Have you ever heard of doing negatives? It's what the cool kids call an eccentric contraction. It's a contraction that occurs as the muscle is lengthening.
If you think about a squat, the eccentric contraction is happening on the way down while the concentric contraction is on the way up. Now that I have exhausted 4 years of what I learned in college, I will tell you why you should care about these things.
There are several benefits to using eccentric contractions or negatives in your training. They are:
1. More muscle gain- this is a good thing!
2. Increased metabolism- this is the reason we want more lean muscle mass. And when you focus on negatives it can cause more muscle damage (more on that later) and the process of the body repairing itself costs more calories.
3. Increased flexibility- because you are gong through that full range of motion under control it can lead to better flexibility.
4. Joint protection- this is not what Snoop does when he travels. Negatives strengthen the joints and tendons, which in turn helps to protect the body from injury.
So how do you do them?
A good rule of thumb is to focus on lowering the weight for 3-5 seconds through a full range of motion. Start off by adding one set of 10 negatives on you last set of normal speed sets. Because they do cause so much muscle damage they can cause you to be really sore, so ease into these and only try them once a week in the beginning.
Here are a few exercises to try this technique on:
Chest press
Squats
Rows
Split squats
Shoulder press
Hip raise
Gauge your soreness and make the necessary adjustments for your next workout.