May this serve as a comprehensive explanation as to how Core Stix flexible rods are so effective in the development of fast twitch muscle fibers. There is a reason why using Core Stix produces such great results at quickly conditioning your muscles to be fast and responsive. During an isometric contraction, the muscles' motor unit recruitment patterns are entirely new and different than what has been normally experienced by a muscle that has not been conditioned with this type of training.
When using Core Stix with an isometric strategy, each attempt by the muscle at balancing and stabilizing the dynamically changing force of the rod, helps to create and reinforce new neuro-pathways inside the muscle. This process accelerates the development of strength, speed and coordination within the muscle.
The muscular development becomes even more pronounced the weaker the muscle gets as it attempts to hold the isometric position. This is because when the rod can no longer be held steady due to a weakening muscle, quick and ongoing small changes in the resistance level of the rod, force the muscles to immediately react and alter their typical motor unit recruitment pattern without resting, in order to stabilize the rod. This kind of training exercise is of great benefit to the athlete.
You will get even greater benefit when these strategies are applied during an exercise to joints in different angles and planes from what they are normally performed in the gym. This is readily accomplished by utilizing the different available locking positions on the arch in which the rods are placed. By doing this, the muscles are less likely to become pre-conditioned to the guided pathways of traditional exercise machines. As a result coordination issues, speed and strength levels within the muscles are then developed far beyond their current level. Faster muscle contraction speed is the net result of these improvements in coordination and strength.
Furthermore this type of training has an overwhelming effect on the strengthening of ligaments, tendons and the stabilizing muscles surrounding the joints. Therefore, isometric training exercises using the Core Stix flexible rods, expose and then eliminates greater weaknesses in your muscles, in ways most athletes have probably never experienced before.
Using this unique training strategy, muscles quickly become conditioned for speed and explosiveness in ways that are rarely attainable using traditional weight lifting.
To summarize, the advantage to this type of training is twofold. First, by forcing your muscles to hold a position for a certain length of time, your body starts to recruit more and more motor units to help maintain this contraction. Motor units that are rarely exercised within a muscle are now brought into use, perhaps for the first time. Second, the motor units that are recruited are forced to contract continuously, until your muscle achieves a state of maximum intensity, safely and effectively. The end result is that the entire muscle matures very quickly.
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Bob Tillberg is a personal trainer and founder of All About Fitness & Functional Dynamics