 Question is from dance girl. What are the benefits of isometric holds? For example a wall sit, you know It's funny with isometric type. So if you don't know what that means. So there's there's three main types of muscle contractions There's the Concentric contraction. This is when I'm actually lifting something. So think of a bicep, right? Me curling a weight up That's concentric me lowering the weight. That's another form of contraction. That's called eccentric and then there's holding something That's isometric and it's funny because Or X there's the isometric holds go in and out of favor in the in the fitness space both that and eccentric They do I think both those two are over low But isometric a lot like isometric was valued a lot a long time ago wrestlers and you know grapplers and when weight training became a thing initially in the early days of lifting weights Yeah, isometrics was a big was a big thing the Soviets Really utilize isometric training quite a bit. In fact, they have some of the best studies on isometric training I love isometric training because they create little down damage for the amount of the amount of results you get from them So it's a great way to add volume to your workout without overtraining your body The strength that you gain from an isometric hold Most of it's in the in the hold itself But there's a lot of carryover to outside of that well It's also one of the best ways to teach how to get connected to them Oh, we talk about muscle connection mind muscle connection people you throw that turn around a lot You know, this is one of the best ways to help somebody get connected there is you know in a wall sit You know, it's cool about a wall sit is you can be in a wall sit and there's there's many muscles that are being contracted But you can sit in it and actually mentally Engage the ones that you want to put more emphasis on so I could be in a wall sit and I can make it really quad You know just totally tense up my cause or I can kind of shift it back into my glutes and squeeze and tense my glutes to hold Me up and that's what I like about it allows for the time for you to really connect and feel your way through You know the muscles and into the recruitment process So it's like, you know, can I summon up more of an army? You know for for this job that I have and that's that's part of it Like you can do it from like any angle to which is a great benefit to it So if there's a part of an exercise you feel like you don't have that much support you don't have that much strength Yeah, it's good point. Let's just let's just focus on that for a while. Let's feel our way through it Let's squeeze and see if we can recruit more so we get more powerful in that movement. That's it's a perfect exercise That's a great great point. So to use that as an example Let's say you're you like to squat, but you notice at the bottom of your squat You tend to lose a little bit of stability Your knees wobble a little bit or your pelvis tilts or you just don't feel as connected a great way to connect to that Portion of the rep is to do an isometric hold in that portion of the rep We did a great YouTube video on this. We did it's a dump these squat And I know Justin introduced that to us for that exact reason that you're talking about right now So and I think it's one of the most overlooked. Here's what you got to remember is like we and we tend to do this We do an exercise. We do something and it's like we want the immediate results like tomorrow Why was I not sore enough or oh, I didn't see something change It's like that's not what you're doing when you do something like that Like if you go squat 200 pounds 10 times and then you go do isometric holds for 10 reps You're gonna feel the squat with 200 pounds on your back way more the next day It doesn't necessarily mean though that the the isometric hold couldn't be as beneficial for somebody if you're not Getting good recruitment in your glutes and you're trying to focus on that Just loading the bar up every just gets the body sore doesn't necessarily mean that you're using utilizing the glutes as much as you like To so introducing these types of exercises It's the long-term carryover that you're getting it that which is great because it seems to be a theme of this episode is The you know, you're doing something very small and basic But the carryover that it will have long term for you is gonna be tremendous It's the first place you go when you have disconnection the first place You go when you can't connect to a muscle well is to try to squeeze it in an isometric position You know what Western athletes? Understood the benefits of isometrics on accident before other athletes bodybuilders now you asked well How how bodybuilders don't use isometric holds posing they flex that's exactly right And I remember as a kid stumbling upon this on accident because when I was a kid and I was lifting weights in the 90s No magazines talked about isometric holds, but they did talk about the benefits of flexing and posing They never use the word isometric, but they would say things like Arnold You know when you would go up to as he got closer to competition He would spend an hour a day posing and bodybuilder say yeah, it helps bring out definition or whatever You know Jim bro, you know science or so I would practice flexing because of course Arnold did it And he's you know the bodybuilding God or whatever and I would notice when I would practice more flexing I feel better in my workouts I would just be able to feel the muscles a little bit more And by the way if you've never posed or flexed your muscles and held them I'm not talking about just a flex and relax try holding a pose like a bodybuilder does on stage I mean when you're on stage as a bodybuilder and you're holding a front double bicep You have to hold it and look good not just your biceps. You're flexing everything in a very nice You know you have to increase the intensity of it and you have to smile while you're doing it You can't look like you know because that takes away from the look or whatever and you're holding that shit for like 30 seconds Doing that no joke try five minutes of posing where you're holding a flex and remember your whole body's getting looked at So you're not just doing a lat spread or you know a crab pose the whole the whole body is being presented Try flexing your whole body in different poses hold your pose for just hold it for 15 seconds Just do that do that for five minutes and tell me that that's not a freaking amazing workout