Question: Hey Drew, I started testing this negative emphasized type of training. I found myself using too heavy weights, which ended up being 1-3 positive reps + negative-only reps (I didn’t want to leave the sets too short). I noticed that the negative-only reps were really exhausting and now – after the workout – I have a feeling that I really pushed myself ’til the end. This got me thinking:

Is negative only “better” than negative emphasized?

It seems that a training partner would be really good thing with this negative-only training. I had to use my imagination to get the weight into starting position (of the negative) safely, or at least safely as I could. What do you think about negative-only approach and can you point out anything specific about it – to keep in mind?

Answer: Negative-only training may be more effective than negative-emphasized training for muscular strength and size gains due to the ability to create more tension and microtrauma for the same amount of time, but the ability to handle much heavier weights also means more stress on your joints and greater risk of injury if you’re not careful with the hand-off and gradually slowing the weight to a stop as you approach the bottom of your range of motion.

Unlike negative-emphasized repetitions, which can be done with any exercise and equipment that can be used for normal dynamic repetitions, negative-only training requires you to have either two or more strong spotters to lift the weight for you, equipment that lifts the weight for you like Dr. Michael MacMillan’s MaxOut, or motorized machines like those designed by Randy Rindfleisch If you don’t have someone or something to lift the weight for you it is possible to perform negative-only reps with many upper body exercises if you have equipment which allows you to perform the positive with your lower body. A stool, step ladder, or bench can be used to perform negative-only chin-ups and parallel bar dips, and a squat or power rack with adjustable safety bars can be used to perform negative-only with a few barbell exercises.

Hyper deadlifts on an early motorized machine prototype

The biggest risks of injury from negative-only training come from missed or sloppy hand-offs, not bringing the weight to a stop gradually, and not being conservative with your range of motion in exercises where the start point or bottom of your range of motion puts the target muscles in a stretch at the position of maximum moment arm, like dumbbell pullovers and dumbbell chest flys.

Because you can use twenty to forty percent more weight for negative-only repetitions than for normal repetitions you’ll need two people to assist you in lifting the weight. One very strong person might be able to do it, but it is much easier with two, especially if you are using a barbell or a machine with independent movement arms where balance is a concern. It is necessary for both assistants to hand off the weight to you gradually and at the same time, when you signal you are in position and ready to receive the weight. The weight should be held motionless during this transfer, and you should not start lowering it until after the hand off is complete. This way, if during the transfer you find you are unable to hold the weight motionless, in which case you will probably not be able to lower it under strict control, you can signal them to take the weight from you or assist you while lowering it.

If using a selectorized machine the assistants should always help you by lifting the movement arm, and never attempt to directly lift the weight stack to avoid losing fingers. Plate-loaded machines work much better for this, since the assistants can use the weight horns as handles.

The same rules apply when transferring the weight from your legs to your arms during exercises like negative-only chin-ups and dips. You should hold your body motionless while performing the transfer, and if you are unable to do so stop the exercise. Also, keep your legs in a position where you can use them to catch yourself and assist if you are unable to lower yourself slowly enough.

Mike Mentzer frequently used advanced HIT techniques like negative-only, forced-negatives, and forced reps

It is important to perform negative-only repetitions very slowly so that you are able to gradually bring the weight to a stop as you approach the bottom. The faster it is moving, or the longer you wait to start slowing the weight down, the greater the acceleration required to bring it to a stop and the greater the force your body will be exposed to. I recommend taking at least ten seconds to lower the weight, even on exercises with a very short range of motion. This makes it easier for you to bring the weight to a stop under strict control rather than dropping and slamming into the starting position, and easier for your assistants to spot you if necessary.

The positive, however, should be performed as quickly as can be done safely, to minimize the rest between repetitions. Negative-only reps can also be done in combination with rest-pause, and I plan to write more about that in the following weeks.

On exercises like dumbbell pullovers where the weight can not be set down and the target muscles are in a stretch at the start point you need to be very cautious not to exceed your safe range of motion. I recommend avoiding these altogether, or using different equipment which prevents you from exceeding your safe range of motion. For example, the weight stack of a pullover machine can be pinned up to reduce the degree of shoulder flexion at the start point, and you can perform dumbbell pullovers from the floor or with a barbell in a squat or power rack with the safety spotter bars set to the bottom of your range of motion.

The safety spotter bars of a squat rack or power rack can be used to hold the weight at the start point or bottom of exercises performed in a standing position like arm curls and shoulder presses so you can squat down and position your arms at the end point or top, then stand back up holding it in this position to perform the negative. This is one of the few exceptions to the rule of not curling in a rack.

It’s only OK to curl in a rack if you’re doing negative-only

If you don’t have two people to assist you, or access to equipment equipped with MaxOut weight stacks or motorized machines like the ones made by Randy, the following are the best exercises that can be done practically negative-only when training alone:

Chin-ups and Pull-ups using a stool, step ladder or bench

Parallel Bar Dips using a stool, step ladder, or bench

Barbell Presses inside a rack

Barbell Curls inside a rack

Barbell Standing Triceps Presses inside a rack

Barbell Shrugs inside a rack

Barbell Rows inside a rack

Unfortunately, without strong assistants or specialized equipment there is no practical way to perform exercises for the lower body negative-only. The closest thing would be negative-accentuated repetitions; lifting the weight smoothly but quickly with both legs and alternating between slowly lowering with only the right or left leg. This can only be done safely with exercises that do not require you to balance entirely on one leg, and involve complimentary movement (movement in the same direction), like leg presses, leg extensions, leg curls, heel raises on a leg press, and barbell hip raises. Standing heel-raises with a dipping belt or holding a dumbbell and bodyweight squats are an exception, since your hands are free to hold something for balance and to assist when you are too fatigued to lower yourself slowly enough.

