Like if I clench my fists and muscles hard enough and imagine holding these weights, is it pretty much the same?
In: Chemistry
Under zero circumstances. If you bicycle your legs when you’re laying in bed, do you think that’s the same as doing a mountain stage of the Tour de France?
What you’re lacking is resistance, the heavy weight doesn’t want *[citation needed]* to be moved. Your muscles need to actually move the thing to burn the calories, to build the muscle.
muscle growth depends on progressive. The weight you life has to get heavier over time to see gains
If you were able to clench your fist harder every time, then you’d be on to something, but you can’t.
Much like imagining you’re eating food will not get you any nutrients, imagining you’re drinking water will not hydrate you, imagining you’re exercising will not exercise you.
The closest to what you are thinking of would probably be isometric exercises. These are ones where you contract a muscle while not actually moving, either through stabilizing with other muscles or using an outside force. These aren’t generally done for strength training or endurance for various reasons, but can help with stability and strengthening some particular targeted muscles.
What you are describing is essentially isometrics, meaning you are holding statically. So clinching your fists and holding a weight is probably very similar.
But neither will likely result in actual muscle growth or strength increases. Study after study has show that it is the moving of the weights that actually produces such results. Both the part where you move against gravity(or whatever force) but also the part where you let the weight fall back down(as long as you do it slowly and control it) is what seems to produce muscle growth and strength.
Dynamic Tension
“Invented” by Charles Atlas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Tension?wprov=sfti1#
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