What would you say if I said, I have the key to making your workouts more efficient? And it’s not by lifting more weight IN FACT, you can do this without any weights at all.
Are you interested? Then read on, or you can watch the video by clicking here
Before I get into the how, here’s a little bit of background science you need to know…
When you pick something up or lift anything your muscles will go through a shortening phase, this is called a concentric contraction, when you lower the weight your muscles lengthen, we call this an eccentric contraction. There was also another type of muscle contraction where the muscle doesn’t change shape; it doesn’t shorten or lengthen and that is called an isometric contraction but we’re not going be talking about that today, so we’ll leave that for now.
So imagine a classic bicep curl as you are picking up the weight and lifting it, you are contracting
the muscle. That muscle is getting shorter as you are curling the weight, as you are lowering the weight again the muscle is lengthening. This lowering under tension is the eccentric phase, and this is the phase that I want to tell you about today.
As you curl up with the weight you can see the muscle getting shorter and bulging and this is where you usually think you’re doing the most work. But imagine as you are curling down and lengthening the muscle you’re going really slowly, in fact imagine doing that while counting to 3. As you are lengthening that muscle slowly under load, the muscle fibres are having to work really really hard on the fighting against gravity as well as holding onto the weight.
So traditionally when we lift we are focusing on just one phase of the muscular contraction, the concentric contraction or the shortening phase, but I want to you to start to think about the eccentric contraction or the lengthening phase as part of the exercise, I want you to start to think about the two phases together as one and putting your muscles under tension for a longer period of time.
So let’s again consider the bicep curl. As you’re curling up, count to 3, pause at the top and then count to 3 again while curling down. Consider the amount of time that you are now loading that muscle during the concentric and the eccentric contraction, that amount of time is called we call time under tension. The longer your muscle has to support that weight, the longer the time under tension, the more that that muscle has to work. If you’re using momentum to push through the reps really, really fast just to get them done there is much less benefit than if you’re using a lighter weight and doing fewer reps with a longer time under tension.
Aim for three seconds for the concentric or the shortening phase and three seconds for the eccentric or lengthening phase and that is really going to see some super benefits for your strength.
But you don’t have to use weights to be able to get the benefit from doing this type of exercise, let’s consider the press up. If you go through the full range of motion on your press up pressing down, pausing and pressing up slowly, you are going to be putting your muscles through a longer time under tension. They are going to have to work much harder for a much longer period of time this will be really beneficial for your strength gains and make your workouts really effective.
Working out in this way means that you can reduce the amount of reps that you’re doing for your workout because your muscles are still working for the same time or perhaps even longer than if you were doing a higher amount of reps but those reps were lasting for less time. Aiming for 8 to 10 reps is a really good amount of reps for a press up if you are working for three seconds on the concentric and three seconds for the eccentric contraction.
So we talked about strength gains and the benefits to your overall strength by working through the
eccentric contraction but are there any other benefits?
Glad you asked! By working eccentrically you will:
increase flexibility
Increase mobility
Reduce the risk of injury
You’ll be stronger, more flexible, more mobile and less likely to get injured!
Are there any drawbacks of working eccentrically?
By doing eccentric training you are more likely to suffer with delayed onset muscle soreness, also
known as DOMS. If you’ve ever felt sore the day after doing a workout, then you’ve had DOMS.
You can read more about DOMS and how to reduce them in my other article here or watch
my video here
DOMS is the uncomfortable feeling that you feel in your muscles between 24 and 72 hours after exercise and is the result of micro tears in the muscle fibres but don’t worry, this is a normal and natural process and is all about building them size and shape of your muscles.
So are you going to start to use eccentric contractions in your workouts? I’d really love to know
please leave a comment below and share your thoughts with me.