When performing negative-accentuated repetitions you should use only sixty to seventy percent of the weight you would use for normal repetitions, since this would be about twenty to forty percent heavier for the individual limbs during the negatives. I recommend erring on the lower side since it can be more difficult to maintain correct body position when performing negative-accentuated on some exercises. Perform double the repetitions you normally would, since each limb only performs half of the negatives and the positives are relatively easy with the lower weight.

The following is an example of a full-body workout that could be performed with negative-only (NO) and negative-accentuated (NA) repetitions without the need for assistants or specialized equipment:

1. NA Leg Curl or NA Leg Extension or  NA Barbel Hip Raise
2. NA Leg Press or NA Bodyweight Squat
3. NA Heel Raise
4. NO Chin-up or NO Barbell Row
5. NO Dip or NO Standing Barbell Press
6. NO Standing Barbell Triceps Extension
7. NO Standing Barbell Curl

Any additional trunk and neck work should be performed with normal, or negative-emphasized repetitions.

Because negative-only and negative-accentuated training are extremely demanding, you have to be even more careful than with other high intensity training methods not to overdo it. This is why several exercises are listed as alternatives rather than including them all in the workout. When performing negative-only and/or negative-accentuated workouts either only use it for a few exercises for muscle groups you want to prioritize, or reduce your overall volume and frequency, or only do it a few weeks at a time or once every third or fourth workout. Individuals will vary in how much of a reduction in volume and frequency they require or how long or frequently they can perform these kinds of workouts without overtraining, so be sure to keep accurate records of your workouts and adjust as necessary.

Question: Can I gain strength and size faster by performing loaded stretches between exercises?

Answer: Research on the effect of static stretching (without weight) between sets on muscular strength and hypertrophy shows mixed results. A study by Wayne Westcott that compared the results of seventy two novice trainees doing high intensity training with and without a twenty second static stretch for the muscles worked found the group that stretched had twenty percent greater strength increases over a ten week period (1). Other studies show either no difference in strength between groups training with or without inter-set stretching (2) or that inter-set stretching reduces strength gains (3). This suggests there might be some benefit to inter-set stretching, but adding loaded stretching to your workouts isn’t going to cause you to suddenly start packing on “pounds of lean muscle” while “stripping off body fat at the same time” as some people are claiming.

There are plenty of impressive studies on the effect of loaded stretch on hypertrophy in animals, but I have yet to see this duplicated in humans. A lot of the recent marketing hype for inter-set stretching under load or “cell expansion protocol” is based on a study they claim shows it causes 200% faster muscular strength and size increases, but I have been unable to find this study anywhere anywhere, and when I asked the bodybuilder selling the program where the study was published his only reply was “University of Tampa”. I asked for a specific reference, but have yet to receive a response.

Where is the research on loaded stretch, AKA “cell expansion protocol”?

The only mention of the study I could find was in an obscure bodybuilding web site interview of Jacob Wilson, PhD who said the study involved a thirty-second loaded stretch immediately following  each set of a triple drop set of heel raises on a leg press, but gave no title, no reference, and no specifics on the results. The study is not listed on Dr. Wilsons CV, either. If I am able to find and read the study I will update this article with whatever information I find. It’s possible the study is still under review, but I’m not going to hold my breath. If a study actually showed a training technique could produce such a huge increase in muscular strength and size you would expect the authors and the people selling a program based on it to provide more details on it.

If you want to experiment with regular static or loaded stretching between exercises be very cautious with the degree of stretch. Only go until you feel a moderate stretch in the target muscles. You shouldn’t feel the stretch in your joints or feel any kind of pain. If you do, you’re going too far. Be very careful with your shoulders performing loaded stretching on exercises like pullovers and chest flys, and on any exercise where the stretch is done in the position of maximum moment arm, where the lever against the muscles is the largest.

Loaded stretching  is not going to “double your muscle gains” or cause “rapid fat loss”, as some internet marketers claim, but Westcott’s research suggests some form of inter-set stretching might be worth adding to your workouts. If you want to experiment with it do so cautiously, keep accurate records of your workouts and take measurements before you start and every couple of weeks after so you can determine the effect.

Update: Since posting this article only a few days ago I’ve received several e-mails from people who injured themselves in the past doing various types of loaded stretching, usually on exercises where the stretch was done in the position of maximum moment arm like pullovers and chest flys, but also with triceps extensions and heel raises on a leg press. Regular static stretching would be a safer option, but if you decide to experiment with loaded stretching please be careful.

Update 2: In a recent conversation Anthony Roberts informed me, “Jacob’s nickname among his colleagues and in the wider scientific/professional world is “King Midas” because everything he touches turns to gold (ie everything is proven to work when he is paid to study it, or his friends have a new product or idea). He did the work on HMB-FA that nobody believes”.

It’s pretty pathetic when a “scientist” like Wilson is falsifying research for profit. This is why it pays to be skeptical.

You can read Anthony’s expose’ on Wilson and the HMB study here.

References:

1. Best Of Both Worlds: Stretching and Strengthening, by Wayne Westcott, PhD

2. Souza, Antônio Claudio, Claudio Melibeu Bentes, Belmiro Freitas de Salles, et al. Influence of Inter-Set Stretching on Strength, Flexibility and Hormonal Adaptations. Journal of Human Kinetics, 36.1 (2013): 127-135. Retrieved 14 Jun. 2014, from doi:10.2478/hukin-2013-0013

3. Borges Bastos CL, Miranda H, Vale RG, Portal Mde N, Gomes MT, Novaes Jda S, Winchester JB. Chronic effect of static stretching on strength performance and basal serum IGF-1 levels. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Sep;27(9):2465-72. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31828054b7.

