Nothing New Under the Sun: Isometrics, Part 1- The Oldest “New” Training Method You’ve Never Tried

Depending on your level of general nerdery when it comes to training methods, and to a lesser degree your age, you may know anywhere between nothing to “the shit that dude Charles Atlas did” about isometric training, due to the fact that the methodology fell almost entirely out of favor in the late 1970s. If I’m honest, I use isometrics somewhat sparingly in my own training and never really refer to it as such, as “isometrics” are in the modern day typically touted by people with unimpressive lifts and physiques, so I’ve never associated my methods with theirs. Having had that realization, I also breathe frequently the day and will admit to that in spite of the fact that most of humanity (whom I’ve truly come to view with only hatred and disgust over the last couple of weeks) breathes as well, I suppose I should include isometrics as one of my oft-used training methods.

Having established I use isometrics but don’t consider them to be pillars of my training, I rarely discuss them. In the same way that a dentist might neglect to mention using a certain pick a couple of times a week for cleaning a half-impacted molar, it never occurs to me that I use isometrics unless I happen to sit down and begin writing on the subject. For those of you who are unaware, isometric training is essentially maximal force expenditure without any concomitant, measurable work being done. Put another way, it’s exercise without motion, or an attempt to move an immovable object. That’s right- the use of isometrics is a potential real-life application of the concept of the irresistible force paradox, and if used like Maxick and Paul Anderson could be the key to transforming a shitty build into a brutal one and a weak body and mind into some shit that wouldn’t have you struck dead if an ancient Spartan hit you with the stink eye.

The concept is sound- provided you’re straining at an object, you’re engaging muscle fibers regardless of whether or not you move the weight. People have been using this method for millennia, dating back to the creation of a holistic martial art/medicinal system by the ancient Tamil (the indigenous people of India displaced by the Iranian culture we now think of as Indian) that they call Siddha medicine. The Chinese adopted and adapted that system to form a similar system that also used isometrics, which you can still see today in both yoga and traditional martial arts practices like the horse stance. While I realize the horse stance might seems as antiquated and useful as an abacus at a Stone Age Pictionary party, there are far worse ways to build up leg strength in the absence of weights (like in the apocalypse everyone claims is drawing nigh).

It’s not as though the use of isometrics simply predates weights and was thereafter forgotten- the use of static contraction isometrics was more popular with turn-of-the-century physical culturists and strongmen than cocaine and heroin were with doctors of the same period. For all we know, guys like Maxick and Monte Saldo (you can get the basics of the Maxalding system here) might have ripped massive gaggers before settling into some psychotic, pretzel-shaped flexing session- whatever they were doing, it fucking worked, because Monte Saldo was able to hold a one ton bridge section complete with extraordinarily brave passengers in a Darracq automobile on a raised, rotating platform at 5’5″ and 144 pounds. That ripped little badass still sported 16″ biceps and a 17″ neck at that weight, which is a muscular impossibility for most people (when I wrestled 134, my arms were barely 15″ with a 18″ neck at the same height), and possessed enough strength to do life-threatening crab-pose supports as well as bent press 230 pounds.

Following the turn of the century strongmen and bodybuilders, the isometrics fad swung back into the zeitgeist when they were promoted by the hilariously zany and awesome “Doctor Frankenstein” of strength sports medicine, John Ziegler. Ziegler combined isometrics with steroids to produce two lifting prodigies, Bill March and Louis Rieke. This, however, was also what killed the use of isometrics by “regular” lifters, as the results Ziegler produced were “tainted” by the concomitant use of steroids. As Bill Starr so aptly put it years ago,

“The main reason isometrics fell from favor in the strength training community was the disclosure some years after the concept’s introduction that those who had made fantastic gains on the isometric system were using steroids at the same time. When someone went on steroids, his lifts increased regardless of the type of training system he was used, so many people assume that the isometric program was just a smoke screen that allowed Bob Hoffman of the York Barbell Company to market thousands of power racks – and that isometrics were useless. It was a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. John Ziegler, M.D., is often credited with inventing functional isometrics, but this is not, strictly speaking, true. Ziegler was a prominent physician in the Washington, D.C., area, and he was fascinated with strength. He came across some research on the subject done at Springfield College in 1928, but the researchers didn’t couple the method with a specific groups of exercises. In 1953 Dr. Mueller of Germany began conducting some experiments with isometrics, but they weren’t relevant to strength athletes. Ziegler took the concepts and geared them specifically to Olympic weightlifters. Later, he did the same for bodybuilders” (Starr).

