IsoMax Bruce Lee: Week 3

I did not skip Week 2. I did not have anything to report about it, although I did record my data as usual.

I found out about recent research on isometrics published around 2020, which found that isometric training with the targeted muscle at a long length produces the greatest carryover to dynamic performance, compared to training with the muscle at a short length.

This latest research inspired me to change the following exercises in my Bruce Lee routine:

• Replace Zercher Squat with Zercher Lunge - Because of my low back injury history, I was reluctant to train at the lowest possible position. I can get into a lower position in the Zercher Lunge, compared to the Zercher Squat, without worrying about my lower back. The lower position stretches the muscles of the quads, glutes, hamstrings and hips, thus lengthening them for isometric strength training.
• Replace Medium Overhead Press with Standing Overhead Tricep Extension - The medium angle of the overheard press does not put any of the overhead pressing muscles at a long length. The Standing Tricep Extension puts more load on the triceps, which are among the weakest of my overhead pressing muscles, compared to the chest and shoulders. Strength gains for the tricpes should lead to pressing strength gains. It is also easy to find a position/angle for the Standing Tricep Extension that sets the triceps at reasonably long lengths. Thus, the combination of low-angle Overhead Press, which works all the overhead pressing muscles at long lengths, and the Overhead Tricep Extension, which works the triceps at long lengths, is likelier to stimulate strength gains with the greatest carryover to my kettlebell pressing.

I was used putting my working foot as close as possible to the chain when I trained the Zercher Lunge on the Isochain. The IsoMax baseplate is not shaped like a rectangle but actually narrower in the middle, presumably to help keep the IsoMax strap from sliding to either side. As a result of the narrower width in the middle, there is less surface area for contact with my foot.

My performance of Standing Overhead Tricep Extension this week was unsurprisingly week. I just haven't practiced this exercise very much in my life. I might have been shown it once as a dumbell exercise by a trainer when I was going to a commercial gym for exercise, or maybe it was the supine version, aka "skull crusher", which requires a bench. In any case, not only was my force output only 17 lbs., I felt some pressure in my elbows. In this video, fellow IsoMax user Chrys Johnson, who is also a fitness trainer, says that the elbow pressure is not a bad thing, but rather a sign of connective tissues tightening up. In fact he reports it fixed his elbow tendonitis.

I looked up overhead tricep extension Youtube but did not find clues to why my max force was such a low number, other than simply being weak. What bothered me more than being weak was not being able to get that feet-to-hands whole body tension that I can get with other exercises. I knew that the forearms should be moving up. But what I'd missed was that if I were doing this exercise dynamically, the weight should be overhead with the arms straight. The weight should not be in front of the head, because that would be bad for the shoulder joints. For this to happen, the elbows have to be pulled back as the weight goes up. To pull the elbows back, the upper back muscles must be engaged. Once I figured this out, I got the whole body tension I was looking for and my max force jumped from 17 lbs. to 35 lbs.

I continued doing only one rep per exercise, which seems to be the majority interpretation of the Bruce Lee/Bob Hoffman isometric routine. Performance has fluctuated from day to day as expected, but seems to be generally trending higher in the low overhead press, seated row, and a few other exercises. The Lee/Hoffman routine was created long before the Isochain was invented, so there's no particular guidance on using Isochain/IsoMax for progressive overload. For my version of this routine, I've been using IsoMax in Timer Mode, at the default setting of 6 seconds. I do this to use the built-in timer, and to ensure that I produce a particular amount of force at minimum. I've tried to set the target load at about 70% of where I think my 1-rep max might be, and increase the load if I'd been working at the same target load for more than a week, or if I'd logged max force numbers at a higher level for 3 consecutive sessions. This is obviously a much looser approach compared to the Promethean program, in which you raise the target load every session until you can't sustain force for at least 6 seconds, or the 6x6 program, which requires you to spend one session every 2-4 weeks on just 1-rep max testing.