At age 10, I had to do wall sits for gym class, and I associated muscle burn with stronger legs, and stronger legs, to me, meant jumping higher. Ever since my youth, IвЂ™ve been obsessed with jumping higher. My own history with isometrics is an interesting one. This isnвЂ™t to say that isometrics canвЂ™t yield immediate results when performed properly (as weвЂ™ll get into later), but most people donвЂ™t have the patience or proper follow-through to see the amazing results. Isometrics can take a few weeks (or even months) before athletes get to the point where they are seeing great results, and we are in an industry where marketing has us expecting the miraculous in a week.

Unlike plyometrics, isometrics are more related to the maximal strength and activation capabilities of the athlete, and therefore must be performed in the proper complementary manner to other forms of training.People emerge praising the results of isometric training, and then fade into the background, only to reappear again. The isometric phase remains a bit ambiguous, however, and its pendulum swings back and forth in the industry. We have seen this type of exerciseвЂ™s capacity to yield amazing results (such as 6вЂќ vertical jump gains in 10 weeks of training time) by optimizing this phase of muscle contraction.

When we see athletes get stronger in moving a barbell eccentrically than concentrically from point A to point B, yet not always gain commensurate speed on the field of play, we should start to look at the dynamics of lifting itself and determine exactly which mechanisms are at play in the pursuit of strength.ДЄs far as the brain is concerned, the concentric phase of movement is different from the eccentric and isometric phases of lifting, yet we all measure strength by how much an athlete could concentrically move! Great coaches have been questioning this yardstick for some time.Д«uilding eccentric strength has been of importance for ages via the medians of plyometrics.

Isometric workout pdf