Isometric Exercises

7:55 AM

I learned about this new exercise category around a week ago called isometric exercises. It's interesting that you can live over 30 years and not know what they are, despite feeling so confident that you knew all the basics and everything to working out. I've read a lot of exercise related articles, seen some videos, and even worked out many hours myself, so I felt like I knew a thing or two about exercises.

But yeah, I've heard of isometric exercises before, but I never knew what they were, and I had never bothered looking them up. It's the same with Pilates exercises. It was stupidly arrogant of me to believe that researching what these two things meant was beneath me. Pilates exercises are just a group of 50 or so exercises that follow certain rules, that a guy named Pilates came up with, I don't know anymore about Pilates than that.

Isometric exercises though, these are the ones that I started doing more of recently. Isometric exercises are the only exercises known to reduce blood pressure, no other exercises have been found to do that. What are they? They are exercises where you hold a certain pose and don't move, such as planks or a bar hang, and many more. The most important exercise probably being wall-sits, which is what was studied to reduce blood pressure. Holding it for over 2 minutes is where the blood pressure improvements started to show.

If you are a beginner, you can do 10-20 seconds of wall sits, and gradually move up to 30 seconds, then over a minute, and so on, over time. All you do is hold a sitting position leaning up against the wall, your knees bent at a 90 degree angle so it's sort of like you're sitting down, and just hold it for as long as you can. I actually had no idea of the experience time progression and that I should have started off at 10 seconds first, so on my attempt I struggled massively thinking this was the hardest exercise of all time, and I lasted over a minute.

It's the same with planks. Planks are actually insanely hard if you are a beginner, but working out with my friends, they would do 1 minute minimum, so they forced me to do 1 minute planks basically on my first attempts. It wasn't really my first attempt, I had done them over the years such as in high school, and a bit on my own sometimes, but it's not like I was practicing it often.

Anyway, I looked up the world record for the wall sit, and it's over 11 hours. It was set in 2005 I think and hasn't been broken since. I'm just recalling all of this from memory by the way, I don't have the record data in front of me right now or anything, I read about it a few days ago too, so my memory could be off. But yeah, 11 hours doing a wall sit. That's pretty crazy.

I have always wanted to set a world record in something, but it's so hard to set a world record in anything. I can do a wall sit for over a minute, but for any blood pressure benefits, I have to do them for over 2 minutes. If I want any world record benefits, I have to do them for over 12 hours. Who can even keep awake in such a position for so long? It's hard enough to just remain standing for 12 hours straight, let alone doing a wall sit for 12 hours. Wouldn't there be so much blood or whatever clotting your feet?

I also started doing bar hangs and can do them for over a minute. It's funny as well, that the advanced level is 1 minute and over for the bar hang, and I was able to bar hang for over a minute on my first attempt. It does hurt my hands holding the bar for that long though. It's more of a mental battle. There are some motivational techniques that I use in my mind that if applied for an isometric workout, or even a "personal best" workout, will allow me to beat my previous best.

Today I exercised while watching some videos. I would just put some videos on, and lift this 17 pound piece of metal block around, doing different exercises with it. I don't know if it's productive or not, or if this builds any muscle or not, but I think this is surely better than just sitting around and watching videos sedentarily. I hope it's building muscle, although I don't think I need to build anymore. After doing these random exercises lifting this 17 pound metal block while watching videos for a few hours, I checked myself out in the mirror, and with this "pump", my body looked so much more muscular than ever. If I lost body fat this would look so toned.