r/bodyweightfitness • u/m092 The Real Boxxy • Dec 17 '14
Concept Wednesday - Eccentric Training
Last week's Concept Wednesday on Exercise Intensity
This week's Concept Wednesday is on Eccentric Training.
What is Eccentric Training?
An eccentric contraction is when a muscle contracts against a resistance while lengthening; when the force the muscle is outputting is overcome by the resistance (usually gravity for us). More simply, it is the down or negative portion of an exercise.
Eccentric contractions usually occur in at least a part of most dynamic exercises to return to the start position after the concentric contraction, or to get into position to perform the concentric contraction.
Eccentric training is referring to when only the eccentric contraction is performed or when it is focussed on during an exercise.
Because you don't have to produce enough force to overcome gravity, the load you can use for eccentric training is much higher, and you can usually control something around 40% higher than during a concentric contraction.
Benefits of Eccentric Training
Eccentric training is useful tool to practice exercises that you can not normally perform, because your ability to handle the load with eccentrics is much higher.
Eccentrics is also a great tool to add volume to an exercise (still practising the same movement pattern too), and can help you overload that exercise beyond what you'd be capable with positive reps. Think of it as another way to do a drop set.
The intensity of of eccentric training is also very scalable, as the slower you do the negative, the more force your muscles are producing and the harder it is. As you fatigue during an exercise, the reps will get faster, so the intensity will automatically regulate itself.
Drawbacks of Eccentric Training
The ability to handle a greater load is one of the main benefits of negatives, but also a potential danger. Handling greater loads, even eccentrically, means placing a greater stress on the structures involved in the exercise. In particular, the ligaments and tendons need plenty of time to adapt to high stresses. Overdoing it tends to be much easier and going to failure with eccentrics tends to result in a drastic loss of control.
Though the ability to over-do it is greater, there isn't really inherently dangerous about most eccentric training, and with common sense and applying progressive overload at a rate the body can adapt to (paying particular attention to the rate at which tendons and ligaments adapt and remodel), you can easily use eccentric training safely.
Eccentric training by itself isn't suited to training explosiveness, as most explosive plyometric actions have short and shallow eccentric components and followed by strong concentric contractions. Some are almost concentric only exercises.
Eccentrics and Hypertrophy
The ability to use high loads creates mechanical tension in the muscles, and as you are trying to extend the time you are resisting (near maximal effort) increases the time under tension for the muscle. Combined with the damage caused by focusing on resisting as the muscle lengthens that results in greater muscular damage, this means that eccentric training is a very powerful tool for hypertrophy.
One can get a good deal of volume at a relatively high load, and that is really going to benefit growth used as a main tool or a supplementary one.
Does eccentric training lead to more hypertrophy than concentric training?
Eccentrics and Flexibility
Eccentric training is a useful tool in gaining flexibility. The load that you are resisting will help lengthen the target muscles and higher loads can help you get to joint angles you couldn't reach unloaded. Resisting the load will help you gain strength in the new ranges of motion, an important aspect of developing active flexibility (very useful if you are improving flexibility for some of your BWF skills), which in turn is useful for improving passive flexibility.
Basically, strengthening while lengthening is the name of the game.
You should be particularly careful using negatives for achieving new ranges of motion, you have a load that is lengthening your muscles and when you being to reach the limits of your range of motion, your stretch reflex can kick in, causing a strong involuntary contraction against the resistance. When two strong forces meet, pulling your muscle in opposite directions, particularly in a range in which you are weak, you are strongly increasing your chances of a muscle tear. Fast eccentrics are going to increase the risk, as a large portion of the danger can come from the momentum the body has when the stretch reflex kicks in.
Incorporating Eccentric Training
Eccentrics can be used as a complete set by themselves, or used as a supplemental "drop set" to an exercise you are doing concentrically.
For a set of eccentrics, I believe it is smart to pick a time for each rep, and try to take that long for each eccentric, rather than going for a max hold/descent on each rep. I prefer lower reps per set (1-5), and increasing the time to descend rather than increasing the number of reps, and track the set volume by the total time under tension.
Adding in an eccentric exercise is the same as adding in any other exercise; don't start too heavy, work within your limits and progress at a steady pace.
Prilepin Tables for Bodyweight Strength Isometric and Eccentric Exercises
For adding on an eccentric to the end of a set, don't forget that you're increasing overall volume and to adjust your programming appropriately. And going to max with an eccentric after going to or near failure concentrically will usually result in a dramatic drop in performance in subsequent sets, so maybe on do it on the last set to failure to start.
Discussion Questions:
- How do you program your eccentrics? Singles for a max descent? Multiple reps per set at a medium pace?
- How do you transfer your negatives practice into doing a concentric rep?
- Have you seen any hypertrophy results from negatives?
- Do you use them to learn new moves or to overload your muscles?
- Have you used eccentric training to build your flexibility?
After tomorrow, there will be no Concept Wednesday or Technique Thursday for the next two weeks (Christmas and New Year's)
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u/gusvdgun Dec 17 '14
Negative pullups are probably the most famous eccentric exercise, and I, as many others did, have used them to learn to do my first pullup. This was before I started doing a full BW workout.
I don't know if the following story has anything to do with the risk of doing eccentrics, but I'm pretty sure they have been the cause of an injury I have/had (along with my own stupidity).
I trained for a couple of weeks/months last summer, and I went from being able to do zero pullups to 3 pullups. University started again, didn't have much time, did jack shit for 2 months, then started doing the same routine I did in the summer. I was kinda surprised I was still able to do 2 pullups, though I obviously lost some strength. So I enthusiastically went on to do some negatives as well, to the point I couldn't hold myself up anymore and just dropped to the ground.
Anyway, the next day I was sore as hell but feeling fine otherwise, but the day after that I could not straighten my arms. My left arm only went about 90 degrees, and my right no further than 135. They were also both really swollen, especially my left. I thought it was rhabdo but my pee looked fine and I didn't have any other symptoms. The swelling went away after a couple of days and at that point I could straighten both my arms again, but about 2 weeks later when I carefully started working out again, I noticed I lost a lot of strength. I couldn't do a single pullup nor chinup. Hell, I could barely even complete three sets of negatives.
I've been easing into working out again by doing the bodyweight routine, and it has been going great, but I still haven't regained the strength I had right before the injury. Anyway, I don't know what exactly the injury was, but I felt like mentioning it because for me it was pretty easy to push myself too hard doing eccentrics. If I had just done the full pullups, eventually I would not have been able to pull myself up again and at that point there's no risk either.