Contrary to the claims of many bodybuilders, trainers, and coaches, you can not selectively train for sarcoplasmic versus myofibrillar hypertrophy by working in different repetition ranges. While training with lower or higher repetition ranges can result in differences in improvements in strength relative to local muscular endurance, you can’t separate strength from hypertrophy. After the first couple months of training when neural adaptations contribute more to strength increases than hypertrophy, if you get stronger your muscles will be bigger, and if your muscles get bigger you will be stronger.The relationship between muscular strength and size varies between individuals due to numerous genetic factors, however, so regardless of how you train some people will gain a lot of strength without much size, some will gain a lot of size without getting very strong, and most of us will be somewhere in between:

…chronic resistance exercise training induces skeletal muscle hypertrophy as well as increases in strength. However, not every individual can expect the same magnitude of muscle responses to a standard program because of genetic and environmental factors yet to be thoroughly characterized.

One study with five hundred and eighty five men and women performing the same program of unilateral arm flexor training for twelve weeks showed a huge difference in muscular size and strength gains. The worst responders lost about two percent muscle size while the best responders gained an impressive fifty nine percent. Strength gains varied from zero to as much as two hundred and fifty percent (2):

Men and women exhibit wide ranges of response to resistance training, with some subjects showing little to no gain, and others showing profound changes, increasing size by over 10 cm and doubling their strength. Men had only a slight advantage in relative size gains compared with women, whereas women outpaced men considerably in relative gains in strength.

I suspect the belief you can selectively train for either sarcoplasmic or myofibrillar hypertrophy is based on observation of the difference in training between bodybuilders and strength athletes like powerlifters, and failure to consider selection bias as a significant factor in the differences in the relative muscular strength and size between the two. Any program done hard, progressively, and consistently with a volume and frequency appropriate for the individual will eventually get them as big and strong as their genetics will allow, but the ratio of strength to size gains will vary considerably between individuals. People who can get very strong without much hypertrophy will tend to gravitate towards strength sports where a high ratio of strength to body weight is advantageous. People who are able to gain a lot of muscular size relative to strength will tend to gravitate towards bodybuilding where muscularity is the goal but strength has no bearing on competition.

Someone who fails to consider this selection bias might assume the bodybuilders had a higher ratio of hypertrophy to strength due to their training and the powerlifters have a higher ratio of strength to hypertrophy due to their training, when the differences are mostly genetic.

Casey Viator had great genetics for both strength and hypertrophy

If you remove this selection bias and randomly assign people to either a “bodybuilding” or “strength” program with equal volume as Brad Schoenfeld did in a recent study (4), you’ll find no significant difference in the average hypertrophy between the two. The strength group in this study increased their one-repetition-maximum more than the hypertrophy group, but this is most likely due to specific neural adaptations to the lower rep ranges used and if a ten-repetition-maximum test was done instead the hypertrophy group probably would have improved their performance more than the strength group.

If your goal is to improve your performance in a specific range of repetitions you should train in that range, but if your goal is general improvements in strength and hypertrophy the optimal repetition range is whatever you respond best to based on your genetics, and not some arbitrary range of repetitions claimed to be specific for hypertrophy.

Stuart Phillips, PhD from the kinesiology department at McMaster University recently had this to say about the subject:

Sarcoplasmic vs. Myofibrillar hypertrophy… perhaps you’ve heard those terms and even read information from some guru who says there are different types of ‘hypertrophy’. This is unadulterated garbage and basically anyone who has ever taken a course in muscle physiology, exercise physiology, and knows a little biochemistry would tell you so. The amount of myofibrillar protein in skeletal muscle fibre remains remarkably constant! There are no examples of where a muscle fibre hypertrophies with resistance training and the myofibrillar pool doesn’t grow but the sarcoplasm does! The occasional example of a discordance between hypertrophy and strength gain (for example http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22518835 (5)) is not, no matter what the pundits think, due to a ‘sarcoplasmic’ hypertrophy in the low-load condition. The obvious explanation is a neuromuscular training-zone specific strength response in the low vs. the high load groups – muscle/exercise physiology 101.

Similarly, I’ve heard some say that blood flow restriction (BFR) training leads only to ‘sarcoplasmic’ hypertrophy… it’s a myth! Hypertrophy, when it happens is due to expansion of the myofibrillar protein pool. For people who think that your fibres can grow (not transiently due to fibre swelling – a short-lived phenomenon) by expanding their sarcoplasm are incorrect. If this happened the energetics of the fibre would be a complete mess due to greatly, on a relative scale, increases in intracellular distances for chemical reactions… like propagation of the electrical impulse from a t-tubule to the SR to cause contraction!So the next time you hear someone spouting off about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy you can tell them, with confidence, that no such thing exists! It’s a construct of bodybuilding forums… hypertrophy is hypertrophy and strength is strength. There’s no difference between the hypertrophy you get with one routine versus the next!

Ken Leistner demonstrates his unusually high ratio of muscular strength to size, squatting 415 pounds for 23 reps at a body weight around 165 pounds

I also recently discussed this with Ryan Hall and he also shared the following:

I reviewed a few studies concerning sarcoplasmic vs. myofibrilar hypertrophy several years ago:

This is in line with other research I’ve seen suggesting that all structural components of muscle fibers hypertrophy simultaneously with training.

“This implies that with exercise-induced hypertrophy, the sarcoplasmic reticulum, cytoplasm, and lipid components increase proportionately with contractile protein…”

Functional and structural adaptations in skeletal muscle of trained athletes. S. E. Alway, J. D. MacDougall, D. G. Sale, J. R. Sutton, A. J. McComas. Journal of Applied PhysiologyMar 1988,64(3)1114-1120;

Other studies show similar results.

“This hypertrophy of muscle fibers by 30% with training resulted in no change in the cytoplasm-to-myonucleus ratio.”

