Its all about angles

Its all about angles

When we think of muscles we tend to break them down into distinct groups as parts. However, skeletal muscles consist of many thousands of fibers. These fibers rarely cover the whole area of a muscle group. So for example an exercise that stresses fibers near a muscle’s origin point may not activate fibers near an insertion point. We need to aim to incorporate diverse movements and angles  of contraction to stimulates as many fibers as possible.

Charles Glass the godfather of bodybuilding incorporated angle training into his and many other champions routines. So what is

angle training? each set of an exercise is performed differently in a sequence of typically four to six sets. You might change the grip, the stance, the angle of a bench, or the positioning of equipment, like the height of a cable pulley. Ideally, this is a progression from harder to easier, such as dumbbell chest presses that go from a high incline to a low incline to flat to a low decline to a high decline. In that way, you can use the same weight as you progress, and with adequate rest between sets, you can get the same or more reps each time.

It is also important to realise that an online diagram or tutorial may be of benefit however people may also pick up a vague understanding of the movement and start to incorporate bad habits.

This is not what we want. Understand what muscle you want to work, then understand what area of a muscle group you want to work. Then play about with angles until you find the sweet spot. It is there.