A new study reports that slowly lowering weights builds and strengthens muscles almost as well as lifting and lowering them, as you would do with a typical rep.
That means, for example, that you could use two hands to lift a dumbbell, then one hand to slowly lower it, while sacrificing little in the way of results. Focusing on the lowering – or the “eccentric” contraction – can lead to a more efficient gym session, Japanese researchers say.
In the study, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology , researchers found out that, people who did lifting-plus-lowering saw the biggest gains because they were pretty much doing twice the number of reps. The lowering-only group made similar improvements in strength and muscle with only half the work.
Study author Masatoshi Nakamura, PhD, a professor at Nishikyushu University in Japan, believes that eccentric muscle contractions produce greater neurological adaptations in the spine and brain than concentric contractions. In other words, your nerves learn to send more of the “pull harder” signal to your muscles
This, they also associated with the spring action of a large protein called “titin” in the muscle fibers. It produces greater force during eccentric contractions( when lowering objects ) while using less energy. “ More titin could account for the increase in muscle size, which is called hypertrophy”.
Also a 2019 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that a partial range-of-motion triceps exercise produced greater muscle growth than full range-of-motion movements.
Source: WebMD