Effects of high-intensity resistance training on untrained older men. II. Muscle fiber characteristics and nucleo-cytoplasmic relationships. Hikida, RS, Staron, RS, Hagerman, FC, Walsh, S, Kaiser, E, Shell, S and Hervey, S. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 55:7, B347-54 (2000)

Given the above data, it seems unlikely that selective hypertrophy occurs, at least in the confines of most strength training protocols.

In a nutshell, you don’t need to train with different repetition ranges for general strength increases or hypertrophy. A variety of repetition ranges can be effective for both. However, depending on your genetics you may respond better to either a lower or higher repetition range. I cover this in detail in the chapter How To Find Your Optimal Repetition Range in the updated and expanded High Intensity Workouts.

References:

1. Association of interleukin-15 protein and interleukin-15 receptor genetic variation with resistance exercise training responses. Steven E. Riechman, G. Balasekaran, Stephen M. Roth, Robert E. Ferrell. Journal of Applied PhysiologyDec 2004,97(6)2214-2219;DOI:10.1152/japplphysiol.00491.2004

2. Hubal MJ, Gordish-Dressman H, Thompson PD, Price TB, Hoffman EP, Angelopoulos TJ, Gordon PM, Moyna NM, Pescatello LS, Visich PS, Zoeller RF, Seip RL, Clarkson PM. Variability in muscle size and strength gain after unilateral resistance training. Med Sci Sports Exerc 37: 964–972, 2005.

3. Timmons JA. Variability in training-induced skeletal muscle adaptation. J Appl Physiol (1985)2011;12:846–853. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00934.2010.

4. Effects of different volume-equated resistance training loading strategies on muscular adaptations in well-trained men. Schoenfeld BJ, Ratamess NA, Peterson MD, Contreras B, Tiryaki-Sonmez G, Alvar BA. J Strength Cond Res. 2014 Apr 7. [Epub ahead of print]

5. Resistance exercise load does not determine training-mediated hypertrophic gains in young men. Cameron J. Mitchell, Tyler A. Churchward-Venne, Daniel W. D. West, Nicholas A. Burd, Leigh Breen, Steven K. Baker, Stuart M. Phillips. Journal of Applied PhysiologyJul 2012,113(1)71-77;DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00307.2012

This Q&A is a general response to several specific questions I’ve received through e-mail and comments on other posts regarding high intensity training for seniors.

Question:

Is high intensity strength training safe for seniors?

Answer:

Whether high intensity training is safe for any particular individual depends on their current health and physical condition. Certain conditions may increase the risk of injury. That being said, when properly performed using appropriate exercises high intensity strength training is safer and more beneficial for seniors than any other activity.

When an exercise is performed correctly using a slow, controlled speed of movement over an appropriate range of motion the level of force the body is exposed to is kept well within safe limits for even very frail subjects such as those with severe osteoporosis.

When breathing is done correctly, Val Salva’s maneuver and excessive gripping are avoided, and the head is kept above the remainder of the body during exercise blood pressure is maintained at a safe level.

In addition to being safer for your joints, high intensity strength training is also safer for the cardiovascular system than steady-state activities like jogging, cycling or using a stair climber or elliptical machine. The high intensity contractions that occur during resistance training enhance venous return which improves coronary artery blood flow (blood flow to the heart itself). Doug McGuff, MD explains this in detail in The Body by Science Question and Answer Book, and discusses an interesting study from the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation that showed circuit strength training was safer than treadmill walking; “30 of the 42 subjects had one or more cardiovascular complication (arrhythmia, angina, ischemia, hypertension, hypotension) during the aerobic exercises as compared to only 1 subject with complications during resistive exercises.” (Daub WD, et al. Strength training early after myocardial infarction. J Cardiopulm Rehabil. Mar-Apr;18(2):145-52.)

Over the past two decades I have trained dozens of seniors including several in their seventies and eighties with a variety of medical conditions including several with severe spine conditions (and one middle-aged man with a grade-three spondylolisthesis) and not one has been injured doing high intensity training.

Ellington Darden (left) and Jim Flanagan (right) are both in their sixties and still stay in great physical condition with high intensity training.

Question:

How should high intensity training be performed by seniors?

Answer:

The same general principles that apply to athletes and bodybuilders apply to seniors, the only difference is that although everybody should always train as safely as possible seniors need to be especially cautious about which exercises they perform and how they perform them.  The following are a few general guidelines:

1. Start out with just a few basic, multi-joint exercises working the major muscle groups. Perform only one work set of each exercise per workout. Some find their joints tolerate certain exercises better after a light warm up set, although for most this is unnecessary if proper form is used.
2. Perform the exercises with only a light weight at first and focus on learning to move and reverse direction smoothly and breathe continuously.
3. Move very slowly; take at least four seconds to lift and four seconds to lower the weight, reversing direction as smoothly as possible without bouncing, yanking, or jerking the weight. Pause for a second or two in the fully-contracted position on compound pulling exercises and simple exercises. If you’re moving slowly enough six to ten repetitions should take you around fifty to eighty seconds to complete.
4. When you are able to perform ten or more repetitions of an exercise in good form, the next time you perform the exercise add five pounds or five percent more weight, whichever is less. It is common to recommend higher repetition ranges for seniors both because of the perceived increase in safety and because of the conversion of type II to type I muscle fibers with age, however a range of six to ten is fine when performed at a slow speed.
5. As the exercises become more challenging you’ll start to experience elevated heart rate and breathing. At first, allow a minute or two between exercises for heart rate and breathing to return to normal before performing the next exercise. Over time as your conditioning improves gradually reduce the rest between exercises to improve the cardiovascular and metabolic effect.
6. Train no more than three times a week on non-consecutive days. If your progress slows down add another rest day between workouts. Most people only require one or two weekly workouts for best results but some may do even better training as infrequently as once every 10 days or less. The amount of recovery time required between workouts increases with age and can vary considerably between individuals.
7. It is normal for your muscles to burn, and for your breathing and heart rate to increase but if something hurts or if you begin to feel dizzy, nauseous, or faint or think you maybe starting to get a headache stop the exercise  immediately and carefully exit the machine or set down the weight.

