Lately I’ve been doing a fair amount of bodyweight isometric training.
I was inspired when seeing the results had by Bud Jeffries especially after he taught at the last Super Human Training Workshop.
I’ve also been studying oldtime strongman Alexander Zass who was famous for his use of isometrics.
Most of my training right now is with bodyweight exercises and isometrics are making up a big amount of that.
With hand balancing, there are lots of holds, like doing the handstand itself, is an isometric. But I’m doing lots more like holding specific positions of presses.
I’ve even been doing bodyweight isometric training with one arm chinnups lately. I’m continue to experiment with this and hope to have positive results to share with you later.
Top Isometric Hold in One Arm Chinnup
Holds are only one form of isometrics. There’s a whole lot that will need to be covered here in the future.
Comments
I’ve been doing a lot of inversion work lately, one that’s worth a try if you have some gravity boots is:
Hang upside down, grab a pair of lightish dumbbells and VERY slowly do the movement of a wide grip pullup. In a similar vein to the 1+ minute pushup, moving 1/4 inch and holding for a few seconds, very slowly ratcheting the movement.
The great thing about this one is that because you are inverted you are getting lots of extra bloodflow in the upper body, also you can adjust the dumbbell weight easily.
I’m sure you could do similar with bands deloading a pullup, but I really enjoy 10 – 20 minutes inverted at the end of my workouts at the moment.
Also I’ve been doing heavier lifts in this style, what I call in my logbook “batman rows”, go a bit heavier here and just do one arm rows whilst inverted, absolutely blasts the lats and almost the entire arm.
@Kris Wragg: That’s very interesting, I’m going to have to give it a try. I could use my yoga trapeze for it but I’ll need to find another place to set it up as I don’t have full overhead range while hanging where its currently at.