As with anyone awesome, Ziegler couldn’t give two wet shits what the world thought about steroids, or anything else for that matter. Ziegler was a giant of a man, towering over the York lifters at a burly 6’4″ and 240 pounds, and did whatever the fuck he wanted, when he wanted. This was a WW2 Marine who’d fought in the Pacific and would drink at roadside bars on long road trips while inexplicably dressed as an Amish preacher, telling everyone he was doing research on “ee-vil,” sat his fur buddy beagle at the head of the dinner table and served the four-legger first, and who loved taking d-bol at least as much as he loved giving it to other lifters. When he wasn’t dressing up for a one-man game of “Cowboys and First People” and insisting people erefer to him as “Montana Jack,” Ziegler was scouring the latest research to figure out how to make people bigger, faster, and stronger, and he achieved his goals using a madcap combination of hypnosis, the isotron (an early form of TENS that seemed to work wonders per the studies by Massey and Lloyd), isometrics, and five week cycles of 5mg tabs of dianabol three times a day.

Let that sink in- for those of you who have used grey market gear, that pales in comparison to the shit you’d used with Superdrol in it, and is likely even weak compared to high dosed halotestin. For a modern lifter, I’d say 25mg of dbol is an incredibly low dose, as I have known chicks to use considerably more than 15mg a day for far longer than five weeks… to far lesser effect. As such, it seems that the methods of Dr. John Ziegler have a hell of a lot of merit.

Prior to meeting Ziegler, Bill March (b. 1937) was a 181lb lifter who had just totaled 745 prior to meeting Ziegler. After agreeing to make the six hour round-trip drive to visit Ziegler’s house four to five times a week, March started packing on both mass and strength. Using Ziegler’s wacky combination of cutting edge training techniques, March went on to total 1037 as a 198 pounder, winning the Pan Am Games and the Weightlifting World Championships, though he took fourth in the 1964 Olympics (though his total had him tied for third, the other lifter managed an Olympic record with his snatch, which netted him the bronze. Between March and Rieke, who both put 100 pounds on their Olympic three-lift total in six months, isometrics were placed firmly on the map, and the work of other exercise scientists at Lousiana State and Iowa State confirmed Ziegler’s own research. Bob Hoffman began promoting isometrics like he was a combination of Jesus and all of the apostles, claiming the system was his invention while being the world’s biggest evangelist of the training methods. The problem? Between the fact that all of his lifters were seen to be crazy gassed up (though natty as shit by today’s standards) and the fact Hoffman omitted critical training points from his articles no one believed the shit worked, though in fact it is near magic if done right.

According to Bill Starr, fucking up with isometrics is far more common than getting it right. In that was it was very much like how most people give oral- in an uneducated manner, skill-free, and begrudgingly.

“One thing we all discovered was that it took some practice to learn how to perform the isometrics correctly. It was simply a matter of pushing and pulling against a stationary bar. It required a great amount of focus and concentration, so several weeks passed before we got any results from our workouts. It was difficult to tell if we were, in fact, really exerting ourselves completely. 

This is the main reason Ziegler quickly modified his program. He had March and Riecke move a weighted bar a short distance, then lock into an isometric hold for the required count. Those of us in the hinterlands, unfortunately, didn’t learn of this adaptation for many years” (Starr).   

