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| FOCUS... |
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Focus... it's all about the mind-muscle connection. Focus gives you the ability to be in the moment. Whether you are weight lifting or aerobic training, using focus to improve your form and help you concentrate on the movement, will put you in the zone, elevate you to higher performance levels, and help you avoid injury. With the right focus, from the moment you begin, your breathing, posture, and muscle contractions are all led by your mind, and constantly adapting based on feedback from your body and your senses...
To establish a fuller contraction of a muscle during an exercise, you must first be able to fully contract the muscle - without resistance. This method of isometric contraction is informally coined "posing" a muscle. In between sets, posing a muscle allows more blood to flow to the given area, as well as establishes a direct mind-muscle connection between the brain and the muscle being targeted. You must first be able to fully contract the muscle without resistance. This enables you to selectively flex certain muscles, without involving others. The better you get at mastering this, the more control you'll have over your muscles during your workouts, and the better your results will be.
It’s basically a feeling of connection with your muscles that you develop over time. It helps you mentally control the amount of force you generate during a given exercise. Regardless of the weight, it’s the ability to use the mind-muscle connection to get as strong a contraction as possible in the target muscle. This comes with practice and... Focus.
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| FORM... |
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Proper Form... it's essential for success when training for anything from general fitness to sports activities to competition. It's the quality of training that influences your progress, more than the quantity. Lifting weights has a number of benefits, such as strengthening your muscles and improving your overall health. However, lifting weights also carries risks if proper form is not used. Time under tension, angle of movement, range of motion, and many other factors all contribute to a particular resistance training session. It's important to understand the proper mechanics of training to get the most benefit from your time...
Correct training form and technique can help avoid sprains, strains, fractures and other injuries that may hamper your weight training efforts. In addition, using proper form when weight lifting pumps more blood into the muscles you are working, leading to better performance.
Your goal should always be to work the targeted muscle group in the most effective way to achieve the intended results. In addition to choosing the right exercises to perform, and how much weight to use, you can maximize your success by using... Proper Form.
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| FUNCTION... |
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Functional Fitness... it's about training your body to handle life - your life. It puts the focus on building a body capable of doing real-life activities in real-life situations, not just lifting a certain amount of weight in an idealized posture created by a weight machine. Conventional weight training works muscles in isolation. Functional fitness is all about integration - it teaches the muscle groups you've worked on independently, to work together...
For example, try doing a one-legged press on a leg-press machine; not a problem. Now stand up and try doing a one-legged squat. It's tough to do without falling over! No matter how strong your various individual leg muscles are, a one-legged squat requires that those individual muscles work together.
Although you may not do many one-legged squats in real-life, you will perform a lot of daily activities that benefit from improved stability and balance that you'll achieve through... Functional Fitness.
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| FLEXIBILITY... |
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Flexibility... it's a measure of the range of motion around a joint or series of joints, or... can you scratch that itch in the middle of your back? Flexibility is limited by the joint's physical structure, including the bone, connective tissue, and muscle. We can't change our bones, but we can change our connective tissue and muscles to enhance flexibility. With the proper training, both women, and men, can improve their flexibility...
Flexibility can enhance performance in aerobic training and muscular conditioning as well as in sports, and reduce the chance of injury during training and in daily life. It allows you to become more in tune with your body, and is a form of active relaxation that can improve both mental and physical health.
Good flexibility will help you perform everyday activities with relative ease - getting out of bed, lifting children, or running errands. Flexibility and joint mobility tends to deteriorate with age, often due to a sedentary lifestyle, and daily activities become more difficult to perform. To help prevent this loss of mobility and make your daily activities easier, your training plan should include... Flexibility.
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