This is one piece of advice that I hear all too often…
And to tell you the truth, I’m sick of it.
In today’s article, I want to explain why slow negative reps are hurting your progress in the gym.
If you read to the end, you’ll learn why using a full range of motion on an exercise is always superior (and how fast reps may be the key).
3 Reasons why negative reps are hurting your strength gains
- They’re hard to recover from: Eccentric muscle contractions (i.e. negatives) cause more muscle damage than concentric muscle contractions (i.e. positives). This may seem like a “good thing”. After all, most people think that you need to create enough trauma to the muscles to get them to adapt and grow stronger. But in reality, if you’re chronically sore and stiff all the time you won’t be able to lift heavy as often.
- You can’t use as much weight: “Time under tension” is often made out to be more important than it actually is. In truth, you need to lift more weight over time to get bigger and stronger. And it’s much more difficult to do this if you pre-exhaust your muscles with slow negative reps.
- You get less muscle activation: Many studies have shown that the negative portion of a rep produces more force. This had led to a lot of “gurus” jumping the gun and proclaiming that slow negatives are better for muscle growth. This IS NOT true. In reality, concentric muscle contractions stimulate the muscles to a greater degree.
In short, stop focusing on slow negatives and pay attention to what really matters- progressive overload:
- Try to lift more weight
- Do more reps
- Do more sets
- Rest less between sets
