Isometric Exercises

Isometric Exercises for Everyday Situations

Isometric exercises are "HOLD" exercises that involve the muscles in any desired area of the body. The exercises require you to tense certain muscles for a minimum of 3-10 seconds, gradually increasing to 30 seconds as you get stronger and more able. Many people use these exercises to release stored stress and tension in the muscles during times of stress and anxiety.

Benefits of Isometric Exercises

There are many excellent benefits of isometric exercises and some of them might even suprise you:

Isometric exercises are very effective and beneficial for PHYSICAL health. They reduce blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and can even increase bone density. These exercises can even help with fat loss.

They also benefit your MENTAL health as they help relieve stress, anxiety and promote feelings of relaxation and a sense of "CALM".

They are convenient and can be done anywhere, anytime. (Yes, even while sitting in the dentists chair!)

They lower your chance of injury by increasing strength in your muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Since they help strengthen the stabilizer muscles (the smallest muscles inside the body), they also add to physical stablity, muscle coordination and balance control. Those with hypermobility syndromes and connective tissue disorders find these exercises to be most helpful.

Isometric exercises can even reduce pain, such as tendon and joint pain. It can increase mobility, and help eliminate stiffness.

They are suitable for physical rehabilitation.

They are a great companion to your breathing exercises and visualization exercises.

Isometrics are safe for mostly everyone. If you have a question whether these exercises are safe for you, contact your physician for more details.

How Isometric Exercises Help Anxiety

Isometric exercises help anxiety by helping you release physical tension stored in the body during stress. The exercises can help you shift your focus from an anxious mind to a more relaxed state. With anxiety and panic, the muscles in the body naturally grow tense, this only adds to the anxiety and panic that you already feel mentally and make it more intense. Although, the mind and body are two separate areas they each affect the other. So, when your mind is anxious, your body will respond with tension in your muscles along with many other physical symptoms. The opposite is true, also. When your body is tense, it doesn't do our mental state any good. Isometric exercise promote a release of tension in the body will have positive effects in our minds and how we feel mentally. It helps us to be more confident knowing we have some control over how we feel.

Simple Isometric Exercises

Isometric exercises do not require any obvious changes in movement or posture, so it can be done discretely while going about your everyday situations, such as working or in the presence of other people. It is important to point out that these exercises, when practiced regularly, get you in tune with your body's tension and teaches you to release that tension. While training, you may have to do them a number of times throughout the day to maintain a relaxed state, especially during stressful times. The more you practice, the better you will get, and the less and less time it will take to do them. If you do them faithfully enough, you may just find yourself doing them without thinking about them by habit.

These exercises are meant to be gentle and done slowly. The goal is to relax so trying to rush through them will not work as well. For beginners, it is advised to hold your tension at minimum 3-10 seconds but 10 seconds is better but do not exceed 10 seconds! Always begin these exercises with a small breath and hold it for the duration while you tighten/tense your muscles at the same time, then breathe out slowly for a minimum of 5 seconds while you relax your muscles and gently repeating to yourself "relax".

Some easy ways to use isometric exercises:

crossing your legs (at the ankles), press them together and tense up and hold

hold onto your chair by placing your hands under the sides of the chair and pull up

place hands behind your head , lock your fingers together and then push your head back and hold

tightly grip onto an immobile object and tense up for 5 seconds, allowing the tension to go up the arm

cup hands together and try to pull them apart (this can work in front of you or in back of you)

tighten thigh/buttock muscles while sitting in a chair and hold

holding hands palm to palm, press together and hold

when standing- you tighten your legs and press your knees as far back as they will go and hold

For some FREE guided Isometric Exercises, visit Open Arms, Veterans & Family Counseling Website

Important Things to Remember

1. It is important to recognize WHEN your muscles when you are tense. When you notice certain muscles tense up use these exercises to target those muscles.

2. Relaxation is a skill that is learned and it gets better and better the more you practice! Do your Isometric Exercises whenever you feel tense or stressed.

3. The basic idea of doing these exercises is to help you develop a positive habit of releasing chronic tension by relaxing the muscles deliberately. Sometimes, you do not notice how tense you are until you focus on doing this exercise.

4. Isometric exercises can work for everyone! If you find they don't seem to be working for you, check the quality of your self-talk and perhaps practice more often. You are encouraged to practice more while talking to yourself in a more truthful, encouragine, positive way.