Login | September 15, 2025
Static contractions in weight training
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: September 15, 2025
If you’re of my baby boomer generation then you surely remember those comic book ads for the Charles Atlas dynamic tension muscle building system.
My favorite was the one where a skinny guy on the beach is humiliated by the beach bully in front of a pretty girl.
So skinny guy is so mad he subsequently orders the Charles Atlas paraphernalia, whereupon during his next beach bully encounter the newly muscled-up and no-longer wimpy guy punches out the big bully, striking a pose on the final panel with pretty girl in hand.
Okay, in reality we all know that muscular gains don’t occur instantaneously like they do in the comics.
But I use that nostalgic little foray as a lead into today’s topic - static contraction strength training - because it’s a great example of how such an antiquated training technique still has relevance in today’s gym. For when you think about it, those old Charles Atlas ads were trying to hawk a muscle building program which largely revolved around static strength training.
Now for those of you not familiar with the physiological jargon here, static contraction training is very similar to isometric contraction training because both methods involve muscles applying force without changing length.
Yet they’re slightly different from one another.
An isometric contraction typically involves working the muscles against an immovable object, such as pushing against a wall.
Here the wall goes nowhere no matter how much/little muscular force is applied to it.
In a static contraction we’re talking about holding a weight - be it your own body weight or external weights like a dumbbell or barbell - in a fixed position such that the involved muscles don’t change their length.
It’s similar to an isometric contraction but here there’s actually a bit of movement that can occur with respect to the weight you’re working against.
A great example of a static contraction exercise, and one that I’ve been advocating in this column for years, is our good friend the plank!
So what I like about using static contractions in workouts is that they allow you to work specifically on the sticking point of any particular exercise.
And a sticking point is usually the toughest position within an exercise.
Take for example those biceps muscles.
A good example here is where you’d perform a static standing biceps curl by holding a weight at the exercise’s sticking point, the position where there’s a 90-degree angle at the elbow.
Here you’re doing an isolation exercise to stress just one muscle group.
But how about static contractions with multi-muscle group exercises like squats and push-ups?
Well, let’s take the push-up.
To work its sticking point you’d try to remain static in the bottom position of the exercise, where there’s a 90-degree angle at the elbows and where you’re just an inch or so off the floor.
By confining this exercise to just that tough sticking point for 10, 20 or even 30 seconds you can overload the muscle fibers, thereby training yourself to get stronger in what’s probably the most crucial position of the full push-up movement.
And despite the fact that multi-muscle group exercises don’t truly isolate one muscle group in order to build muscle mass, they are quite good for building raw strength.
So even in my senior fitness class I often have the participants hold static squat and push-up poses.
How long should you hold static poses?
Depends on what you’re looking to do.
If you’re looking to build muscle mass with isolation exercises like hamstring and biceps curls and leg and triceps extensions etc, then the weight should be light enough to allow you to hold it statically for at least 10 seconds, but heavy enough such that you cannot hold it for more than 20 seconds.
When you reach 20 seconds - time to move up in weight.
If you’re looking for strength gains in multi-muscle group exercises like the bench, squat, push-up, pull-up etc, then you can go for slightly longer static holds, say 20-30 seconds or more.
Finally, I’d recommend beginners start with one set/exercise.
Then once the muscles get used to this form of exercise training building up to several sets/exercise is reasonable.
So as you’ve probably gathered, you’re not going to get the instantaneous results using static contractions that the Charles Atlas ads promised…but you can indeed get stronger and bigger if you employ them gradually and wisely.