For fitness enthusiasts who are short on time, packing a solid workout can be a challenge, but recently exercise scientists have taken a deep dive into what the most efficient workouts look like. I came to see the A team at Australia’s Edith Cowan University (ECU) did this through research showing that focusing on lowering weights rather than lifting weights may be a more efficient way to build muscle mass. provided new insights in the field.
This year, researchers at Edith Cowan University (ECU) made some interesting discoveries about weight training and how short, sharp workouts are still very valuable. In February, the team showed significant strength gains with dumbbell training for 3 seconds each day, and in August he showed similar effects with lowering dumbbells six times a day. .
These studies explored the types of muscle gains delivered during different stages of weight training. The lifting phase shortens the muscle and is known as the concentric contraction that occurs when the dumbbell is lifted towards the shoulder in a biceps curl. Eccentric contraction is the opposite phase, lowering the weight toward the hips and lengthening the muscles.
Many exercises, such as running and jumping, involve both eccentric and concentric contractions, which are thought to play complementary roles in a healthy body. Concentric contractions feel like harder work and may require more energy at once, but your muscles recover more quickly. However, it is thought that there is greater breakdown of muscle fibers and, when rebuilt, increases muscle strength.
Previous findings by the ECU team have followed this line of thinking by showing how eccentric contractions lead to maximal strength gains, and new research continues this theme. Fifty-three subjects were enrolled who were placed in one of three exercise groups designed to perform curls twice weekly for five weeks and one inactive group to serve as a control.
However, only one group performed both concentric and eccentric contractions, like a typical biceps curl. Another group performed only concentric contractions and the other group performed only eccentric contractions. Scientists observed improvements in concentric strength in all groups, but the most interesting insight from the experiment was the superior gains seen in the eccentric-only group.
These subjects benefited from very similar increases in strength, despite only lowering the weight and doing half the repetitions of the eccentric-concentric group. The group had a 7.2% increase in muscle thickness, and the concentric-eccentric group had a 5.4% increase. Study author Professor Ken Nosaka tells New Atlas that people looking to size up at the gym may be better off focusing on lowering weights rather than lifting them.
“We can cut concentric contractions, so resistance training should focus on eccentric contractions,” he explained. attention, but this needs to be reconsidered.”
Nosaka gives some examples of how this works with body weight resistance at home. From a half-squat, slowly sit back in a chair, or slowly lower back and lunge. When it comes to using weights for resistance, the question arises of how to put them there in the first place.
“To do an eccentric contraction, you have to do a concentric contraction (to lower the weight, you first have to lift the weight),” he told The New Atlas. It is important to note that also induces neuromuscular fatigue, thus reducing the effort of concentric contractions by using two arms to lift the weight and one arm to lower it to accentuate the eccentric contraction. that is important.”
One of the limitations of this study is that it only focused on training the elbow flexor with bicep curls in untrained adults. Nosaka believes that eccentric contraction values are the same for muscle groups elsewhere in the body, but we want to confirm this and see if the effects apply to wider populations and trained individuals. Further research is needed to examine the
This research European Journal of Applied Physiology.
Source: Edith Cowan University
