This bashing of the idea of increasing strength in tendons and ligaments is an incorrect emphasis, IMO.

You WANT the strongest, thickest, density-intense tendons and ligaments you can build. You want 'em like steel cables. This is true power and not only the apperance of strength.

You bypass the tendons and only develop the muscles you are asking for injuries all day long.

Tendon strength is fundamental strength. Building it is not lazy, or cheating or incorrect–it is foundational. Double the size of your biceps = by pretty. Double the size of the tendons and ligaments in your wrist = superhero.

so is it possible to flex the opposite muscle of the muscle that you are working on?

after reading your article i learned that high rep cannot make muscle permenent:

So can I do this?:

I normally lift 12rep with the dumbbells, can i just slower the rep and make it between 2-5, same with the push ups……..

just curious can some one help me out

It's all focus, and willpower; don't rush yourself.

I was thinking of the rowing machine, but I'm not wanting to build my upper body anymore and I'm kind of afraid that using this as my only means of cardio for near a month with put me askew with the rest of my upper body strength training routine!?

People have suggested swimming, yes that's a possability, but with time restraints, swimming can take away a lot of time from the rest of my routine/life, plus I hate the water :/ And for some reason they decided to make the pool some dumb artistic shape at my gym so swimming laps is about as easy as navigating in the dark…. God I miss running.

Anywho, that's my story. Lately I've just been adding more and more puships at different variations (burpe's i'm not allowed to do at this time).

A message to all: Don't push yourself too hard, hurting yourself is not worth it.

Steven Anderson i Love rings, they're really hard, but so good to develop back and strength

Rusty have you heard about Lance coming back to competition next year, i just got really happy about it, i'm a huge fan of Lance in every way, his a Life Champion and an example in every possible way you can think of, and his return represents also a very important fight, once again his going to help a lot of people that's for sure.

Great post, and you're absolutely right!

Strength is mainly the ability to create maximum tension in your muscles, basically training your muscles to contract harder.

In fact, I've heard that when people get electrocuted it fires off all the "contracting neurons" (not sure the technical name)… and overloads the safety mechanisms your body has in place to keep you from contracting your muscles too hard…to such a degree that the person's muscle's contract so hard they break bones!

That's why you see some guys with "wiry strength"–they just know how to get more horsepower out of their smaller engines — they understand maximum tension = maximum strength.

Best,
Caleb

Here's my 2 cents.

Personally, I rarely train in the manner that Rusty is advocating.

Why? Because that method is not designed to develop my body in the manner that I want.

This doesn't make Rusty's approach wrong. Just not right for me, right now.

Ignoring any genetic tendencies towards muscle fiber type, muscle and tendon physiology, etc., our muscles will adapt to the type of training that we expose them to.

Want muscles to perform as quickly as possible. Train in a way to develop neuro-muscular efficiency, muscle firing speed and maximize the elasticity in your tendons. But also be aware that this type of training may expose you to a greater danger of tendon injury.

This doesn't make it wrong. Just different.

Decide what YOU want out of your training program – Body composition, strength, power, speed, endurance, joint mobility, reduced chance of injury, re-hab, pre-hab, flexibility….

Then organize your training around those goals.

Keep up the good work Rusty

for a full development of the back, I'd do a few different exercises. My choice would depend on my proportions, the waist to shoulder ratio more specifically.

1. If you have wide shoulders and small waist, the exercises of choice would be some kind of barbell rows and shrugs.

2. If you have wide shoulders and wide waist, the exercise would be shoulder width grip pullups and barbell shrugs.

3. If you have narrow shoulders and narrow waist, the exercsies should be pullups and barbell rows (no shrugs)

4. If you have narrow shoulders and wide waist, the exercise of choice would be pullups.

Also whats the best back exercise. nothing too big…i'm 17. (bdyweight or with weights)

t-nation.com/article/bodybuilding/lift_fast_get_big&cr=

here is a lil something he wrote.

Muscle physiologists have discovered an important law of motor unit recruitment: the faster the tempo, the greater the recruitment of motor units. This is important because the more motor units you recruit, the greater the strength and muscle gains you’ll achieve.

The benefits of fast training are:

1. Improved High-Threshold Motor Unit Recruitment

Quicker high-threshold motor unit recruitment occurs with super-fast tempos since you improve the recruitment of the motor units that have the most potential for growth. What I’m referring to are the fast-fatigable (FF) fast-twitch motor units that possess Type IIB muscle fibers. These motor units are capable of inducing huge amounts of strength and hypertrophy increases.

2. Improved Rate Coding

Rate coding is also enhanced with fast training. This relates to a change in discharge frequency of motor units with faster tempos. In other words, the firing rate increases with increases in speed (power) production.

3. Enhanced Synchronization of Motor Units

The last scientific element improved with fast training is enhanced synchronization of motor units. As you increase the frequency of fast training sessions, motor units improve their synchronous activation during maximal voluntary efforts. This leads to more strength and enhanced neuromuscular efficiency.

The three aforementioned variables (recruitment, rate coding and synchronization) all work in concert to enhance intramuscular coordination. But I’m not finished yet! A few more advantages of fast training are:

4. Improved Intermuscular Coordination

When you apply maximal effort to a load (attempt to lift it as fast as possible), you’re improving your body’s ability to maximally activate many different muscle groups simultaneously. This coordinated effort enhances intermuscular coordination which, in turn, improves your strength levels.

5. Altered Muscle Fiber Characteristics

With a consistent execution of fast training speeds, the skeletal muscle and nervous system adapt by converting many slow-twitch (Type I) muscle fibers to fast-twitch (Type IIA and IIB) characteristics. This is another perfect example of the specific adaptations to imposed demand (SAID) principle.

Great to finally read a detailed post on rep speed. I know you have done a couple on this topic before but this post really goes into detail and explains the exact type of lift you are referring to. Currently, I think I'm somewhere in the middle when it comes to generating muscle tension. Most of the time I try to perform my reps slowly and fully whilst concentrating on getting a full squeeze out of the muscle involved. I never lift super fast and explosively because I see so many guys doing it in the gym and think it's just an injury waiting to happen. The perfect example is lat pulldowns where guys do it so fast that they go from sitting upright to lying down. Sure they will lift a lot on the exercise but how much of this is their momentum and bodyweight and how much is their actual lats?

However, I don't think I focus on generating muscle tension to the degree you describe. For example, with a bicep curl whilst I will make sure that I perform the exercise fully and slowly with no swinging and make sure I am squeezing the bicep, I don't take this any further and make sure that my chest, abs and legs are contracted too. I'm always open to new techniques though and have started to vary my training more and more in recent weeks (different weight/rep ranges, isolation/compound weeks etc) so I will definitely give this a try at some point.

Cheers again for the great post,

Tom

P.S. Your 'Notify me of followup comments via e-mail' option does not appear to be working.