Static Holds Revisited

Static holds: there is no need anymore to argue that they are useful. In my training Sergej often makes me do snatches with top and bottom static holds. Doing them improves the technique. At the time of writing the post on this topic on the old blog I came across a piece from Coach Sommers' "Building the Gymnastic Body" It was about improving pull-up reps:

"Many people believe that an easy way to increase your repetitions in the pullup is the focus on performing a bottom static hold (the "hang" portion of the pull-up). I agree. In addition, I would submit that it is equally important to train the top position as a static hold as well."

To me it was unexpected and counter-intuitive, especially static hangs. However, after thinking about it for a while it made sense. You cannot just hand like a sausage, and in order to keep the shoulders in their sockets the muscles surrounding the shoulder joint have to contract, at least to some degree. As the result, these stabilizing muscles become stronger, which translates to more pull-ups.  

For this very reason static holds work in girevoy sport: you get better at holding the weight, and this translates to better technique. Just like in sports that involve lifting weight, isometric exercises lead to improvement in dynamic movements. The fact that a gymnastic coach recommends doing it makes it even more convincing to me.