First Tumblr Post!
Welcome!
First off, I'd like to thank all of my followers on twitter for helping me reach 100 followers in my first week! I really appreciate your support, and I hope that I can develop relationships with many of you in the future, while providing practical and valid strength training information.
Background:
As a strength and conditioning coach and gym owner, I often look for the most valuable/practical ways to increase one's strength with the most bang for their buck. And there is one piece of equipment I have found which dramatically increases strength, breaks plateaus, and quadruples the amount of free weights in the weight room.
Introducing...
Plate Mates! These little guys magnetically attach to dumbbells, olympic weights, barbells, etc. to progressively increase weight on your lifts! They come in 3/8, 1.25, and 2,5 lb increments!
The philosophy of Plate Mates is micro loading. Most often, when we look at commercial gyms, we see their dumbbell set is in increments of 5 lbs (5, 10, 15, 20, etc); however, what happens when a 5 pound jump is too much for you to accomplish a specific rep range? For example, one person might be able to perform dumbbell curls with 45 pound dumbbells, but when they make the jump to 50 pound dumbbells, the weight is too much to handle. Instead, when they attach a 1.25 pound Plate Mate to the dumbbell (totaling 46.25 pounds) that weight is much easier to handle and they can still perform the lift, increase the weight, and post-pone failure to a higher repetition. After a couple weeks of micro loading, the 50 pound dumbbells become no problem!
In many cases, people believe they have plateaued, when really the weight increments are too great to make any more progress. But when we micro load, they are able to continue to make progress!
In my opinion, I think every gym, personal training studio, weight room, etc should have numerous pairs of Plate Mates. If not, then they are only limiting their members and clients of incredible strength gains!
Once again, thank you for following me on Twitter and Tumblr! Please, Re-Tweet to help me get to 1000 followers before the end of the week!