Everyone sees or experiences this when they go to the gym.

The coach pats a person's muscle, maybe it's your muscle, and then asks:

“Do you feel it?”

Don't think too much, the coach here means whether you can feel the peak contraction of the muscle.

Basically, every muscle growth player needs to achieve peak muscle contraction, because peak muscle contraction is considered a basic requirement for fitness.

If you can't achieve peak muscle contraction, then many later fitness techniques won't be useful to you.

What is peak muscle contraction?

First, let's talk about the concept. Peak muscle contraction means that when the muscle is held under tension, it reaches the peak contraction through concentric contraction.

The first requirement is that the muscle must have tension, that is, the muscle is working and bearing load.

The second requirement is concentric contraction, which is the process of contraction from the stretched state. This is called concentric.

Finally, the peak of concentric contraction, which is the maximum achievement of concentric movement.

For example, when training the chest muscles, the process of pushing the dumbbell bench press to the highest point is called chest concentric contraction. Reaching the highest point is called peak contraction.

Generally, we can roughly understand peak contraction as muscle squeeze. When you train, the muscle squeeze is called peak contraction.

Because you are training against resistance, the muscle must have tension, which is active contraction, so peak contraction can be understood as squeeze.

Why is peak contraction important?

Many people don't understand, I obviously do the same action as the coach, why does the coach insist on asking me if I feel it.

If I don't feel it, does that mean my action is wrong?

Of course it's not necessarily an error, but if you don't achieve peak contraction, it means your action is only form correct, but lacks the three souls.

(1) Precision

The purpose of doing dumbbell bench press is to train the chest muscles. The purpose of doing high-level pull-downs is to train the back muscles.

But if you don't feel the peak contraction of the muscles, can you be sure you are training the target muscles?

Not sure, because after training, delayed soreness will affect all participating muscles, and the delayed soreness may disappear over time.

So training peak contraction at the time proves that you are training the target muscles.

(2) Standardization

Fitness movements don't have perfect, one fitness movement, everyone does a different look.

So your action is the same as the coach doesn't mean your action meets your body structure, that is, your action may not be standard.

Your trajectory, your amplitude, your action details should all reflect muscle activation.

So peak contraction can help you correct your action form. When you seek peak contraction, you are also optimizing your action form to make it more standardized.

(3) Control

The last one is control, which is similar to precision, but precision is targeted at muscles, while control is targeted at load.

For example, if you move too quickly, you will not be able to feel the peak contraction of the muscles, and the muscle growth effect will also decrease.

Only when you make this action, you can use muscle strength to control, so that the muscle can withstand the load, thus completing muscle growth.

So the third function of peak contraction is to realistically stimulate the target muscle with your training load.

Cheat techniques for peak contraction

Many people may not understand the role and definition of peak contraction, but they know that peak contraction is important, and they call it muscle activation.

But if you attach so much importance to peak contraction, a beginner can't do it, let alone the peak contraction of the muscle.

Today we will introduce two cheat techniques to make it easier for you to experience peak muscle contraction.

(1) Pre-hypertrophy

Newbies can't feel the peak contraction of the muscles, a key reason is that the muscles are too thin, you can't squeeze them.

So you can pre-inflate to make the muscles temporarily thicker, and then you can experience peak muscle contraction.

For example, when doing barbell rows, if you don't feel the peak contraction of the back muscles, you can first train 50 times of sitting rows, and then train barbell rows, which can experience it.

(2) Muscle tape

Sometimes you encounter the problem that the coach feels the peak contraction of the muscle, and the coach doesn't feel it.

This is called 'foreign object sensation', which guides you to complete the peak contraction of the muscle.

So you can use a tape to target the muscle, such as applying a tape to the chest for peak chest contraction. When you achieve peak muscle contraction, you have basically entered the fitness arena, especially muscle growth.

Then you can hit your head on the dragon ladder, and you can say you are training the trapezoid muscle.