Modern scientific research confirmed this. One meta-study on existing literature explained it in a little greater detail than did Bill Starr above, claiming that isometric strength training (IST) is ideal for improving dynamic sports performance, as “IST has been shown to induce less fatigue and resulted in superior joint angle specific strength than dynamic strength training, and benefited sports related dynamic performances such as running, jumping and cycling. IST may be included into athletes’ training regime to avoid getting overly fatigue while still acquiring positive neuromuscular adaptations; to improve the strength at a biomechanically disadvantaged joint position of a specific movement; to improve sports specific movements that require mainly isometric contraction; and when athletes have limited mobility due to injuries” (Lum).

To maximize dynamic strength and explosion, use:

• 70-75% of your 1RM
• sustained contraction of 3-30 seconds per repetition
• and total contraction duration of>80-150 s per session for>36 sessions (Lum).

To increase maximum strength, use:

• 80-100% MVC with sustained contraction of 1-5 seconds
• total contraction time of 30-90 seconds per session,
• multiple joint angles or targeted joint angles to ensure you trash the muscle fully.

Additionally, if you use IST in a ballistic manner and really explode off the pins (which is my preferred method), you can maximize the improvement of rate of force development. (Lum)

Superstar strength coach Bill Starr’s methods were a bit more simplistic. He recommended the following isotonic-isometric addition to your regular training, which he intimated were awesome for squat, bench, and deadlift but could be used for literally any exercise on which you wanted to try isometrics.

• Do three sets- two warmup sets (to get the feel of the exercise) and one work set.
  • “On the warmup sets, just touch the bar to the top pins 3 times but don’t try to hold the bar against them. On the work set push the bar against the top pins and lock it into position tightly for no less than a count of 8 and preferably a count of 12. If you can’t hold it for 8, the weight is too heavy. If you can hold it for 12, the weight is too light. Keep in mind that the amount of weight on the bar is less important than the amount of time you hold it locked into position.
• “If you decide to work just one position on any lift, do so after you’ve done your regular routine on that exercise, but don’t do as much as you’d normally do. Drop the back-off sets or one of the work sets.”
• “Should you choose to do three positions in the rack – start, middle, and finish position – don’t do your regular program at all. Instead, do 1 or 2 light warmup sets, then do the rack work.”
• “Each time you do a position in the rack, try to increase the weight on the bar slightly” (Starr). 

As I mentioned at the outset, not all isometrics have to be done in a rack, which makes sense given the fact that the oldest type of isometrics of which we know that is still in use is at least 5000 years old- the Vinyasa poses of yoga predate a systematic yoga by at least a thousand years, and those are the sort of isometrics utilized in kung fu with horse stance, as are the other Shaolin stances (which at this point appear to be based directly on Indian Siddha methods, according to historians).

In addition to Ziegler’s method, a few other isometric applications are:

Yielding Isometrics

Yielding isometrics are what I think of when I think of isometrics- it’s the holding of a pose without resistance. It could be a plank or a kung fu stance or just you pressing your palms together as hard as possible to engage your pecs fully. Yielding isometrics are awesome because they require zero equipment, very little space, and have zero risk of injury. The drawback? Your brain, mostly- most people can’t maintain the focus or the drive necessary to make this as effective as guys like Maxick (who could flex one side of his abs at a time, or flex a single row of abs while leaving the others relaxed). Thus, if you’re a master of the mind and body, feel free to make these the cornerstone of your program- if you lack that sort of fictitious-seeming superhumanity, however, it might just be something to keep in your bag of tricks in situations like the current shutdown or jail.You can also do this with weights or bands, holding it as long as possible in the contracted position. I typically do this with bands for biceps, holding the band as long as possible with my arms at 90 degrees. Traditional martial artists will hold a horse stance or other stance up to five minutes (at least one source states that holding positions longer confers no additional strength), and if you want a full book on the subject, I would say the Maxalding text (available for free here) is likely going to be your infernal grimoire of pain of choice.

