Hi,
Should a beginner focus more on stretching and squeezing the muscle with each rep or more on the overload principle (still maintaining MMC) until a more “solid base” is built? Thanks!
Nothing wrong with working on MMC during some of your warm up sets or lighter working sets…but this takes time to drill home and if you try to do it on even your top sets it will hinder your progress. Sometimes it’s damned near impossible to feel that MMC if you dont have much muscle to start off with! So yea, don’t make it your priority just yet, but don’t be afraid to see what it’s all about either.
To me it feels like most big backs are built by first getting strong enough to do pulldowns with the stack and then working on MMC so you can do pulldowns with the stack with great MMC. So focus on getting strong on the basics and work on MMC before or after the big weights.
There are a lot of overly flashy words here but it’s not a bad strategy: http://www.T-Nation.com/strength-training-topics/1826