Keep in mind these are only general guidelines. The specifics can vary significantly between individuals depending on age, genetic and environmental factors, current health, etc. The specific exercises and style of performance that is best for you may be different than what is appropriate for someone else. For more detailed guidelines read High Intensity Workouts.

Question:

My doctor told me not to lift a weight that is heavier than X, can I still do high intensity training?

Answer:

This depends on why your doctor made that recommendation. There may be a very good reason for it, or they might just be covering their ass.

Often, the advice to not lift more than some amount of weight is based on the assumption excessive weight is what causes injury during exercise. The real concern is not how much weight but how you attempt to move it. You can be injured lifting a very light weight if you do it in a careless or fast and jerky manner, however even a very heavy weight will not injure you if you attempt to lift it correctly and pay careful attention to form. If you follow the above advice to start with a light weight and only increase it when you are able to perform 10 or more repetitions in strict form you shouldn’t have any problems.

I trained an 85 year old man who started out only able to use a very light weight during pressing exercises due to shoulder problems. Within a year he was using nearly quadruple his starting weight on the chest and shoulder press and, more importantly to him, significantly increased the distance he could drive a golf ball.

Question:

I have a medical condition, can I still do high intensity training? Can high intensity training help?  What are the risks?

Answer:

I get a lot of questions from people with specific injuries and medical conditions asking if it is OK for them to do high intensity training. I am not a medical doctor and can not give you any kind of official clearance. Unless you are a one-on-one personal training or phone client who has signed a waiver I’m not going to give any specific advice related to training with any kind of medical condition either.

While I have no doubts about my ability to teach someone how to train safely, I have no control over how advice given out over the internet or by phone is implemented. If you aren’t sure about your health visit your doctor. Regular check ups will make you aware of any problems which might affect your ability to train safely. If you ask a doctor about exercise expect them to give very conservative recommendations, probably something “safe” like walking they figure you can’t hurt yourself doing and sue them over.

Question:

Can you recommend a trainer where I live?

Answer:

If I know and trust in the knowledge and competence of a trainer near where you live I will refer you to them. I do not, however, recommend just hiring any personal trainer because most of them have no idea what they’re doing and a lot of what I’ve seen personal trainers teaching seniors is an ineffective waste of time at best and dangerous at worst. Certifications are meaningless – most of what the major certifying organizations teach their trainers about exercise performance is utter nonsense.

I have directly observed personal trainers in several gyms and training studios who market themselves as specialists in “senior fitness” and even licensed physical therapists working with seniors who had no idea what proper exercise form was or how to teach it, had their clients and patients doing numerous ineffective and inappropriate things, and generally wasting their time and money. You would have a much better chance of getting it right on your own with just the general guidelines above than by hiring these “senior fitness specialists”.

Someone recently asked me whether it is possible for a person to become as strong and muscular as their genetics will allow without training with weights. A few years ago I’d have said “maybe” but considered it unlikely, but after my own experiences with Project: Kratos and the feedback from people following the program I have no doubt it is possible.

To be able to get as strong and muscular as possible you have to be able to do a few things. You have to be able to effectively work all the major muscle groups, and you have to be able to progressively increase the resistance those muscles work against as you get stronger to stimulate continued improvement. While much simpler with free weights and machines, these can both be effectively accomplished training with just your body weight.

If you doubt bodyweight exercises can provide enough resistance a simple experiment should convince you otherwise; try performing a set of strict one-armed chin-ups or push-ups or one-legged squats. In an article in Iron Man magazine in the mid 1990’s Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones wrote,

Apart from a rather limited number of hardcore bodybuilders who are misguided enough to believe that they have a chance to compete against the outright genetic freaks that now dominate bodybuilding competition, just about anybody else in this country can produce nearly all of the potential benefits of proper exercise without spending much if anything in excess of about twenty dollars. You can build both a chinning bar and a pair of parallel dip bars for a total cost of only a few dollars, and those two exercises, chins and dips, if properly performed, will stimulate muscular growth in your upper body and arms that will eventually lead to muscular size and strength that is very close to your potential.

Adding full squats, eventually leading up to one-legged full squats, and one-legged calf raises, will do much the same thing for your legs and hips. Using this very simple routine, when you get strong enough to perform about ten repetitions of one-armed chins with each arm, your arms will leave very little to be desired.

While Arthur is right, I recommend a little more variety than chin-ups, dips, squats, and heel raises, and based on the feedback the more varied workouts in the Project: Kratos program are every bit as intense as what you can do with weights and work just as well:

From a reader posting on Facebook,

I’ve never experienced getting my butt kicked so bad than with the Kratos protocol. I feel THOROUGHLY exercised after each workout, more than I ever did with free weights or machines. Perhaps when I did sets of sprints back in the day could I compare the level of exhaustion I am able to attain using the Kratos level of progressions for increasing resistance (unique to Drew Baye’s approach), but of course, with sprints, you don’ really get an efficient muscular development opportunity. The proposed Kratos level of progressions (how to make an easy bodyweight exercise DIFFICULT, and how to make a DIFFICULT bodyweight exercise easier) and the rep cadences have enabled me to “adjust resistance” to meet the HIT goal … in no way do I feel I am not working my body to genuine muscular failure. Plus, I like making my own equipment for working out … the Kratos book had some new ideas that I jumped right into.

From a couple in Germany,

The results we achieved until now are unbelievable. I lost 20 kg of weight and I’m now stronger than ever in my life (and I did intense sport for decades). My wife is now – aged 55 – for the first time in her life able to perform pull-ups, real push-ups and so on. She achieved these results in less than three months. After finishing today’s training a few minutes ago, I just want to let you know. The change in nutrition and training according to your program where the most important contributions to our health and strength for decades.

