What is the most underrated concept in fitness?

The shake weight exercise. Forget the stupid dumbbell, but the idea of rapidly contracting opposing muscles, by doing a rapidly shaking/vibration movement, is pretty solid. Just remember two things: Be very careful with the elbows, knees, shoulder, spine, and the part where the leg connects to the pelvis.

Start with no weights then go higher.

A very good exercise to blast your arms and chest is to get under a safety bar, and get a barbell or dumbbells and start at the top of the flex, arms all the way out, then start tiny little reps, barely going down an inch then up, moderately fast, then every 20 reps go down a few inches or so, all the way back down.

You're doing explosive movements from every possible starting point. Usually your best explosive movement is at the beginning of the movement, arms all the way back, then shooting them forward. What if you had that explosive movement at any position?

That's what football players do to certain parts of their bodies, and same with speed runners. The football players do the super rapid jogging in place, usually in a mid squat, and depending on the team/coach they'll do it during a low squat, and all the way standing up. Having explosive technique in any position is great for athletes that need to be able to make quick changes in acceleration at a moment's notice, like surprise attacks.

Runners do it by going up to a cage, and kicking the cage then pulling back slightly and kicking again, as fast as they can, over and over.

You can get in a pull and pretend you're a humming bird, not making full swings but just rapidly moving a few inches up then down, or a few inches back then forth, starting from your arms at your sides to shoulder height, or higher if you don't mind being watched, or you're horizontal underwater.

Then do that when doing the dolphin-looking stroke, rapidly flexing their abs then their back, kicking their feet up then down. It's a natural movement.

Or imagine going up to solid steel bars, like cage bars, prison bars, etc, and shaking yourself back and forth, like a crazy monkey. That builds incredible explosive strength in your chest, triceps, biceps, etc.

You can do it with heavy weights for sum exercises, but I highly don't recommend it with heavy dead lifts or squats. I'll always do that slower and with lighter weights, the potential gains ain't worth the damage.

Or wrist rotations. Grab two 3-5 pound dumbbells and shake them rapidly side to side, or up and down for the top and bottom of your forearms.

Plenty of shaking exercises to do to build explosive strength and total muscle control. The faster you go, the harder you flex your muscles and the more explosive that movement gets. The key is to change the center point of the shaking, that's why I say to slowly move from the beginning of the movement to the end.

Do the flying V and rapidly go from the V to a slightly wider V, then move your way down to almost being totally horizontal, floating on your ass cheeks. Tell me that doesn't make all your abs feel like they got worked the fuck out, along with the other muscles that kept flexing to fight the constant rapid change in acceleration.

You know that rapidly volley of kicks that Chun Li does, contracting and kicking out all over the place from like 80 degrees to 20 degrees? People have done that in real life. They do that by doing tiny little explosive movements all over the place for maximum speed and control. With speed and control over all your muscle fibers comes tremendous fiber.

It burns calories very fast and activates muscles just like super heavy weights would, while also working out the fast twitch muscles and actually doing fast-twitching movements.

Remember what I said though, be especially careful with your knees and spine.

It's a great way to build muscles you hate doing, like obliques and shit for tilting you and turning you.

It works great for doing dynamic stretching too. I feel a hellova lot looser all over my body after a session of various rapid shaking exercises.

/r/Fitness Thread