Work Every Muscle In Your Body At Home With This New Fitness Technology

2020 needs no introduction as the year that wreaked havoc on our health, freedoms, and usual ways of doing things. Great solutions for in-home training are now more attractive – necessary, even – than ever before.

For some, it might be a long time until their gym reopens or until they feel confident using shared equipment in an environment of strangers’ sweat and heavy breathing. It makes sense that the home fitness industry has seen a massive tick in uptake.

Regardless of living through a once-a-century pandemic, it always makes sense to train smarter and more efficiently wherever and whenever possible. If you want to make real gains and see your body change, read on. It’s all about progression.

While bodyweight training is a great introduction to exercising and a beneficial complement to a broader regime, resistance training is really where it’s at for building muscle strength and tone.

Most of the equipment you have at home will not be sufficient to actually challenge you enough to deliver meaningful results. It might be great for beginners new to resistance training, but you’ll quickly outgrow it – or find that you’ll need hundreds of reps to get anywhere.

Another pitfall of common workouts, both at home or in the gym, is that they often quickly get stale. This happens either because they’re not challenging enough or they’re lacking variation.

Loading plates and throwing heavy dumbbells seems somewhat primitive alongside other connected fitness options at our fingertips. One the one hand, you’ve got the if-it-ain’t-broke principle. Maybe we keep moving iron around because it works.

Sure, but that argument doesn’t really cut it, with humankind’s natural inclination to progress, innovate, and continually excel. For all the whizbang technology out there that has evolved in the ‘smart’ era, which opens up a world of possibilities for a range of exercise types, not much has effectively evolved weightlifting into the digital sphere. Until now.

The V-Form Trainer by Vitruvian Form has genuinely revolutionized resistance training and is generating strong interest and pre-sales around the world ahead of its official launch later this year. The interest isn’t just in professional athletic and fitness circles but across the spectrum from sports scientists and rehabilitative programs to young mothers, fit lads, and elderly folks.

Why so much interest by so many types? Because it’s not just repackaging existing technology or tools into a smart device. It’s providing individuals with a fundamentally better way to train, that until now has been the domain of only serious athletes with team support or people under the guidance of preventative health and rehab professionals.

Housed within a slim form carbon-fiber platform – light and compact enough to use and store away just about anywhere – is unique algorithmic technology that empowers the user to train more purposefully and safely than ever before. With just two cables and a concise range of accessories, this remarkable device can all but replace an entire gym.

Conceived of by an applied physicist and high-frequency trader, the algorithms that the V-Form is built on is what blows away the competition. The smart tech learns the user’s capabilities, meaning that it won’t allow you to cheat, it will push you to make gains based on previous performance data, and, importantly, it acts as a spotter.

Backed by hard science on the most efficient and effective ways to holistically train a body, the feeling of the V-Form Trainer’s seemingly intelligent responsiveness to the user’s technique and capability is a physical marvel that is hard to put into words – you really have to feel it to believe it.

Activated by the V-Form App, which has a vast catalog of exercises and classes, the V-Form Trainer enables the user to train through multiple strength parameters and modes. Fundamental to its appeal is the ability to use it for eccentric-only training as well as for eccentric overloading. Traditional resistance training consists of concentric-only or mostly concentric contractions.

Eccentric training has long been an integral part of preparation programs for athletes. During the lengthening contraction – say, when you’re lowering the weight; concentric is when you’re lifting it – the muscle is at its strongest, which means it is capable of exerting a higher force at the same energy cost.

For strength programming, eccentric overload is where it’s at. The beauty of the V-Form Trainer is that the sleek, compact device does it all for you, doing away with weight releasers and flywheel devices. You can train completely effectively and safely alone, with no spotter. With a few simple physical movements, you introduce your range of motion and weight capabilities to the machine – then it responds and adapts accordingly.

You can perform the concentric phase with little or no weight before the weight is loaded on at the top of the motion for full resistance in the negative phase of the movement. The V-Form can supply up to 200kg of resistance, although for many purposes, you’ll find that eccentric training at lower weights less frequently will provide the results you’re looking for.

Which brings us back to progression.

Progression

A successful purposeful training program will consist of three key elements:

1) Progressive Overload through challenging stimuli

2) Engagement to encourage continued adherence

3) Measurement is vital for quantifying progression

These three elements combine to facilitate progress towards specific goals and ultimately achieving results.

Progessive Overload

A purposeful training program that sensibly provides progressive overload is the basis of strength training and hypertrophy (increasing muscle size).

Progressive overload is achieved by increasing the weight load or the number of reps or the amount of sets you do. You probably know this.

What you might not know is that applying this approach to the negative phase of your lifting – in other words, eccentric training – is how you can make optimal gains faster.

It works this way because eccentric training is less metabolically demanding. Traditional training can have you jacking up your heart rate quickly. Greater demand on the heart leads to greater oxygen consumption, which often results in earlier muscular fatigue and pain.

During eccentric contractions, elastic contractile tissue absorbs energy, so you’re able to output up to 20% more force. When a lifter can train under a greater load, they’re facilitating the potential for greater muscle gains.

Why wouldn’t you train in a way that allows you to go harder – remembering that we’re stronger in the eccentric phase – for longer?

The V-Form Trainer is specifically designed to challenge you in every phase of the lift. In eccentric mode, it allows you to lift anywhere on the scale of minimal to maximal on the concentric phase but will pack on additional weight for the eccentric phase, leading to

muscle activation and growth,
increased aerobic capacity, and
improved functional ability.

Engagement

While repetition is obviously an important component of strength training, it doesn’t have to be mind-numbing continuation of exactly the same thing. Having variety in your regimen is a key driver towards success. You can perform all major compound lifts with the handles, bar, bench, belt and straps. With the V-Form’s suite of accessories and library of hundreds of exercises, you can customise workouts that will work every muscle in your body in a variety of ways.

Being a new player in the connected fitness space, Vitruvian Form understands the benefits of interactivity, especially from home. As personal as workouts are, humans are social species. Being able to share workouts, challenges and gains with the #formfam online, as well as participate in gamified aspects, adds another level of engagement to your workout – ultimately helping you to stick with it and see progress.

Measurement

To get the best results you need to track your data and workout history. The V-Form Trainer solves this essential component of your workout simply. Never again print out a spreadsheet, fill in numbers or manually adjust settings.

Being able to see even the small increments ensures that you are completely in tune with the progress you’re making. The V-Form app will show you progress after every workout, progress over time, energy burned and personal bests for individual exercises, including force distribution, average load lifted, velocity and handle position.

Written by:

Luke A J

Certified Personal Trainer

BSc in Sports Science & Physiology

First Class Honours in Sports Science, Exercise & Health

Instagram: @lukeandrew22