Never over look connective tissue development. It is a real weak spot for steroid users and most other athletes/people who traine etc who develop there muscular system faster than their connective tissue, resulting in bicep tears etc.
It's the simple short answer to 'how come a skinny, wiry guy can beat a meat head at lifting'
'I am of the opinion that joints need to be trained in a like manner to how
we train our muscular system, but with recovery and adaptive periods that
reflect their specific recovery periods.'
Bones, and connective tissue have low to no blood supply and their growth,
and recovery are slower than the muscle tissues.
So the task is to find the correct loading to the cycles of compression and
decompression (and other stress types) that will produce a conditioning
effect to those tissues without "overtraining". It is as simple as training
the musculature, but also complex, due to the fact that you are dealing with
two critical variables:
1)Present Condition and the level of load that will be required to produce
positive adaptation
2)Age and the amount of recovery required between loading bouts.
Obviously this is significantly different than training the muscles even
though we use essentially the SAME exercise actions.
As well we generally have 3 main tissues to be aware of:
1)Bones which need general heavy load stresses to gain or retain
mineralization
2)Ligaments which require regular stresses to reduce age related stiffness
3) Cartilages which require appropriate cyclic compression and decompression
to facilitate synovium saturations and hydrations
Certain sports that take a toll on joints and connective tissues, so it might be wise to keep these elements in
mind.
Ensure you take training connective tissue as seriously as muscular training to ensure less injury.
Good examples of strengthening connective tissue through bodybuilding and weight training is the use of isometric and static movements, such as isometric bench press, partial squats (to name a few) using heavy loads and low reps. Also to be considered are plyometrics. As with all forms of training these things need to be developed slowly and sensibly. Don't just go out to try and develop your tendons work new movements in gradually and increase the load over time.
Check out this article on tendon development from PPONLINE
