Do Hindu Squats improve your vertical leap?

[Aodhan]

There is an exercise I know where you sit with your back against a wall and slide down until your legs are at a 90 degree angle. You form like a chair so I all this "wall sitting." You hold the position for a few minutes. It feels like holding horseriding position for a few minutes. Is that isometric? Afterwards my legs are shaking from it. My instructor says that the reason my legs did that was because I was training muscle fibers that have been used for the first time. Most likely fast-twitch fibers which require for all the slow-twitch fibers to be exhausted or for a stress load only fast-twitch fibers can handle for them to come into play. During your lifetime some fibers are never activated because you never face a stress that is hard enough to turn them on.

Message to Aodhan: The exercise you suggested is like the visual aid in the Air Alert III link I received. It is called step-ups. Is this what it looks like doing your exercise?

Yes, it is isometric. Tension on the muscle without movement. Part of the reason your legs shake, is as you exhaust parts of the muscle, other parts are recruited until the entire muscle is spend. The fatigue in the muscle and the extra acetylcholine (muscle neurotransmitter) floating around are what contribute to the shaking of the muscles.

And, as far as the Air Assault III, I've never heard of the program, so I couldn't say.

Aodhan

[CapitalKarate]

Did you create two identical threads? I see another thread with the same name and author a few threads down.