By Pete Sisco - Developer of Static Contraction Training
Q. Do those 1 Ton Hooks
you talk about help with all lifts? Are they really
worth the money?
A. Lifting hooks are a great tool
for pulling exercises. (They don't serve any
use for pushing exercises, such as bench presses,
triceps press-downs and the like.) Most of us are
totally unaware that when we reach failure on exercises
such as deadlifts, shrugs, lat pulldowns, T-bar rows,
low pulley rows, etc. it is primarily due to grip
fatigue!
That means your lats, traps, etc. quite likely
have much more power left in them to exhaust... but
you never get the opportunity to go to true failure
because your grip strength fails first.
When people first use lifting hooks, they are usually
astonished at how much more they can lift... either
in total weight on the bar or the number of reps they
can complete or both!
Are they worth the money? That really depends on
what price you put on gaining more muscle and reaching
new levels of strength and fitness. I know guys who
spend $300 per month on nutritional supplements that
don't have a prayer of giving you the fast gains
those hooks will. So by that measure they're
worth it. I'm a bit biased on this because I
helped designed the specifications of the 1 Ton Hooks.
So I know they will last any lifter a lifetime (in
fact they're guaranteed to) and they're
the most comfortable hooks I've ever owned.
You can count the number of products I endorse on
the fingers of one hand... so that should tell
you a lot about the quality and effectiveness of the
1 Ton Hooks.
Q. What are some of the
exercises to get ripped and toned with some muscle
mass gain but not get too bulky?
A. There is a direct correlation
between muscle size and muscle strength. Just like
a steel cable, a muscle fiber's strength is
proportional to its cross sectional area. And a muscle
can only do one of three things: get smaller, get
bigger or stay the same size.
So, irrespective of whether your goal is to "tone
up" or to "bulk up" you are trying
to make your muscles bigger. And whether you want
"more strength" or "more size"
you are trying to make your muscles bigger. This means
that there is not a set of exercises for "getting
ripped" and a different set of exercises for
"getting bulky". There are only exercises
for making your muscles bigger.
The key to getting the result you desire is to monitor
the development of your physique and determine when
you have the tone or definition you want then to switch
you training to a maintenance routine where you keep
everything the same. And on the subject of being "ripped",
muscle definition is a function of muscle size and
low bodyfat. In many cases people would be satisfied
with their current muscle size if they had lower bodyfat
that revealed their muscles.
Q. You advocate not using
the whole range in lifting, but does this cause a
decrease in flexibility?
A. We've never specifically studied
whether partial range of motion strength training
decreases overall flexibility. The reason is that
we don't advocate any form of strength training as
a means to improve flexibility.
I can tell you that we did a study on golfers where
we used Static Contraction Training to improve their
strength and measure how it affected the distance
of their drives. (Increased up to 30 yards!) The participants
reported that their overall game was also improved
as well as their stamina on the course. But we did
not measure and quantify those particular improvements.
The more efficient and safe way to improve flexibility
is the way martial artists, yoga practitioners and
other highly flexible people do it. Stretch. There
is a good reason why you never see barbells in a yoga
studio. Trying to improve your flexibility while hoisting
a heavy weight is an invitation to injury.
My advice is completely separate and highly focused
workouts for each of the three pillars of physical
fitness: strength, flexibility and endurance. Mixing
different types of workouts is a bad compromise.
Q. I've been using
your methods for a few weeks and now I've maxed-out
the leg press and soon I'll be near the maximum
on some of the other equipment. What can I do?
A. What a great problem to have!
I've been hearing this for years and I never
get tired of it. It's wonderful to show people
how they can get stronger than they ever thought possible.
This really underscores how limiting conventional
training methods... and conventional training equipment
really is!
In the past I've told people about how they
can switch many exercises (leg presses, toe presses,
lat pulldowns) to unilateral exercises. That is, doing
one leg or arm at a time as a means to get more utility
out of the limitations of their equipment.
But in the next few weeks I'll be telling you
a lot more about the revolutionary new exercise equipment
being manufactured by Explosive Fitness. I had a hand
in the development of this static contraction exercise
equipment so it was designed from the very beginning
to deliver massive overload in every exercise used
in an SCT workout. I have the latest versions of this
equipment and most of my family and I have been training
on it in recent weeks. It is truly amazing!! I really
mean that... it is just amazing and a joy to use!
All you do adjust the bar (or footrest) to where
you need it to be for your height and then push or
pull for all you're worth. When you're
done you press a button and a large digital readout
shows you the exact maximum weight you achieved. So
your leg press weight might be 2,327 pounds and your
bench press might be 293 pounds... and that's
an exact measurement you just never get with conventional
equipment. Instead you have to estimate what your
maximum is by loading plates and you can never be
certain of exactly what you "had in the tank."
Thanks to this new equipment, those limitations and
many others are now a thing of the past.
