Why is Accelerating Isokinetics so Effective?

The greatest athletes are the ones who can put their muscles on stretch and fire them the fastest. It's the ability to go from the eccentric phase (lengthening the muscle) to the concentric (the shortening of a muscle). This is not a secret. What we are finding is that many of the training methods put too much pressure on the eccentric phase which results in injury. Take the bench press for a moment. When doing a bench press, you lower a large amount of weight onto your chest (eccentric phase) and then push it up (concentric phase). Most of the failure occurs during the eccentric phase. Taking a large amount of weight and lowering it down and up, does not train your muscles to move from the eccentric phase to the concentric phase quickly, even if you lift quickly.

One Alternative

One of the most effective ways to train your muscles to fire quickly is to use Accelerating Isokinetics. When you use Accelerating Isokinetics you do not have resistance during the eccentric phase, you have during the concentric phase. The beautiful part is that your resistance is matched during the concentric phase. Let's look at the bench press example again. If you were to do a bench press using Accelerating Isokinetics there would be no resistance on the way down (the eccentric phase), and when you pushed up (the concentric phase) your force would be matched. So if you push with 300 pounds of pressure, the Accelerating Isokinetic machine would match it, but only during the concentric phase. If you push with 40 pounds of pressure then the Accelerating Isokinetic machine matches your 40 pounds of pressure.

What Does Mean?

Since the Accelerating Isokinetic machine doesn't provide resistance during the eccentric phase you can develop greater force, speed and acceleration. Your muscles are being trained to rapidly move from the eccentric phase to the concentric phase.