Isometric Stops

According to Bill Starr, “This technique was popularized by Ray Mentzer, Mike’s brother and the 1979 Mr. America. For these you do a regular set to positive failure, have your partner help you with a few forced reps, then have him raise the weight to the top position for negatives. Instead of lowering all the way down in one continuous motion, however, you stop the bar one-third of the way down, two-thirds of the way down, and close to the bottom. At each of these positions along the range of motion you drive hard, attempting to reverse the movement of the barbell, dumbbells, or whatever for 4 to 6 seconds. Your partner should prevent any upward movement by applying pressure to the bar, if necessary, in each position. This makes for a very intense set, and you may want to eliminate the forced reps prior to your isometric contractions to prevent over-training.”

Isometric Finisher

This is a methodology I’ve heard most often used on the bench, and it might be the easiest way to use weighted isometrics. When you are gassed and know you cannot get another rep, just hold the weight at the sticking point until you fail. Obviously, you’re going to be using a spotter or stops, or you’ll be heading to the hospital in a fucking hurry.

Overcoming Isometrics

Of the bunch, overcoming isometrics seem to be the most enticing method and the biggest bag of bullshit ever, all at the same time- much like with how Emma Stone is the “girl next” door, in spite of the fact that she’s more attractive than women who’ve had wars fought over them, brilliant enough to make the headier dialogue in Easy A to seem natural as shitting in a bucket, and has a voice like a fucking soul-sucking siren. Steve Justa wrote at some length about his use of overcoming isometrics to, of all the weird shit for which you could weight train, get better stacking hay bales. Justa claims that training with an array of over a hundred movements, done with differing frequencies, durations, and intensities, reduced his effort in tossing hay bales by 40% and made him quicker than than a coked-up hummingbird.

While you might think just pulling or pushing on a fixed barbell is something the slow kid in class would do when he was full of energy from eating toilet paper out of the bathroom trash can, science says it’s actually you who’s the slow one, because overcoming isometrics are the shit. One study done at the beginning of the oughts found that the only type of exercise that generates near-maximal levels of muscle recruitment is during a maximal isometric contraction due to greater neural drive, which they posit will lead to greater strength and power on the back end (Babault). Another found that holding a leg extension at within 20%^ of maximal contraction using overcoming isometrics decreased the co-activity of the hamstring by 20%, which means that your quad is working 20% harder because the hamstring is not co-activating to stabilize the leg (Carolan). In essence, a daily battle against an immovable object can indeed turn you into an unstoppable force.

Though a lot of people used the chain setup Bruce Lee and Alexander Zass famously used, or the fixed barbells employed by Steve Justa, Daniel North at Fortitude Training has a different method he loved, especially when attempting to break through a plateau on a given weight.

“Some people can get stuck in the rut of doing the same old shit over and over again when they go the gym. It can be easy to find yourself in this situation (I have) and not know what to do to break through your plateaus. For example, trying to increase your bench and not getting anywhere with your progress can be annoying, but it’s usually due to a lack of variety in your approach to training. Using the bench as an example, instead of repping out 3 sets of 10 like you normally do, you can try performing some overcoming reps. You would have some safeties set up on the rack with the bar underneath, from there, you’re going to press up against the safeties as hard as you fucking can, for about 5-8 sec. This will get your body used to applying as much force as possible, which will help carryover to the bench.

You can also use overcoming isometrics to build muscle, not just strength, and use them as what’s called “pre-exhaust” sets. A pre-exhaust set is when you perform an isolation movement to pump blood to the muscle before performing another exercise that involves movement and targets the same muscle. This helps build a stronger connection to the muscle during the exercise” (North).

Overcoming Isometrics Workouts

If you want to give these a shot, Alexander Zass was a massive fan of them and you can read his turn-of-the-century text on overcoming isometrics for free here. Steve Justa also provided a weekly program of sorts in Rock. Iron, Steel that looked like this:

Day 1

Deadlift at knee height– 50 x 5 second holds on each set, at 80%-90% of maximum effort. Rest 30 seconds between sets. Alternate with a twist to the left and right on each set.

