XXX666’s BodyBlog

Chains, you may or not seen some goof with no neck drag/carry chains in or out of the gym.  The purpose of chains is it povides a continous "delta" of weight through the range of motion.  This is very simular to the cam style belt/cable epuipment.  As you extend force you contiously add weight *delta* to the movement.  For example, say at the bottom position of a motion you have 100lbs, add chains and at the end of the motion you may have 125lbs.  Thus, the resistence is contiously increasing. 

My personal rig is made from chain i bought at the home depot and from several strands from the local port ship yard.  Total i have 85 pounds.  Depending on which movement i’m doing i could have a delta of 85 pounds.  This is unlikely since is a bit difficult to manipulate the rig so it is at a zero resistance potential to a completely extended length; an excercise with that range of motion would be along the lines of a high pull, snatch or clean&press.

There are a lot of different benefits to usings chains with any movement.  For example a lot of people have a dead spot in thier upper range of thier bench.  Right before they reach the end of the motion the movement stops and they are exterting a great deal of energy to push that weight those last few inches.  Chains will eliminate those sticky points since you are building your strenght to increase through the range of motion.  The weight is active and continously increasing instead of just being a dead lump of weight that remains the same through the entire range.

This strenght training tatic will have a direct effect on mass/size. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.