How Often Should You do Isometric Exercise

By Paul "Batman" O'Brien  
B.A., N.C.E.H.S., Dip. Acu., Cert Clin. IMed., Dip. Adv. OBB, Dip. CHM, Pn1, PN-SSR, PN-NCA, M.AFPA., M.C.Th.A.

How Often Should You do Isometric Exercise - Daily. That's the short answer...BUT...it's not that simple. Recently I posted an excellent Isometric Exercise, known as the Kiveloff Isometric. You can read about it and learn how to do it here - Solve High Blood Pressure and get in great shape. It is recommended that you perform this isometric daily, in fact 3 repetitions 3 times a day.

However many who have read 7 Seconds to A Perfect Body, Project Dragon etc know that I advocate 7 days of rest between training the same body part (if you trained your arms Tuesday, don't train them again till next Tuesday) or at least the same aspect of that body part. (Eg. If you've done a a full biceps contraction on Monday don't do that again for at least 7 days, but on Tuesday you could do the Triceps Press down and so on).

This has caused some confusion. So I thought I'd take the time to explain a little bit more about how often should you do Isometric Exercise. The science, fibre type explanations and recovery times for those fibres is all in Perfect Body so I won't repeat that here at length but basically:

Slow Twitch Fibres )SO) take 90 seconds to recover from maximal stimulation
Fast Twitch Fibres (FG) take upwards of 7 days to recover from maximal Stimulation

In 7 Seconds to A Perfect Body I teach maximal isolated isometric contractions. The important word here is isolated. A given muscle is trained in a series of positions to overload and maximally contract that muscle. This stimulates FG fibres and causes muscle growth and strength development.

The Kiveloff Isometric on the other hand is NOT AN ISOLATION isometric. As such you cannot maximally contract the muscles and stimulate the FG fibres. Thus it does not require 7 days of rest. :-)

But how is this? If you contract as hard as you can surely that's a maximal contraction. Yes...and no.

Muscles work in opposing pairs. Your biceps vs your triceps is a good example. One shortens the angle the latter extends it. Another aspect of this is the actual intensity of contraction. Maxick taught that to fully contract a muscle its opposite number must be fully relaxed.

As such during the Kiveloff Isometric your muscles and fighting each other and roughly are about 50/50 each side, preventing a full isometric contraction of any one muscle.

The goal of the Kiveloff isometric is to regulate blood pressure, sugar levels and provide light toning. It is NOT designed for maximal strength or muscle growth as it does not tap the FG fibres.

As I frequently point isometrics are incredibly versatile and you use different isometric protocols to achieve different results. I provide full guidelines for each type of isometric in my individual programs. That said here are some quick pointers on how often should you do Isometric Exercise...