For high-quality and professional training of the upper muscles of the body, many athletes use neck extensions. These pads allow you to significantly increase the grip strength when using horizontal bars, rubber loops, dumbbells or bars in training. Very often, expanders are also used in training the US Army, police and firefighters.
Main advantages
When using any projectile from the gym, the neck extensions can additionally increase the strength characteristics of the trained muscle groups, forearms and grip.
Also linings contribute to:
- improving muscle coordination;
- training all muscle cells;
- training motor neurons and the entire central nervous system;
- increase the productivity of each lesson.
Experienced athletes know what effect the nervous system has on muscle function. Training with fingerboards allows you to increase the productivity of each exercise and increase the effectiveness of all workouts.
This efficiency is achieved thanks to inconspicuous neck tips that can attach to it in seconds.
Nervous system
To understand how deeply affects a person training with neck extensions, you need to understand the basic concepts of strength. So, human strength is the number of simultaneously involved muscle cells at a certain point. These cells are called symplasts. The nervous system counts and controls their number, and it is motor neurons located in the spinal cord. At first glance, everything is simple: a person concentrates on a specific exercise, a signal is transmitted to the nervous system and it reduces the necessary muscle cells.
In fact, the human body has a sense of self-preservation at the cellular level, and with excessive loads, the frequency and power of such signals will deliberately decrease in order to protect the body from injuries, injuries and other stresses. This process is controlled by a system of Golgi organs, with which every athlete is familiar.
These protective mechanisms work to protect joints, bones and ligaments, which are not always ready for maximum muscle contractions and may not withstand their power. Protecting the body at a subconscious level, of course, is useful, but it works with a large margin, which reduces the safe productivity of athletes by 20-30%.
The effect of extenders on the central nervous system
In this case, neck extensions can do the almost impossible. It is their use that pushes the threshold of activation of protective functions, while not adversely affecting the functioning of joints and bones.
This effect is achieved due to the simultaneous use of a large number of muscle cells to bypass motor neurons.
Based on this:
- muscle mass will increase faster;
- the athlete will control his nervous system by training it;
- strength indicators in all exercises will increase.
The latter is achieved due to the fact that with proper CNS training, the results will be distributed equally to exercises with completely different biomechanics.
The use of linings
How exactly do neck extenders affect an athlete’s body? From all of the above, we can conclude that keeping the projectile in an uncomfortable position provokes the body to use more muscles. Mostly these are the forearms, since they help to maintain weight without dropping it. Such a stress factor of projectile loss activates the release of adrenaline and norepinephrine in the body, due to which the strength characteristics increase.
Of course, hormones can only increase potential for a short time, but this is enough to complete the exercise and get the results as soon as possible. To keep the projectile, the body has to use a huge number of motor neurons and symplasts.
The difference between training with a regular bar
When working even with heavy weights on a regular neck, the forearms always feel comfortable, as evidenced by professional reviews. Neck extensions can provoke a stressful state in the body, which cannot be achieved even when working with non-standard grips, since their surface is hard.
The soft surface of the fingerboard allows you to compress them more, increasing the grip force, especially on the latest approaches. This is necessary when the nervous system is already at the peak of activity, and it becomes technically difficult to complete the exercise.
Need to use
It is almost impossible to make high-quality neck extenders with your own hands. In their work, not only the correct dimensions are important, but also the material of manufacture, the reliability of attachment to the bar. Only all of these indicators in combination can make training not only productive, but also safe.
The regular use of expanders can significantly increase the strength of the forearms and hands, so that the athlete will be more reliable in maintaining weight. Interestingly, even with constant training, the pads are not addictive. At first, the Golgi system pushes away the stress factor, and then it simply ceases to see the danger in such exercises, since well-developed muscles hold weight firmly.
When choosing exercises with a bar extender (XGRIP, IRON BULL, FAT GRIPZ, MANUS GRIP), it should be remembered that the result of training the nervous system will apply to all muscle groups, even when squatting with a barbell. Of course, this exercise is dangerous because the projectile can slip out of poorly trained hands, so you should take less weight than usual.
Popular manufacturers
XGRIP neck extenders are especially popular around the world. Athletes' reviews characterize them as high-quality linings at a minimum cost. They are always sold in sets of 2 expanders and are available in several variations for different loads:
- Standard pads have an external diameter of 5.7 cm and are suitable for all athletes regardless of experience and strength. The weight of each device is 500 g.
- Pads for experienced athletes are available with an external diameter of 69 mm and are used by athletes to increase the load after training with conventional expanders. These XGRIP MONSTER pads can complement workouts with conventional expanders. Each piece weighs 650 g.
- A sphere-shaped extender is manufactured by the manufacturer under the name XGRIP SPHERE. Its use allows you to get a non-standard load, which allows to increase the grip strength for athletes from power types of competitions - arm wrestling, judo, powerlifting, mixed martial arts and so on. The outer diameter is 6.9 cm and the weight is 500 g.
Vulture extenders are also represented in the world by such manufacturers as MANUS GRIP, IRON BULL and FAT GRIPZ. Each of them has its own characteristics, but due to the hanged cost it is rarely used by our compatriots.