From a reader commenting on another web site,

I bought this book back in November and it’s basically changed how I train from the bottom up. I’ve put on 15-lbs total with 10-lbs of lean mass in about four months (from 170 to 185) and I didn’t even change my diet like I was supposed to. I also, among other things, went from being able to do six 4-count pull-ups to eight 4-count pull-ups with 20-lbs hanging from a dipping belt (keep in mind I also gained 15 lbs). I’ve tried sharing my results on other forums and people tell me it’s impossible to put on 10-lbs of muscle in less than four months, but I did it, so I don’t know what to say.

If someone believes it is impossible to gain ten pounds of muscle in less than four months it is because they simply don’t know how to train and eat for muscle gain. I would be surprised if a new trainee didn’t gain at least ten pounds of muscle in their first four months on a proper high intensity training program, and I’ve had clients gain that much in half that time training with both weights and bodyweight only. It isn’t even unusual for beginners to gain that much muscle over three or four months while also losing fat, something Ellington Darden has demonstrated repeatedly over the past few decades with his group fat loss programs.

While, in the long run, proper training with bodyweight will probably get you about as big and strong as your genetics will allow, like any method of training there are both advantages and disadvantages to consider. The biggest disadvantage to bodyweight training is that resistance progression is not as straight forward as it is with weights and machines. To increase the resistance for a barbell or machine exercise you simply add more weight plates to the bar or pin more weight on the weight stack. To change the resistance for bodyweight exercises without resorting to weighted belts or vests you have to change the leverage and timing of the movements, or advance from bilateral to unilateral versions of exercises. While the resistance progression system I’ve developed for Project: Kratos simplifies this and makes it easier to track, it’s still not as simple as adding weight to a bar or moving a pin on a weight stack.

The biggest advantage, as Jones wrote, is you need very little in the way of equipment, and what you do need can be purchased or built very inexpensively. You might be surprised at what you can achieve with just a bar for chin-ups and pull-ups, a parallel bar stand for dipping, and a suspension trainer, all of which can be made in an afternoon with materials you can buy at your local home improvement store. Even a heavy-duty commercial bodyweight exercise station like the UXS is a lot less expensive than a gym membership in the long run.

In addition to cost and space efficiency, bodyweight training can also be more time efficient than training with free weights or machines, since you don’t have to take time before your workout or between exercises to load and unload weight plates or adjust machine settings. While this really isn’t that big of a deal if you’ve got multiple barbells and dumbbells or quickly adjustable dumbbells like the Bowflex SelectTech, and machines don’t take that long to adjust, if you’re training with just one barbell it can allow you to move much more quickly from one exercise to the next.

The biggest advantage of bodyweight exercise, however, is the ability to perform most exercises anywhere you’ve got a little open space. It doesn’t matter if you travel frequently, don’t live near a gym or have room in your house or apartment for a lot of equipment, are deployed somewhere without any exercise equipment, or incarcerated (hopefully not), if you know how to use your bodyweight you can train effectively anywhere.

After reading Ellington Darden’s new book The Body Fat Breakthrough and thinking back on discussions I’ve had with Wayne Westcott, Ryan Hall, Jim Flanagan and others and the results of a recent paper by James Steele, James Fisher, Jurgen Giessing and Franke Rothe I’ve decided to give negative emphasized training a go again. I wrote about my experiments with negative emphasized training three years ago, and recommend reading it for the general performance guidelines, although some of those differ slightly from how I’m doing them now.

Unlike the three to four second cadence I discuss in my recent article on repetition speed recommendations, which I consider to be a good compromise between tension, microtrauma, metabolic stress, safety, ability to maintain focus,  and other important factors, because of the longer time spent performing the stronger, more metabolically-efficient negative phase negative emphasized repetitions favor tension and microtrauma over metabolic stress.

In addition to Westcott’s study (discussed in his book Building Strength & Stamina) and the impressive results Ell Darden has been getting with people following his negative accentuated protocol and the results I had using it a few years ago, the study James Steele told me about which is currently under review for publication got me thinking about negative emphasized repetitions again. Within a reasonable range, relative effort is much more important than load for improving muscular strength and size increases. This is part of the reason a variety of repetition methods, cadences, and ranges can be effective when performed with a high intensity of effort. Load is still an important factor, though, and the implications of the study are you should try to maximize both if your primary goal is bigger, stronger muscles (keeping to what you can handle safely to avoid not wrecking yourself in the long run).

In the study they compared three groups. One group trained to momentary muscular failure (MMF), another stopped short of momentary muscular failure (NTF), and another performed rest-pause repetitions and stopped short of momentary muscular failure (RP-NTF). The MMF group had the most improvement in strength and body composition despite not using as heavy a weight as the RP-NTF group, demonstrating the primacy of intensity, but the RP-NTF group improved more than the NTF group, demonstrating the effectiveness of using a heavier weight, and that less efficient inroading (from the rest between reps) does not negatively effect muscular strength and size gains. I suspect that a fourth group doing rest-pause repetitions to momentary muscular failure would have done better than the regular MMF group.

I have also experimented with rest-pause in the past with good results, but I think emphasizing the negative may be more effective for improving muscular strength and size than resting between reps.

I planned to follow the same protocol I had used previously, with a three second positive and ten second negative, but for the sake of keeping the rep counts consistent for comparison with  I will instead be using a two second positive and eight second negative. Two seconds should be just slow enough to allow for reasonably good turnaround performance, and eight seconds is a slow enough negative and keeps the repetition duration around an even ten seconds, keeping the time under load around the same for the same repetition range (five to eight repetitions, for a TUL of fifty to eighty seconds).

