Flash Flash Revolution - View Single Post - you need to feel the tension: a principle that's truer than you think

**Reach** · 07-4-2017, 01:29 PM

Very true, especially if you're concerned about hypertrophy.

If you're powerlifting, well, whatever allows you to move the most weight.

Once you get really good at feeling the tension though you can get bigger with less weight than you would think. That's not to say you can use baby weights, but you can make movements pretty damn painful on the muscles with less weight if you focus on proper contraction.

This is especially true with muscles you can contract with other muscles or where you can offload the tension onto your tendons. This is extremely true with:

1. calves: tension can be offloaded onto achilles if this exercise is performed too quickly, if you don't complete the top ~1/3 of the ROM or if you bounce the weight.

2. benching: the chest activates in the bottom ~1/3 of this lift, yet most people don't spend any time here and or make things worse by utilizing a bounce off the chest. The chest becomes an accessory at that point. An easy trick for people that can't feel it in their chest is to just switch to paused bench for awhile with a long pause. Pausing takes the slack out of the muscle spindles and the chest will be forced to maximally contract to get the bar moving again.

3. squatting: myotatic reflex in the posterior chain can allow you to bounce out of a squat pretty easily. An essential skill for powerlifting but if you're bodybuilding you can take 1/3 of the weight off the bar and just do a pause squat and you'll be in infinitely more pain afterwards (and you'll get much more ham and glute hypertrophy, since utilizing the reflex takes the tension OFF the hams and glutes whereas pausing puts it ON them)

07-4-2017, 01:29 PM	#2
Reach FFR Simfile Author Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Canada Age: 37 Posts: 7,471	Re: you need to feel the tension: a principle that's truer than you think Very true, especially if you're concerned about hypertrophy. If you're powerlifting, well, whatever allows you to move the most weight. Once you get really good at feeling the tension though you can get bigger with less weight than you would think. That's not to say you can use baby weights, but you can make movements pretty damn painful on the muscles with less weight if you focus on proper contraction. This is especially true with muscles you can contract with other muscles or where you can offload the tension onto your tendons. This is extremely true with: 1. calves: tension can be offloaded onto achilles if this exercise is performed too quickly, if you don't complete the top ~1/3 of the ROM or if you bounce the weight. 2. benching: the chest activates in the bottom ~1/3 of this lift, yet most people don't spend any time here and or make things worse by utilizing a bounce off the chest. The chest becomes an accessory at that point. An easy trick for people that can't feel it in their chest is to just switch to paused bench for awhile with a long pause. Pausing takes the slack out of the muscle spindles and the chest will be forced to maximally contract to get the bar moving again. 3. squatting: myotatic reflex in the posterior chain can allow you to bounce out of a squat pretty easily. An essential skill for powerlifting but if you're bodybuilding you can take 1/3 of the weight off the bar and just do a pause squat and you'll be in infinitely more pain afterwards (and you'll get much more ham and glute hypertrophy, since utilizing the reflex takes the tension OFF the hams and glutes whereas pausing puts it ON them) __________________ Last edited by Reach; 07-4-2017 at 01:36 PM..