when the weight goes up and the load is going upwards with increasing muscle tension. The eccentric contraction is the lowering part of the load and the muscles lengthens.
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