In short, I’ll be using a 2/8 protocol and a repetition range of five to eight. I will continue my current routine, training twice weekly alternating the following brief, full-body workouts:

A

1. Squat
2. Bench Press
3. Row
4. Lateral Raise
5. Pullover
6. Stiff-leg Deadlift
7. Neck Extension
8. Neck Flexion

B

1. Deadlift
2. Dip
3. Chin-up
4. Standing Press
5. Arm Curl
6. Heel Raise
7. Wrist Extension
8. Wrist Curl

Other than reducing my daily kcal intake to around 1800 I won’t be making much of a change to my diet. The reduction will be from both carbohydrate and fat, which eat roughly equal amounts of, to maintain a protein intake of around a gram per pound of lean body mass daily. Of course, the clomiphene citrate and anastrazole will factor into my results, but I won’t know how much until I have follow up blood work done to determine the effect on testosterone levels.

In addition to reporting on my own results I will be using negative emphasized repetitions with clients whose primary goal is improved body composition. If you want to try this and have questions please post them below, and if you do please come back and share your experiences with them after a few weeks. I’ll be interested to see what kind of results everybody gets.

A note on the terminology: Ell Darden calls it “negative accentuated”, but I prefer to use “negative emphasized” to avoid confusion with the Nautilus negative accentuated protocol which involved lifting a weight with both limbs and lowering it with one, alternating sides each repetition.

Update 6/14/14:

I did not feel I was able to perform the turnarounds as strictly as I would like using the two second lifting cadence, so I increased the positive duration to three seconds. I initially reduced the negative slightly to keep the rep duration consistent, but have since gone back to the 3/10 protocol I experimented with originally.

When I sent the e-mail out to subscribers and posted Why I Am No Longer A “Natural” Trainee I did not anticipate the response, which was overwhelming. Although I read every e-mail, I received so many, so quickly I am unable to directly reply to all of them right away. I appreciate all of your support and encouragement and will try to reply to every single response individually over time, but I wanted to address a lot of the common questions here for efficiency and so other readers could benefit.

Clomiphene Citrate and Anastrazole

First, about the drugs. Clomiphene Citrate and Anastrazole are not steroids. They increase testosterone indirectly by blocking estrogen so the body produces more luteinizing hormone which tells the testes to produce more testosterone and reducing the amount of testosterone that is converted to estrogen. These were prescribed instead of a testosterone replacement because increasing my own body’s production will also help with fertility, while taking a replacement would reduce it.

After we conceive I will probably switch to an injectable testosterone (more consistent than creams and gels, less concern about contact with others, but it depends on what my doctor will prescribe) and when I do I will be glad to answer any questions anyone has about what I am doing. As I mentioned in the last e-mail, I do not intend to take dosages comparable to those used by competitive bodybuilders which will result in supraphysiological levels of testosterone, but rather just enough to stay in the high end of the normal range.

I plan to keep everything within normal physiological ranges so anything I accomplish with training and diet is a representative of what is possible to drug-free trainees. Having been lax with my diet for a while and procrastinating on getting back in what I would consider “good” condition I’m feeling a lot more motivated and plan to be in “beach condition” in the next six to eight weeks. A process I will be blogging about.

Supplements

A few people asked about supplements for raising testosterone While there are a large number of supplements which claim to increase testosterone, very few live up to the hype. If you are deficient in zinc or vitamin D supplementation with these will help, but if you are not deficient taking more will not. While there is some research supporting the use of DHEA and fenugreek, the results depend on the population. Most of the rest of the testosterone-boosting supplements are a waste of money.

Diet

I am not making any dietary changes except to reduce and keep better track of calorie intake. My diet consists of mostly meat, fish, eggs and vegetables and fruit, with some nuts for snacks, and lots of coffee and water.

Comments on High TUL SuperSlow

Many people asked about the comment I made about losing size when using high TUL SuperSlow. At the time I was using a rep range of four to eight which resulted in TULs averaging over two minutes and training once weekly. Those of you who have been following my writing for a while might remember in the early 2000’s when I started writing about my experiments with what I then considered “low” TULs, in the range of three to four reps, or sixty to eighty seconds and the beginning of the reversal of this.

While this might seem to contradict the results of research showing relative effort to be more important than absolute load for stimulating muscular strength and size increases (all else being equal, achieving failure in a shorter TUL requires a higher load) consider most of this research was performed using typical repetition cadences, and not comparing them with the extremely long sets typical of SuperSlow.

The primacy of relative effort only appears to apply up to a point, beyond which a reduction in load or increase in TUL will result in less effective stimulus.

Although the optimal rep range can vary between individuals, and even muscle groups, and with different goals, I have found a rep range of six to ten at a moderate cadence (4/4) to be safe and effective, and use this as a starting point with my clients. For movements where a squeeze technique can be applied I use a 4/2/4 cadence and reduce the rep range to five to eight to keep the same TUL.

SuperSlow is an effective way to train, and if you are more comfortable or feel safer with slower reps then keep doing them, but don’t let your TUL’s get too high. Three to five reps is enough at that speed. High Intensity Workouts 2nd Edition Update

Once again, I haven’t stuck to my outline and have continued to expand the book beyond it’s original scope. What started out as an update has turned into a major rewrite with a lot of additional content, and I have started adding performance guidelines and tips for all of the exercises in all of the routines. The bad news is it’s going to be about another week, the good news is there is going to be a whole lot more stuff than originally intended. There will be no increase in price despite the additional content. With my current schedule it should be about another week and the bonus video will be available shortly after. In the meanwhile I am going to keep the pre-order page up for those interested:

Pre-Order the updated, expanded second edition of High Intensity Workouts

New Squat Rack Design

I’ve also finally gotten around to designing a squat rack, which incorporates some features from the UXS. In addition to the standard stuff like adjustable bar hooks, safety spotter bars, and plate and bar storage, there will be multiple chin-up and pull-up handles, dipping and rowing bars, a rounded heel-raise step and a few other things I’m working on designing.