Day 2

30-50 different exercises working every conceivable muscle group of one five-second hold at 90% of max.

Day 3

20 exercises of one two-minute hold at 40% of each. He picks his faves for this day.

Day 4

Bottom Position Squat with Twist (alternate left and right)- 100 half-second bursts at 90%, in sets of five

Half Deadlift with Twist– same as above

Curl– same as above

Days 5 and 6

Rest

Day 7

30 sets of quarter-block sprints, followed by a two-mile run after a six-hour rest.

Day 1

Repeat

And there you have it- an exhaustive eleven page monstrosity introducing you to the oldest style of training you may never have tried. Part two will give you the exact training methods of Olympic lifting phenoms Bill March and Jim Dorn, both of whom were built like brick shithouses due to their rabid devotion to the power rack and isometrics. An isometrics-only workout has proved to just about everyone who’s tried it (I gave it a go in jail) to be both insanely boring and nearly impossible to make effective, but no one is suggesting you dine exclusively on gelato, either- use the big shit for your meat and potatoes and the isometrics for a side dish or desert, and you’ll find yourself seated at a smorgasbord of gainz.

Sources:

Babault N, Pousson M, Ballay Y, Van Hoecke J.  Activation of human quadriceps femoris during isometric, concentric, and eccentric contractions. 2001 Dec;91(6):2628-34.

Carolan B, Cafarelli E.  Adaptations in coactivation after isometric resistance training.  J Appl Physiol (1985). 1992 Sep;73(3):911-7.

Dhyansky YY.  The Indus Valley origin of a yoga practice.  Artibus Asiae.1987;48(1/2):89-108.

Fair JD. Isometrics or steroids? Exploring new frontiers of strength in the 1960s. J Sport Hist. 1993 Spr;20(1):1-24.

Justa, Steve. Rock, Iron, Steel. Nevada City: IronMind Enterprises, 1998.

Komi PV, Viitasalo JT, Rauramaa R, Vihko V.  Effect of isometric strength training of mechanical, electrical, and metabolic aspects of muscle function.  Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 1978 Dec 15;40(1):45-55.

Lloyd T, DE Domenico G, Strauss GR, Singer K.  A review of the use of electro-motor stimulation in human muscles.  Aust J Physiother. 1986;32(1):18-30. 

Lum D, Barbosa TM.  Brief Review: Effects of Isometric Strength Training on Strength and Dynamic Performance.  Int J Sports Med. 2019 May;40(6):363-375. 

Massey BH, Nelson RC, Sharkey BC, Comden T, Otott GC.  Effects of high frequency electrical stimulation on the size and strength of skeletal muscle.  J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 1965 Sep;5(3):136-44.

North, Daniel.  2 Types of Isometrics for Maximal Strength and Muscle.  Fortitude Training.  9 Jan 2020.  Web.  20 Apr 2020.  https://www.fortitudetraining.ca/articles/2-types-of-isometrics-for-maximal-strength-and-muscle

Pincivero DM, Gandhi V, Timmons MK, Coelho AJ.  Quadriceps femoris electromyogram during concentric, isometric and eccentric phases of fatiguing dynamic knee extensions.  J Biomech. 2006;39(2):246-54.

Starr, Bill.  Bill March: the chosen one.  Starting Strength.  18 Sep 2014.  Web.  30 Apr 2020.  https://startingstrength.com/article/bill_march_the_chosen_one

Starr, Bill.  Isometric incinerator.  Reprinted from 1996 Ironman.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  May 2019.  Web.  21 Apr 2020.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2019/05/isometric-incinerator-bill-starr-1996.html

Walker, Childs.  Start of ‘roids rage.  The Baltimore Sun.  2 Nov 2008.  Web.  28 Apr 2020.  https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2008-11-02-0811040040-story.html

Welsh L, Rutherford OM.  Effects of isometric strength training on quadriceps muscle properties in over 55 year olds.  Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 1996;72(3):219-23.