Isometric exercise: What is it, and why is it trending?

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word “exercise”? Hours in the gym—squatting, curling, lunging, and sweating. What if exercise does not have to involve any of these? What if you can reap the benefits with barely moving? Sounds like a dream, right? But it’s not. Isometric exercise flips the script entirely. Here, you hardly need movement. This kind of exercise harnesses the power of non-movement. And it’s effective!Isometric exercise is a type of strength training where you don’t rely on movement. These exercises involve the contraction of muscles without any movement in the surrounding joints. Here, you are working hard while staying perfectly still.In this type of strength training, the muscles produce force but do not change length. For example, a plank. This is different from more traditional strength training, like a squat or a push-up, where muscles shorten and lengthen during the movement. Here, your muscles are firing intensely, but your body is still. Another example is a wall sit. You are in a static squat position. You hold it for a while. You don’t need a range of motion like biceps curls, but your muscles are still on fire. It is simple but effective.Isometric exercise has taken the internet by storm for its simplicity and effectiveness. Compared to other exercises, like cardio or strength training, here you don’t have to move much, or at all! These exercises do the job without leaving you exhausted. They improve your strength efficiently and even match or exceed the results of dynamic exercises. Isometric exercises are low-impact and also joint-friendly. This makes them ideal for people struggling with injury, arthritis, or other conditions that prevent them from moving.A 2023 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that isometric exercises are best for lowering blood pressure. During the study, the researchers found that while all types of exercise led to a drop in blood pressure, isometric training led to a significant reduction of 8.2/4 mmHg.Another study by researchers at the University of New South Wales, published in 2021, found that isometric resistance training has the potential to reduce high blood pressure.“We found that IRT was very safe and caused meaningful changes in blood pressure—almost as much as what you’d expect to see with blood pressure-lowering medications,” Dr. Matthew Jones, an accredited exercise physiologist at the School of Health Sciences, said in a release.He also stressed that this is effective for people who are physically inactive due to a “lack of time.”“IRT is a time-efficient means of reducing blood pressure, needing only 12 minutes a day, two to three days per week to produce the effects we found in our review. While the studies included in our review normally used a specialized handgrip device, it’s possible we would see the same effects simply by asking participants to make a fist and squeeze it at a certain intensity for the prescribed amount of time. This means IRT could easily be performed while participants are sitting down watching TV,” Dr. Jones added.This exercise requires no gym or equipment. You can do it anywhere—a wall sit, a plank, a dead hang from a doorframe—you decide. It perfectly fits into your busy life. A 14-minute session, three times a week, can bring you significant health benefits.