There are some forms of exercise that use the body's own muscles as resistance. Many of these come from martial arts.
Imagine doing movements with every muscle in your body flexed, pitting all your muscles against each other. I was really into this stuff back in my martial arts days and was kind of in the weight lifting is bad mindset, but then I realized that weightlifting is awesome. But now that I have an issue with my elbow that keeps me from weight lifting, I am looking for other forms of exercise to get stronger.
There is one program specifically I am referring to that has you doing dynamic tension movements in many different exercises and increasing the reps. Generally speaking it takes around 5-10 minutes when you start and goes up to 90 minutes as you add more to it. This is done continuously without rest. Each movement is a different type of twisting or pushing or punching or blocking, etc. It's pretty involved as far as arms and shoulders go, although there isn't much leg work as you are just standing in a stance, which is tiring, but doesn't do much more than in that stance build some strength. The people who teach the form are pretty large, and although I haven't known many people who train this way, it seems to be effective.
My concerns are this: how healthy is this? Weight lifting is brief periods of exertion followed by rest. This kind of thing is done without stopping for a half hour or more. Aside from getting tons of blood going through your muscles, are there any dangers to it? I mean I don't know if the body is meant to hold tension for that type of action. I have heard unofficially on another forum that doing this kind of thing is bad for you and can promote heart growth as well as other weird issues, like having body issues.
When people run they do that for a half hour or more, but this is more intense than that. It's basically anaerobic. Now even though you're supposed to use maximum tension the whole exercise, I'm sure it is decreasing as you go because you can't do maximum tension for more than a short period, so it's just the effort that is maximum. Does anyone know anything about how doing this kind of thing will cause the body to respond? I know the type of purpose it's supposed to have but I want to make sure it's safe.
