I came across an interesting article in a recent issue of The Journal of Applied Research titled “Muscle Use During Isometric Co-contraction of Agonist-Antagonist Muscle Pairs in the Upper and Lower Body Compared to Abdominal Crunches and a Commercial Multi Gym Exerciser” by Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky (et al).  Just getting through the title is enough to make you break out into a sweat!

Anyway, what Dr. Petrofsky and his team did was to measure the amount of work that a muscle pair did during various isometric exercises and compared it to the amount of work performed by the same muscles during “traditional” exercises (either lifting weights or doing crunches).  They performed these tests on 17 people (6 males, 11 females) aged 22 to 28 and measured the results with an Electromyogram (EMG), a machine that measures the amount of electrical activity in a muscle indicating how much the muscle is working.  The results were pretty fantastic.

They compared the effectiveness of isometric exercise on three muscle pairs in three parts of the body:  the bicep/tricep muscle pair in the arms, the abdominal/back extensors in the midsection, and the hamstring/quads in the legs.  Traditional weight lifting exercises included the chest press, biceps curl, triceps curl, lat pull down, ad extension, ab flexion, leg extension, leg curl, and leg press.  Traditional floor exercises included the abdominal crunch.

In all cases, the isometric exercises produced up to 5 times (and in some cases, up to 16 times) more muscle activity than traditional exercises. Quoting directly from the article, the isometric “… exercises caused between 4.1 and 15.9 times the exercise for different muscle groups than did commercial weight lifting equipment.”  They also stated that “… when added to the fact that more muscle groups exercise with isometric than the commercial equipment, the isometric protocol is a much better form of exercise.  In fact, using isometric exercise for 6 minutes would be the equivalent muscle work of 30 to 35 minutes of gym work on commercial weight lifting equipment.” (emphasis added)

Pretty significant difference, don’t you think?  Now, this does not mean that you should immediately drop all other forms of exercise and do only isometrics.  But it does emphasize that isometrics should be a part of every balanced fitness routine.

Visit Balance-Your-Health.com for more information on the role of isometrics in a balanced fitness program or you can click on the link at the top of this article to get the full research article from The Journal of Applied Research.

Hiram

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