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Preview from: Beginning Bodybuilding Real Muscle/Real Fast by John Little
- Rep. The contraction or extension of a given muscle group against resistance, typically performed from a starting position of full extension to a finishing position of full contraction, and subsequent return to the starting position. We call a series of such movements, naturally enough, repetitions from which we get the singular form, rep.
- Set. A collection of repetitions generally with a brief rest at the end of a set.
- Press. Any form of pushing the resistance away from the body with either the arms or the legs.
- Curl. Any movement that involves pulling the resistance in toward the body with either the arms or the legs.
- Clean. The lifting of the barbell or dumbbell from the floor to the chest in one quick motion.
- Poundage. The amount of weight or resistance that you will be using in your exercises.
- Limit weight. The heaviest amount of resistance that you can lift for one repetition.
- Routine. The sum total of reps, sets, and exercises in any given workout or training session.
A BRIEF LESSON IN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
Before you can effectively train your muscles, you need to know how they function so that you can select the exercises that will best stimulate them to grow.
- Central Nervous System. Without nerves, our bones wouldn’t move, because our muscles wouldn’t contract. The central nervous system consists of the spinal cord and the brain; it functions in conjunction with the peripheral nervous system, which comprises the ganglia and nerves that reside outside of the brain and spinal cord. The nervous system appears like thousands of little wires that function as transmitters, receivers, and interpreters of data from all parts of the body. It is responsible for stimulating the muscles of the body to contract, which in turn make it possible to move. Damage to the central nervous system, obviously, would impair the body’s movement potential. Movement itself is accomplished when the nervous system stimulates the muscles, which then move the bones that support us via the tendinous attachments around our joints, which are connected by ligaments.
- Ligaments. Ligaments are fibrous bands that bind bone to bone. Their compactness determines to a large extent the flexibility of our joints.
- Tendons. Tendons are the dense, fibrous bands at the end of muscles. Their function is to attach muscles to bones. Within the tendons are found the golgi tendon organs, whose function is to send signals to the brain to indicate stress and fatigue
- Bones. The human body contains 206 bones that, collectively, compose the skeleton.
- Muscles. There exist three distinct kinds of muscle tissue within the body: cardiac, skeletal, and smooth. Cardiac muscle is the heart, while smooth muscle assists organs such as the stomach and intestines in the passage and digestion of food. Skeletal muscle, on the other hand, is responsible for moving our bones. As we’re looking to increase the size and strength of our skeletal muscles, it is to this group that we shall devote most of our attention. There are more than six hundred skeletal muscles, which yields a skeletal-muscle-to-bones ratio of almost three to one and accounts for our highly evolved dexterity and precision in movement.
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