Positions of Flexion training isn't a brand-new concept but it's a concept that is the cornerstone behind blowing beyond your genetic potential. My good friend Steve Holman of Ironman magazine introduced it years ago. My friend and longtime mentor, Charles Poliquin, is a huge advocate of PDF training and writes about it often. And if you want to understand the physics and biomechanics behind this method of training take the number one personal training certification in the world, www.RTS123.com, which will blow your mind to pieces. But many guys either have never heard of it or don't really understand how and why it works. If you are one of those guys, you're about to get a crash course in kinesiology and educational growth that will completely change the way you train to build muscle and the results you get from your muscle building workouts.
Enter The First Phase of the Maximize Your Muscle Program: Positions of Flexion Training Explained
The first phase of my 12-month periodized muscle-building program, Maximize Your Muscle, kicks starts with positions of flexion training. In a nutshell, PDF training is using three specific and very different exercises to train each muscle, targeting the fully-stretched position, the mid-range position and the fully-contracted position in order to develop the entire length of the muscle.
The problem with a lot of programs and routines is that many of them are designed with a shotgun approach to building muscle. You might be doing three different exercises for your biceps, but unless you specifically target each flexion position, you're likely overtraining one part of the muscle and ignoring or under-training the rest of that muscle.
Creating a PDF routine isn't any more complicated than designing any other program; it's just more specific about targeting each motor unit in the muscle. For instance, a biceps routine might be barbell curls for the mid-range move, incline dumbbell curls for the stretch move and concentration curls for the peak-contraction move. As you can see, it isn't complicated or complex, but there's a lot of science behind the method. That science is all about stimulating all the fibers in a specific muscle and to strengthen them along their entire range of motion.
How PDF Training Impacts Your Muscles
Many years ago, Steve Holman was frustrated by his skinny guy genetics and limited gains from traditional programs. He was a university student at the time and took advantage of all of the university's available research materials in order to find a solution to his stagnant growth.
His first discovery was a study that showed huge growth possibility from fully stretching a muscle and then forcing it to contract completely immediately afterward. From there, he did a great deal of research into how muscles work and grow at each flexion position. He learned quite a bit by watching Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was already using a form of PDF training, with obviously incredible results.
Steve incorporated PDF training into his own bodybuilding and went from 120 pounds to 200 pounds - 80 pounds of muscle gained! He's been using and teaching PDF training ever since.
The Three Positions of Flexion and How They Work
The three flexion positions are the mid-range position, the stretch position and the contracted or peak-contraction position, performed in that order. Each move builds on the muscle response