Isokinetic Exercises and Their Importance

For a healthy lifestyle, you should know how to do your exercises and workout and isokinetic exercise is something you should learn about as well. Generally living a healthy lifestyle means you have to be active in it. You are eating healthy food but somehow you need to train your body to unitize those healthy nutrients and get rid of all the excess weight. The exercises are of different types as well some just help you increase the stamina and just to keep you healthy. Other help you stretch, some helps you lose weight and some of the exercises will help increase the force of your body while some like isometric target only specific muscles. With isokinetic exercise, you will be increasing the strength of your body muscles. This exercise is very good for individuals who like good physical training.

What is isokinetic exercise?

Isokinetic exercises are the ones that will help you strengthen your muscles. These exercises are done with the help of machines that will increase change in speed and resistance for your body at a constant pace based on what your body needs. This exercise can be a little tough but is great for your body. Basically in this exercises what fluctuates the most of the resistance and the speed usually remains the same no matter how much effort or exertion you do. But you can change the speed of the machine on your own and that will be the constant speed in which that machine will remain in.

There are also different attachments on the machine that will help you target different muscles on your body with these types of exercises you will be needing a trainer. This exercise will also help you get the regular check on your strength and efficiency of your muscles. These exercises are done a lot by the sportsperson. A question might arise that how is isokinetic exercise different than the isotonic exercise.

As you know that with the isokinetic exercises you will have to do the exercise at the constant speed and with different motions your muscles will relax and contract at the constant pace at the very same speed. This is more of a strengthening exercise and they will help your muscles gain strength throughout different motions of contractions. Whereas with the isotonic exercises you are trying to decrease the size of your muscles and also timing them in the process. In this type of exercise, the tension in your muscles varies as well. In this exercise, the muscles will be strengthened but not evenly. Examples include the squats and other such exercises like dumbbell curls. So this is how this explains what isokinetic vs. isotonic exercises mean.

Benefits of isokinetic exercises

There are a lot of benefits of isokinetic exercise but some are described below

• Isokinetic exercises are performed with the help of physiotherapists. The doctors for therapy are for people who must have had the surgery to get their strength back. It also helps people recover from stroke and injuries.
• If your body can’t maintain its balance due to certain injury these exercises will help with them too.
• You are also controlling the speed and resistance in this exercise which is why these exercises will help you prevent the injuries at all. That is why athletes usually do these exercises.
• This exercise also controls the muscle definition and make sure the developing muscle has equal strength.
• These exercises will also help you increase muscle flexibility.
• This exercise like a lot of other exercises also helps with improving your metabolism. Meanwhile they strengthen and improve endurance and define your muscles.
• This can have a good effect on your overall quality of life by making you more athletic. This exercise is best for athletes.
• Even better is the fact that it increases the balance and strength in the knee muscles which makes it a very good exercise for the soccer players and other similar sports.
• For obese people, aerobics can be a bit tough but these exercises develop the strength of your body for the aerobic exercises as well as this. So if you are doing both that will make it easier for you.

The risk that comes with the isokinetic exercise

Certain risks come with a few different types of exercise. With isokinetic exercises following are some of the risks that you may experience.

• You shouldn’t do the isokinetic exercise as the initial movement of inertia and inertia is the point where you have just started any exercise after some dead weight. So make sure you know this is for strengthening and is not for that period.
• With isokinetic exercise there aren’t many risks unless if you are injured and doing it on your own. The resistance is to be set by the therapist based on what they think the level of your injury is. Since nobody can bear this exercise at a heavily injured stage.

Safety steps you need to take

When you are doing isokinetic exercise your body requires following safety steps

• When you are just starting this exercise routine make sure you start with low resistance if you don’t have a trainer or therapist to decide it for you and you are doing it at home. You have to make sure you are not applying more pressure than your body can take. Hence starting from low is the safe choice here.
• Make sure to never push your body to the point that your body is unable to bear anymore.
• You should keep your body hydrated during your exercise.
• Make sure you are warming up in between these exercises or stretching before exercise. You need to get your muscles working before you can do strength training. That include some brisk walking and slight jogging and even a few stretches if you want to.
• You should make sure you are not making your body overwork during this exercise. Do not push limits, know when you need a breather and when you need to stop. Don’t let your muscles overwork until they become very painful. If that happens you should stop immediately.