Why do most people believe that Bruce Lee’s training and workouts are shrouded in secrecy or some kind of mystery?
It’s no secret that Bruce Lee’s training and workouts used a combination of weight lifting and isometrics to produce his incredible physique, power, and strength. And it’s no secret that he had to stop using free weights due to a back injury from performing an exercise called Good Morning.
Bruce Lee also used a combination of bodyweight exercises and a device called the Tensolator. But it was actually a combination of isometrics and isotonics that yielded the best results.
Why use isometrics in Bruce Lee’s workouts and workouts, even though all the newspapers and magazines at the time said that the results obtained through isometric exercise were not true, because the users were found to be taking steroids?
Bruce Lee was no fool, he did research, but he was influenced by Bob Hoffman. Hoffman, owner of the York Barbell Company and coach of the United States Olympic weightlifting team, was a strong advocate of isometric training. What tipped Bruce Lee was Hoffman’s position that strength was the most important quality in any sport or physical endeavor.
More strength, he reasoned, and the ability to effectively control that force while playing his sport would make it possible for the strongest individual to outperform his competitor.
Bruce Lee knew this to be true. When two equally skilled people are paired up, the stronger of the two always wins!
Many people when they first hear about isometrics wonder how an exercise without movement could produce results. Take, for example, a biceps curl. It takes about 2 seconds to bend the bar from the thigh to chin level. The most difficult part of the exercises is not at the beginning or at the end, but in the middle. This is where gravity or leverage causes the most difficulty and the most muscle growth.
Unfortunately, the muscles are only in this position for a fraction of a second. With the isometric contraction, the muscle would be held in this position for 10 to 12 seconds. So, in theory, one isometric contraction would build as much muscle as 12 repetitions performed the traditional way.
Bruce Lee felt that it was necessary to give 100% effort to the isometric contraction, instead of the 60 or 70% that Drs. Hittinger and Muller concluded in their 1950s report on isometry. Later, doctors realized that a 100% isometric contraction held for about a second produced the same results. That was just one of the strengths, of the Bruce Lee workouts and workouts.