Issue 093
October 2012
How going slower will make you stronger… The secrets of eccentric training revealed
Paul McVeigh
Pro fighter & sports scientist
TUF 14 cast member Paul McVeigh is a sports scientist and coach. He’s also one of the leading bantamweight fighters in Europe.
Whenever an athlete is moving a heavy weight they are usually only focused on shifting it from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ as quickly as possible. Very few athletes think about the speed at which they lift and lower and that’s a shame because tempo training is one of the most powerful tools in the strength coach’s arsenal.
If we use the squat as an example, the typical athlete will lower the weight for maybe a second before immediately driving the bar up, using as much reactive ability as they can.
The lowering portion, where the muscle is lengthened under muscular tension, is known as the eccentric portion of the lift. This is the part of the lift were many athletes cheat themselves. They dive bomb into squats, bounce bench presses of their sternums and drop dead lifts like nasty habits. By varying the length of the eccentric portion you can benefit from gains in strength, size and resistance to injury.
WHY LIFT FOR LONGER?
The eccentric portion of a lift has the greatest potential to improve maximal strength (the sum of concentric, isometric and eccentric strength). This may be due to greater neural adaptations to eccentric vs concentric stress and/or a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers being recruited with eccentric stress. Whatever the specific reason for this effect, it is evident that ignoring the eccentric portion of a lift is a mistake if you are trying to get stronger.
Another reason to love eccentric training is that the main driving forces behind increasing a muscle’s size is how long that muscle remains under tension. This time under tension is lengthened dramatically when you lengthen the eccentric to five seconds per rep. A set that takes close to 60 seconds to complete is a powerful stimulus for muscle growth and strength.
At some point in many athletes’ training, they have become so strong that adding a few more kilos to the bar is not going to help their performance, but it can lead to an injury. When constantly lifting really heavy weights your body walks the line between performance and injury, and when you are really strong that line becomes very thin.
Eccentric training allows the athlete to develop without playing around with near-maximal loads. The athletes will definitely feel they are working hard but the decreased loading will save a lot of spines and shoulders. It’s also a great teaching tool. I’ve found that a few sets of five-second eccentric squats really hammers home proper form and as a coach it allows me to see any problems that can crop up a lot easier.
I know what you’re thinking, ‘This sounds fabulous why doesn’t everyone train like this?’ Well there are a few problems, predominantly it’s really hard and hurts like hell. Very few things can make an athlete hate you more than throwing eccentrics into their programming.
It’s upsettingly painful, shows up your weaknesses and you have to use less weight on the bar. A few days later it gets even worse. The type of delayed onset muscular soreness that super-slow eccentrics cause can be unpleasant.
As well as leaving you with legs that feeling like they have done three rounds with Thiago Alves, eccentric training is a massive drain on your nervous system and, as such, this form of training should be kept to the out season when strength gains are the primary emphasis and overall sparring and high-intensity training volume is low.
THE BENEFITS OF ECCENTRIC TRAINING
The easiest way to emphasise the eccentric portion of a lift is not to ignore it. Don’t bounce bars off your sternum, don’t let gravity control your descent and don’t drop off the pull up bar when you finish your last rep.
Beyond that, lower the load under control (one to three seconds) and raise it as quickly as you can and you will be getting the most from the concentric and eccentric portions of a lift.
But if you really want to hammer your eccentric strength, super-slow eccentrics are a great way to do it.
SUPER-SLOW ECCENTRICS
This is a pretty simple method that can bring about some very impressive results in strength and body composition. All you need to do is grab a load between 65-85% of your one-rep max for a particular lift and extend the eccentric portion by the duration outlined above.
