HELP and advise Please!

[cobaltsunrise]

No comment about being vegan , I get enough Cr@$ from everyone. Please can we not debate this here!

Thank you all for the negative dips advise. I just read the forum today and will try and start it tomorrow.

I do have the machine that helps with the assisted dips and pull ups in gym but that really didnt help me. I am gonna try the negative pull ups and see the effect.

Man everytime I come to this forum page I get great advise from you guys !

Thanks a ton!!!!!!!!!

[cobaltsunrise]

After reading the posts and doing own research I was Googleing and found a lot of exercises that showed this technique.

I have two questions

1) what do these do for you ?

2) what exercises(weight and free) can this technique be applied to, to increase strength.

[swanso5]

do you mean negative reps?

you would only use these sparingly, they cause more muscle damage then anything else thus can take a while to recover from

[ldematto]

do you mean negative reps?

you would only use these sparingly, they cause more muscle damage then anything else thus can take a while to recover from

Huh?? Swanso - you recommended negtive reps earlier in the thread?? interest of course is I'm trying negative reps to attempt to get to doing push ups - good or bad?

[Packard]

do you mean negative reps?

you would only use these sparingly, they cause more muscle damage then anything else thus can take a while to recover from

Huh?? Swanso - you recommended negtive reps earlier in the thread?? interest of course is I'm trying negative reps to attempt to get to doing push ups - good or bad?

I also recommend against doing negatives as a regular course of training.

The military uses negatives to get you to do conventional pull ups but they abandon them as soon as you are able to do the reps in a conventional manner. I think that is a good approach to negatives.

Negatives can build muscle size but at the expense of utility. But you have to provide lots of high quality protein and you need lots of high quality sleep and rest to accomplish that.

[ldematto]

Lu <-----so confused!?!??! So, do negatives for awhile then stop after I manage a push up or two?

[Packard]

Lu <-----so confused!?!??! So, do negatives for awhile then stop after I manage a push up or two?

Let's say you are trying for a set of 10 reps and you cannot do any in a conventional manner.

So you should do 10 reps in the negative.

At some point you will be able to do one conventional rep. At that point you should do 1 rep conventionally and 9 reps in the negative.

Since you will always try to do your conventional reps first you will always know how many negatives to do to reach your 10 reps.

At some point you will be able to do 10 conventional reps and at that point you should abandon all negatives.

[ldematto]

Crystal clear! Thank you!

[swanso5]

you don;t need negative reps for push ups when you can alter the ...for chin ups you can but you have the assisted machine so you can simply work down until you have no wt

[Packard]

you don;t need negative reps for push ups when you can alter the ...for chin ups you can but you have the assisted machine so you can simply work down until you have no wt

If she has access to an assist chin/pull up machine I would prefer that to negatives. But if she has access to that I would just as soon use a pull down bar and set the weight to a resistance where I could do 10 reps.

Either would be preferable to negtives for strength training.

Ide--

Remember that muscles can only do one thing: Contract. That is all a muscle can ever do. It cannot extend, twist, recoil or anything else.

When you are doing negatives you are doing a "controlled relaxation" of the contracted muscle. It is not the way the muscle was intended to work. So negatives are not optimal to strength gains (though it can cause a good bit of controlled muscle tearing--which will yield muscular hypertrophy). If you have access to regulated resistance machinery it would be preferred over negative resistance. The military likes negatives because they can train a large number of recruits with a minimal amount of equipment. That is not likely the same objectives that a civilian might have.

[swanso5]

Remember that muscles can only do one thing: Contract. That is all a muscle can ever do. It cannot extend, twist, recoil or anything else.

muscles shorten/contract or lengthen/relax

this whole "use muscles as they where intended" thing is going a bit far...

muscles have 3 contractions:

concentric (shortens)
eccentric (lengthens)
isometric (no movement)

all 3 are required for movement

lets take walking for example, the simplest of all tasks

concentrically you contract the quads and hip flexotrs to lift your leg forward
eccentrically you must contract your hamstrings and glutes once you hit the ground and the roles reverse where you concentrically contract the glute and hams on the swing through and eccentrically contract the glutes for the push off into the next step
isometrically your core is activated to keep you upright

neg's are great for strength gains but they are bastard to recover from...you can lower a heavier then you can lift so they can train the nervous system to lift heavier wts...ever done a bench pres that you could lower down tothe chest but couldn't lift back up?

http://www.uponlinetraining.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Packard]

Remember that muscles can only do one thing: Contract. That is all a muscle can ever do. It cannot extend, twist, recoil or anything else.

muscles shorten/contract or lengthen/relax

this whole "use muscles as they where intended" thing is going a bit far...

muscles have 3 contractions:

concentric (shortens)
eccentric (lengthens)
isometric (no movement)

all 3 are required for movement

lets take walking for example, the simplest of all tasks

concentrically you contract the quads and hip flexotrs to lift your leg forward
eccentrically you must contract your hamstrings and glutes once you hit the ground and the roles reverse where you concentrically contract the glute and hams on the swing through and eccentrically contract the glutes for the push off into the next step
isometrically your core is activated to keep you upright

neg's are great for strength gains but they are bastard to recover from...you can lower a heavier then you can lift so they can train the nervous system to lift heavier wts...ever done a bench pres that you could lower down tothe chest but couldn't lift back up?

http://www.uponlinetraining.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm going to have to disagree (so what's new).

Muscles only contract.

When you do a triceps extension (or legs extenstion) you are contracting the triceps and that levers the arm straight. You contract the quadraceps and that levers the legs straight.

The best way to see this is by testing the muscles that control your fingers. If you completely relax your fingers in your left hand and use your right hand to grasp your forearm (palm side) you can squeeze the forearm and it will shorten up the muscles in the forearm and cause your fingers to curl closed. If you put pressure on the outside of the forearm you will cause the fingers to straighten out. The straightening is not caused by anything other than a straight contraction.

Isometrics are contractions that have stalled. It is still a contraction. The brain can only instruct the muscles to do one thing: contract.

To cause the leg to straighten it contracts the quads; to cause it to bend it contracts the femoral biceps.

I think this is probably another area where we will have to agree to disagree. I don't think you will convince me of your position; and I doubt I will convince you of mine.

[swanso5]

1 muscle can't contract without it's antogonist relaxing

this isn't opinion, this is fact whether you believe it or not

[vamp]

negatives must be able to strengthen. Isometric points can be strengthened. Short reps will cause ranges where the muscle is actually stronger. This is why we train for full range of motion with reps. Also, if doing controlled negatives for a chin-up, why does the bi-cep actually feel like it has done work? Because it has. Controlled negatives work, and yes they are harder to recover from because they do cause more muscle tearing which in turn with proper diet and recovery time will result in larger/stronger muscle tissue.

stretching excercises not only increase the ability of tendons and ligaments to stretch, it also increases the muscle's ability to elongate as well. Without elongation control/strength how could you lower and set down heavy weight without it slamming down? It is not just the opposing muscle contraction that does this, the two muscles work in tandom for the process to work, so there is a strength in elongation just as there is in contraction.

just 2 cents.

cheers

[Packard]

1 muscle can't contract without it's antogonist relaxing

this isn't opinion, this is fact whether you believe it or not

You are calling "relaxing" a muscle activity? If that is the case I call it an "activity" too.

But to me, the mind tells the muscle to "contract" and allows it to relax. Relaxing is simply the lack of contraction. We are splitting hairs here (or discussing semantics). But if you are calling relaxing an muscular activity then I would agree.

Muscles contract, and when not being told to contract they will relax.