We offer a variety of leg presses and leg press styles at GAH Gym in Pontypridd. They’re great additions to the gym, and a brilliant exercise to really train your legs effectively in several different ways.
Here are some tips on how to improve your work on the leg press so that you can target different areas as well as lowering the risk of injury and keeping the exercise as safe as possible. 1. Push through your heels. Never let your heels come off the platform so that the weight is on the balls of your feet, keep the weight moving through your heels at all times. 2. Place your feet hip width and straight on to target your quads, place them higher and wider at a slight angle to target your glutes, hamstrings and inner thighs. 3. Never lower the weight so that your knees are touching your chest or your lower back is coming out of the seat. 4. Don’t lock your knees out at the top, this can increase injury risk and also lose tension in the working muscles. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX
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One of the things we offer at our Pontypridd gym is a variety of resistance bands ranging from 50 to 170lbs
Training with bands can add variety to your training in a similar way to adding chains. They will cause a movement to become harder as they become more stretched. So whilst at the top portion of a leg press, for example, when the movement is usually at its easiest point, adding bands will cause more and more tension to be added, making the movement harder as you press higher. Bands can be added to machines or bars or used by themselves over a variety of exercises in the gym. Examples of using bands in training: Leg Press (looped around lower fixings and weight bars) Hack Squat (looped around lower fixings and weight bars) Bicep Curls (standing on bands, gripping band with both hands, or with a bar) Bench Press (looped around bar and attached to floor or above) Chin Ups (aiding the movement, looped around feet or knees) Tricep extensions (looped around chin up bar) GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Bicep curls are on of the most common exercises performed in the gym, but as with anything, there are always improvements that can be made. Improving the way you do these exercises is quick, simple and can make a huge
difference. Improve your bicep curls with these 2 simple tweaks 1. At the bottom of the movement, completely straighten your arm, contracting you triceps for a short moment. This will ensure your biceps are getting fully stretched throughout the movement. 2. Lean slightly forward whilst preforming them. This will allow you to maintain tension on the biceps throughout the movement, and ensure you don’t lose it at the top, when the biceps are at their shortest Try these changes next time you’re in the gym GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Pendlay rows
A back exercise you don’t see performed very often in the gym. A barbell rowing movement, with the added pause on the floor that keeps your reps explosive and prevents you using momentum to aid your lifts. Performed like a bent over row, start with the bar on the floor, place your grip just wider than shoulder width, a slight bend in your legs, trying to keep your back as straight as possible. From there, row the bar close to your body trying as much as possible to keep your body at the same angle, with your back straight, and your legs out of the movement. This is harder movement than standard barbell rows, so take the weight slowly to find your level. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Go even further in the gym by using negatives to finish sets.
Your muscles are stronger during the negative phase of exercises, i.e. when they’re lengthening, so even once you’ve failed in a set you will still be able to get a couple of negative reps out to finish the set. To perform negatives, at the end of a set, once you can’t finish a rep properly, use a partner to help to get to the end point of the movement, and then lower the weight in a slow, controlled manner. You won’t be able to get many of these reps, but they will be a great way to finish keep your sets going beyond initial failure. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Whilst in the gym, you see a lot of people either struggle to activate their chest or injure themselves whilst training it. It’s not uncommon for people to say that they can never feel their chest working and that they feel that their arms are doing all the work.
However there are a few small changes that you can make whilst training chest that can lower the risk of injury and also allow you to place more emphasis on the muscle that you want to target. 1 KEEP YOUR SHOULDERS BACK AT ALL TIMES If you let your shoulders come forward and your chest become concave, as many do at the end of a press, the emphasis will come off your chest and on to other muscle groups. If you keep your shoulders back and chest up throughout the movement, it will help you keep the stress on your chest. When you perform chest flys and particularly pressing movements, try to stop once you’ve reached the highest point you can without your shoulders coming forward. 2 DON’T LOWER THE WEIGHT TOO FAR A lot of people in the gym will lower the weight as far back as they can when doing press and fly movements. Whilst some may say that you should use as much range as you can, lowering the weight too far can take the emphasis off your chest and place strain on your shoulders. This will make it harder to engage the chest again and will also increase the likelihood of injuring your shoulders. To avoid this, and to keep the stress on your chest, lower the weight to the point where your elbows are level with your shoulders. You should still feel a stretch in your chest, will also find it easier to maintain tension as well as avoiding unwanted strain on your shoulders. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Change up your cardio and fitness training with some high intensity functional training.
