Who uses eccentric movements?

[Slyder190]

Who stresses them rather? I'm lookin for a new approach to training to get my body growing again. 6-10 reps and varying sets hasn't worked for me in quite some time. Yeah, there are drop sets, negatives etc...nothing against them, but I don't feel they are the golden ticket to more size either, especially after training a lot of years. I am going to try mixing power and hypertrpophy routines. I am going to keep slow rep eccntric movements for both. Anyone else had success with this?

 

[NoLimits]

I feel that both concentric and eccentric are very important. You shock the muscle using both. Think slow, and full range of motion when performing any exercise.

 

[Silent Method]

I'm lookin for a new approach to training to get my body growing again.

Go ahead and give your idea a try. Two other thoughts you can implement are manipulating rest intervals - try taking a 30-45 second break between sets instead of two-three minutes (the weight WILL have to come down ) - and try to establish varing degrees of intensity for each consecutive workout hitting the same bodypart - heavy shoulder day, light shoulder day, super heavy shoulder day, easy shoulder day, high vol, low vol, etc.

 

[Dooley]

I agree with the varying intensity.. try using heavy weights while keeping strict form once in a while. Slow and easy on the eccentric and concentric contractions. Aim for 3-5 reps for 2-3 sets. Or 85-95% of 1RM. I guarantee you'll be sore as hell.

 

[AnabolicusEroticus]

Actually eccentric reps are emphasizing the negative, so it's basically the same thing. So saying that negatives aren't the 'golden ticket' to size but slow eccentrics are, is kind of miselading.

But, getting back to your question, it is a fact that the eccentric portion of reps is what causes the most microtrauma to muscles and accounts for the most hypertrophic and strength responses. Not the concentric portion of the rep like many beleive and overemphasize. So, in my opinion and the opinion of many who know their shit, the most optimal way to gain muscle is to perform reps where the eccentric portion takes much longer, at least 2-3x as long as the concentric part. So throw your ego out the window, cause your poundage will undoubtedly drop initially, but your gains will be maximized. Over time, your muscles will acclimate to this added stress and your lifts will get back to where they were and even go beyond asw the muscle gets stronger.

A good rule of thumb is that the positive portion of the rep should be explosive and the negative portion should be between 3-6 seconds per rep. This increases total time under tension for not only each rep, but the overall set as well.