What is borrowing power?
We often say that borrowing power is actually a muscle compensation behavior.
There are generally several kinds of muscle compensation. One is that each movement is called active muscle, which undertakes the task of main force, and the auxiliary force is called synergistic muscle.
For example, bench press, you definitely want to practice pectoralis major, which is the active muscle, but triceps brachii and deltoid muscle will definitely exert their strength. These two are synergic muscles.
However, many people have no feeling after bench pressing the pectoralis major, and their arms are exhausted. This is the manifestation that the triceps brachii and deltoid muscles bear excessive weight-bearing pressure and make up for the role of pectoralis major.
The other is that unrelated muscles are compensated, such as the big shrug above. Originally, the high pull-down action had nothing to do with the upper side of trapezius muscle, and there was a barbell bending. There will always be people swinging back and forth and throwing barbells up, which is also compensated by non-target muscles.
Reasons and countermeasures of borrowing power
First, the stability is insufficient.
You must have heard the old driver say in the gym that you should keep your back straight when pulling hard, sink your shoulders and tighten your shoulder blades when doing bench presses, and don't shake your body when bending over.
In fact, these suggestions all have the same purpose, to maintain physical stability. Stability is the foundation of all training. If it is not stable enough, it will easily lead to pain.
I feel that this weight is too heavy to pull during training. Shrugging is a compensatory behavior, because shrugging can make the upper body more stable, so many people will find it easier to push hard and push harder after shrugging.
However, this compensatory behavior usually prevents the action from being completed in the correct posture. Incorrect posture has two disadvantages: 1, which cannot effectively stimulate the target muscle;
2, easy to get hurt.
Is there any way to solve the muscle compensation caused by insufficient stability?
Keep your body stable in the right way:
1. Maintain the stability of the trunk and rotator cuff of the thoracic spine through the downward pressure and retraction of the scapula. It is very helpful for most push-pull classes in the upper body. Even a squat that looks like a leg movement requires the stability of the scapula.
2. By learning abdominal breathing, we can tighten the abdominal core muscles and maintain the trunk stability of lumbar segments. This is very important for the safety of heavy-load training movements, especially squats and hard pulls;
3. Properly increase joint stability through joint torsion. For example, increasing the strength of knee supination in squat and elbow supination in bench press (such as the action of Bai Wan barbell) can make these movements more stable and easier to exert strength, especially for novices who are prone to shaking in bench press.
4. Appropriate use of protective devices such as belts, wrist pads and knee pads to increase stability.
If you keep your body stable in the right way, you will be more likely to "work hard", so you don't need to use wrong actions such as shrugging.
Second, the load is too heavy.
Some people are in the gym, and their self-esteem is particularly strong. I feel that I have pushed 2 pounds less, and everyone will think that he is a weak chicken. This phenomenon of borrowing power is obviously because the target muscle can't bear the weight used and has to be forced to do it. What should I do? By swinging the body and using the extra force exerted by the waist, the bending can be completed.
But doing so, not only can not fully stimulate the target muscle, but also the body is still in a very unstable state, and the risk of injury is great.
How to solve this matter? Stop pretending! It is the most effective training method to lift multiple irons with great strength, rather than fake movements, and feel the full strength of the target muscles through standard movements.
Third, the ineffective working distance.
For example, dumbbells can be put down when they are raised horizontally to shoulder height. Some people like to keep lifting, and the higher they feel, the better.
But beyond the shoulder level, the deltoid muscle does not exert much force, and it uses the upper side of the trapezius muscle. But the purpose of your side lift is to practice the deltoid intermediate bundle, so this distance is called invalid distance.
There are also actions such as bending down and pressing the rope. Are your elbows fixed in the same position or do you move back and forth greatly?
The main problem of these invalid distances is that they are useless and easy to practice, which hinders the training efficiency of the target muscles. For many people, they want to develop deltoid muscle, but they don't want trapezius muscle to be too developed, because trapezius muscle is too developed and looks slippery and unsightly. If you cross your shoulders every time you lift horizontally, you may find that trapezius muscles grow much faster than deltoid muscles.
The solution to this problem is to strictly guarantee the training action standard. This requires you to keep learning and correcting yourself.
Fourth, the target muscles cannot be effectively controlled.
For example, the typical chest pressure does not feel that the arm is tired first, and the trapezius muscle of barbell rowing is the most sour. This is a phenomenon that the target muscles (pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, etc. ) have not been effectively controlled, and other synergistic muscles will naturally make a lot of compensation.