At the GAH gym in Pontypridd we carry prowlers, sleds, battle ropes , sledgehammers and tires that can give you a quick, effective alternative to traditional cardiovascular fitness training. Protocol 1: Battle ropes swings alternating arms 20 sec Battle ropes swings arms together 20sec 30 sec rest, repeat 5 times Protocol 2: Prowler Pushes 1 length (Approx. 20m), 20 sec rest 2 lengths, 20 sec rest 3 lengths, 20 sec rest 4 lengths, 20 sec rest 3 lengths, 20 sec rest 2 lengths, 20 sec rest 1 length Protocol 3: 25m prowler push pull W/ rope back to starting point 25m prowler push pull W/ rope back to starting point Repeat 4 times, 1 minute rest in between GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Floor press is a chest press technique that lowers the injury risk on your shoulders. Lying on the floor will prevent you from lowering the weight too far, accomplishing two things:
1. Prevents loss of tension on the chest 2. Prevents unwanted stress through over stretching This exercise can be done with either dumbbells or a bar, and you can also add in pauses on the floor to make the movement harder going from a dead stop, adding greater variety to your work in the gym. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX No matter how much time anyone spends in the gym, the one thing we cannot get away from is the simple the fact of the matter is those that work the hardest are those that get the best results. This is true for all fitness pursuits. We’ve seen two extremes in the gym on many occasions over the years, let's call them person A and person B. Person A is the type that brings their notebook into the gym with them (nothing wrong with that in itself) and has what looks, on paper, to be a scientifically sound program. Looks great so far BUT person A puts no real assign into their training. On the other side of the gym you have person B. Now person B is totally the opposite and has no plan and blindly skips from exercise to exercise and trains every body part every time they train BUT person B puts his heart and soul in to it and practically crawls out of the gym every session. Who has the better results? Person B of course! What we need to do is somehow merge A and B and we will get somewhere very quickly. Whether in our own facility in Cilfynydd or any gym throughout the world, we notice the people who can manage to use correct training methods and styles but also push themselves to their limit every time they come into the gym are the people who continue to progress and get the best results. As we said at the start, the fact will always remain the hardest workers in the gym will progress the most. So whatever your fitness goal is, make sure you’re always working hard! GAH Gym Unit 38 Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4Nx Out of all the training variables, weight, rep range, sets, rest times, there is one training variable that is even more important, and that is form. This may not sound like the most exciting piece of fitness advice we could give, but training with the correct form will not only mean you’re training safely but will also increase your progress in the gym exponentially. Good form means you are working the muscle you are supposed to be training in a controlled manner, rather than simply throwing the weight from point A to point B. At this point some people may be asking about heavy weight and the importance of load, and yes, training heavy can be effective, but heavy weight with good form will beat heavy weight with sloppy form any day of the week. Training with good form doesn’t mean performing each exercise very slowly –you can train explosively with great form. Training with good form doesn’t mean you can’t put in the most effort or push yourself to failure in the gym. In fact, maintaining good form whilst pushing yourself to the limit is harder than cheating out the last few reps of a set. So what does training with good form mean? Simply, that you are getting the required response from the muscle group you are training every time you train. Yes, for those that train with poor form, this may mean training a little lighter for a while but the response you will get will be worth it. Training with a heavier weight may mean muscle growth but if the only reason you are moving more weight is that you have compromised form the one and only response you’ll get is that you have moved more weight from A to B and the stress on the muscle will be less. This is one of the things we try to urge members of our Pontypridd gym to always keep in mind. The pieces of equipment we select are always what we feel will allow users to work target muscles properly, allowing customers to have the most effective training experience possible. So how do you learn how to use better form? Experiment, watch, listen, ask people in the gym with years of experience – especially those with no major injuries. Don't be afraid to go against what the majority of gym users are currently doing in their own training. Of all the people that train how many are successful? A very small minority, which means that the vast majority are unsuccessful and would get better results from doing something different. GAH Gym Unit 38 Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4Nx |
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November 2018
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