Some new research has come out which has confirmed what many have been saying a long time: that the eccentric part of the lift in weight training accounts for nearly all of the hypertrophy and strength gains.
Now, it’s possible that other research will come out and show that this isn’t quite true. But what’s there seems very convincing.
If true, it means that I’ve really been doing my training wrong. I really haven’t put any effort into the concentric portion, especially for bigger lifts like bench press.
On bench, I basically just drop it on myself and put all the focus into pushing it back up.
I could be much more productive with my lifting if I put all of my effort into the eccentric portion. So for bench press, that means a very slow, controlled descent. Which is what I’ve been told to do anyway, but I’ve just ignored it for some reason.
For other lifts, like overhead press for example, I maybe don’t even need to worry that much about form going back up. I just need to be able to maximize reps coming down, and specifically the quality of them.
It’s nice to have this kind of clarity, and thinking back, I think I’ve actually really been lacking in my lifts because I haven’t been doing them this way at all.
I’m looking forward to trying this out and will post back results.