With the new Isometric Power Belt I have aquired, it has given me a new outlook on the men who have used Isometrics to better their health, fitness, overall strength and creativity. The Great Gama would tie a belt around a tree every morning for over 2 decades and tried to throw it, suplex it, push it, pull or anything to get it off its roots. It never happened but that's not the point; the point is, that tree made him so strong that he could toss opponents around like rag dolls either in practice or in competition of Kushti Style Wrestling. The belt and the tree gave him an advantage that nobody can match and was undefeated his whole career.
Alexander Zass was an old-time strongman who could bend bars, twist steel and other feats that were extraordinary in his day. He started becoming The Amazing Sampson when he was a Prisoner Of War in World War 1, breaking out of prisons a total of 4 times. He made it his mission to snap the chains that held him and bend the bars of his cell that kept him captive by straining as hard as he could until something moved or broke. He utilized Isometric Exercise in order to survive and that made him a legend among strongmen.
He took what he used and molded it to an act show of bending bars, snapping chains and twisting the toughest steel at the time. He once developed a book using Isometrics as a base for strength and exercise. He used an apparatus that was a long chain with 2 handles attached to each end. You can shorten or lengthen the chain and do a series Isometric Exercises to strengthen the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the body. Some people got so strong the chain broke and would have to replace it. The Isometric Power Belt can duplicate those same exact exercises and no way of it snapping on someone and safer to use than a chain. I did a workout one day using those exercises and felt amazing afterwards. Great training to say the least.
Steve Justa out of all three of these men has got to be the most oddball. That is what makes him great though is his uniqueness and his no BS style of training. He became a believer in Isometrics when he was bailing hay and the guy much smaller yet muscular than him was pacing like a madman and had this incredible endurance for manual labor. Steve tried for 2 years lifting and moving heavy weight but barely made a dent in his labor work; worked for a few months on isometrics and was moving faster and could keep up with his co-worker with ease and his strength was insane along with amazing stamina. Isometrics shed a great deal of body fat, developed strength in his tendons and ligaments and was doing workouts that lasted from several minutes to a couple hours, working every single angle he can come up with and varied the intensity from 30%-100%. He has a course out called Iron Isometrics that shares his story along with how diet and Isometrics got him off diabetic medication after nearly losing his life to Type 2 Diabetes. There's another book you may have heard of called Rock, Iron, Steel that also has an entire chapter dedicated to Isometrics.
With the Isometric Power Belt, that is 28 ft long you can get creative and like Justa, develop strength from all sorts of angles and work the tendons like a madman. You can hold certain positions for long periods of time or shorter periods it is up to you and what your goals are. You can work around injuries (be careful on that) and develop greater speed. The longer holds are what Justa called Aerobic Isometrics (I guess it sounded cool to him lol) where you lower the intensity of a contraction and stick to that position for 30 seconds to several minutes. Think of it like the Shaolin Monks who hold several positions such as horsestances, fingertip push-up holds, handstands and such for long periods of time. That takes serious strength and mental conditioning. This is just an idea, it's not the end-all-be-all.
Isometrics can help you go beyond plateaus and even possibly help you recover from injuries. Be careful on how you breathe during these exercises, it is very common to want to hold the breath which is a huge no-no bro. With higher intensity like around 60-85%, as you exhale breathe out the letter S as in "sssss". For longer holds and less intensity say around 30-50%, breathe as deeply and calmly as possible. With longer holds, you can get quite a cardio workout as the muscle fibers are firing and your breathing becomes a factor.
Now what are the best ways to build muscle and burn fat with Isometrics? From my experience and learning from others including people like Bud Jeffries, Steve Justa, Logan Christopher and others who have practiced Isometrics; the shorter holds with higher intensity tend to give you more definition while the longer and less intense holds give you more of that "pump" and put on more natural muscle mass. I can't prove this scientifically so it's up to you to find this out for yourself, I'm going on what has happened with me. So take a page out of Alexander Zass, The Great Gama & Steve Justa and hit up some isometrics in your training. Get the Isometric Power Belt when it is available and develop some insane strength in the process.
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