Eccentric Training

The benefits of eccentric or negative training has been known for many years, however it never really caught on to the general public. Physical therapists use it to establish stability and strength in muscle and joint rehab. Strength Coaches use it to develop athletes ability to stop and change direction quickly, or to decelerate during a violent movement. Bodybuilders use is to produce more "time under tension" for muscle building purposes.

All of these reasons have immense benefit to general fitness enthusiasts for several reasons:

1. An awesome by-product of strength training is the health benefits that it promotes. If you don't know by now that fitness can make you a healthier individual in multiple ways, then you need to call Century 21 and go house hunting, because living under that rock must be killing your back. Eccentric training can build tendon and muscle strength, as well as ligament and bone density. Basically, the load on the body's skeletal tissue can be greater on the negative portion of a lift because the muscle does not have to over come any resistance; it only has to decrease speed.



2. The reason for developing the ability to stop a body part from moving in an athlete, is the same reason eccentrics can help your training. Walking down the stairs, or catching yourself from slipping on ice requires the "stopping strength" produced by eccentric training, to prevent you from crumbling like the Berlin Wall. We have all had an unexpected injury at an inopportune time, whether it was cutting during a backyard football game or rolling your ankle on your kids Tonka Truck. Eccentric training can make you joints and muscle able to withstand the suprises of everyday life. Not to mention it can make an animal out of you in the gym.



3. Muscle hypertrophy (muscle building) has been shown in many studies to be dependant on the "time under tension". This means that muscle fiber development is increased the longer the extrenal load remains on the muscle. This principle is why you see olympic lifters in the 125lb weight class clean and jerking 225lbs! They train with mainly explosive movements with little time under tension, therefore little hypertrophy occurs. If you want to pack on some added muscle on your frame add eccentric training into your program, and shove some healthy calories into the whole in your head (preferably the one with teeth in it).

Eccentric training produces more damage to the muscle so it takes longer to recover from this type of training. It also fatigues your nervous system more than "average speed" lifting. For these reasons it is advisable to only do one eccentric-dominant movement per workout, and make sure that you have at least 2-4 days before you hit that movement again (depending on how you feel).