If you’re like most people you have hit a training plateau at one point in your life. I have discussed a few great ways to conquer these in the past, but today I would like to discuss my absolute favorite method. Eccentric training, also known as negative training, allows you to push your muscles beyond exhaustion. By allowing your muscles to lift between 30-40 percent more weight than your one max rep, you push your muscles past a point they normally couldn’t handle.
Eccentric training is defined as active contraction of a muscle occurring simultaneously with lengthening of the muscle. It is much more demanding on the muscles, and therefore it works them much harder than you could with a traditional concentric lift. This is especially true for compound exercises such as the bench press, military press, and barbell curls.
As you may have guessed you are much stronger on the eccentric phase of the rep as opposed to the concentric portion. This means that less muscle fiber is needed to perform this portion of your exercises. However, these muscle fibers are receiving a much higher percentage of damage, which allows for those fibers to get much bigger than during traditional sets.
It is absolutely critical to boost the intensity of your workouts if you want to boost your gains. There are a few methods to incorporating these into your routine, but only one will allow you to fulfill your muscle building potential.
Whenever I incorporate eccentric training into my regimen I perform what are called forced reps. These are reps you perform after you have reached muscle failure on a set. A proper and knowledgeable spotter is absolutely necessary to perform these last few reps.
To perform a negative rep on bench press, make sure you have two training partners as it can be difficult for one partner to lift the entire weight of the bar up. The general rule is to load the bar with around 35% higher weight than you normally would, and let your spotters lift the bar off for you. Then you must SLOWLY lower the bar to your chest, this should be slow and controlled (about 5 seconds on the way down). Once you hit your chest, have your spotters do the concentric portion of the lift for you by lifting the weight back to the starting point.
Lowering the bar with 35% more weight than you normally would, allows you to over train your muscle fibers which will help you get over any plateau that stands in your way. By using negatives at the end of your workout you will absolutely annihilate your muscle fibers, which will lead to fantastic results.
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“If you only ever give 90% in training then you will only ever give 90% when it matters.” -Michael Owen
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