I’ve designed the safety spotter bars so they can be flipped and attached upside down so they’ll hold a bar loaded with forty five pound plates about half an inch above the floor, making it less of a pain in the ass to load and unload for deadlifts.

Those tubes extending from behind the chin-up and pull-up handles are two, two-and-one-half, and three inch diameter handles for static holds to work the grip. Whether some version of this makes it into the final design depends on whether I find a better use for the space and how interested people are in the feature.

There will also be a spotter/hip-belt squat stand, although I’m still debating whether to make this fixed or have it flip up and back out of the way when not in use.

The beginnings of the first draft of a squat rack

This is in the very early stages, and I have no idea when it will be complete. I won’t have any idea what the price point will be until I’m done with the design and know what it will cost to build. It is being designed with a low profile (around seven feet tall) to fit in residential spaces, and so short people don’t have to jump to reach the chin-up and pull-up bars.

If you have questions about anything I’ve written about here, please post them in the comments below.

Thanks again to everybody for your support and encouragement, and keep training hard,

Drew

Most of the questions I get from clients and readers have to do with program design. Which exercises are the best for certain muscle groups? Should you train the whole body every workout, or divide it up between workouts, and if so, how? What volume and frequency is best? Do you need to vary your workouts, and if so, how much, and how often? What order should you perform exercises in for best results? Should you change the order, and if so, how? What about using advanced repetition methods and techniques like pre-exhaustion, rest-pause, negative-only, forced reps, forced negatives, drop sets? What about isometric protocols like static holds and timed static contractions? And the list goes on and on and on.

After almost thirty years of working out and twenty years spent training hundreds of people, experimenting, and learning from some of the most brilliant people in the field of exercise I’ve learned the answer to almost every single one of these questions. Just two words:

“It depends.”

The principles are the same for everyone, but how you should apply them depends on your goals, yourbody’s response to exercise, and influencing factors in your life. I could write a book with a bunch of workouts, and if you followed those workouts you’d get good results, but you don’t read web sites like mine because you want “good” results. You want the best possible results. So I didn’t just write a book with a bunch of workouts, I wrote a book that teaches you the principles for constructing your own, and included a variety of workouts as examples of these principles, as starting points to be altered and adjusted based on your goals, your response to exercise, and to fit your life.

Click here to order the updated, expanded High Intensity Workouts

Have a question about high intensity training workout design you’d like to see answered in the book? Chances are, I’ve already addressed it, but if you post it in the comments below before tomorrow night and it isn’t already covered in the book I’ll make sure it is!

Feedback on the first edition of High Intensity Workouts:

“Great book, great workouts! I’m a little hesitant with ebooks, because most of the ones I’ve ordered are a total ripoff (little content, way over-priced). This one is by far the best I’ve seen. These workouts will keep my training fresh for many many months/years. Thanks!”

– Brian

“Got the e-book and upon first glance Drew, it looks fantastic. I doubt too many people will appreciate what they received. They will only see the routines and hopefully will be thankful and apply them successfully. I see the years of reading and research that had to precede the compilation of those routines and for that I am thankful.”

– Bryan Frederick

“I would definitely give “High Intensity Workouts” a thumbs up. Inexperienced lifters will find this book to be an informative roadmap for their training, and experienced lifters can use it as checklist or motivation.”

– Jim Mardis

If your goal is to maximize the potential benefit of an exercise while minimizing the risk of injury, you should move at least slowly enough to be able to do three things:

1. Reverse direction smoothly between the positive (lifting) and negative (lowering) phases of the repetition, without yanking, jerking, or bouncing the weight
2. Maintain correct body positioning over the full range of the exercise
3. Focus on contracting the target muscles

Reverse direction smoothly

To hold a weight motionless or to lift or lower it at a constant velocity you must produce a level of force equal to the pull of gravity on the weight. To start lifting, or to reverse direction between lifting and lowering movements, however, requires a change in velocity, or acceleration, which requires a change in force. You must produce more force to slow to a stop and change direction between the negative and positive (the lower turnaround) and less force to slow to a stop and change direction between the positive and negative (the upper turnaround). The acceleration will be proportional to the force.

If the acceleration is low the force does not vary significantly from the amount required to hold or move the weight at a constant velocity, only a few percent even at typical repetition cadences, and the tension on the target muscles won’t vary significantly other than due to changes in leverage. If you attempt to lift the weight explosively and the acceleration is high, the forces can vary by a huge amount, increasing the force against the muscles to potentially harmful levels then decreasing it proportionally over a portion of the range of motion after positive acceleration stops, increasing the risk of injury while reducing the efficiency of muscular loading.

Reversing direction smoothly, with low acceleration, prevents the force encountered by the muscles from varying too much relative the resistance provided by the weight or machine, which minimizes your risks of injury and keeps the tension on the target muscles more consistent over the full range of the exercise. It is not necessary to move extremely slowly to accomplish this, however.

Mike Mentzer recommended a moderate, 4/4 repetition cadence

If you use a weight that allows you to perform at least a moderate number of repetitions, the average force your muscles are required to produce will be well below their concentric maximum, which is below their eccentric maximum, which is below the amount required to cause an injury (assuming healthy tissue and no pre-existing injuries). For example, if you perform an exercise with a load that is approximately seventy five percent of your one repetition maximum, you already have a margin of safety way over twenty five percent. With this sizeable safety margin a few percent variation in force is not going to significantly increase your risk of injury, and the difference in the variation of force between different repetition cadences is very small as long as the turnarounds are performed smoothly.

This has been demonstrated with force gauge experiments and can be proven mathematically. I’ve discussed this with several friends who are engineers, one of whom shared the following: Assuming a typical range of motion of about half a meter, if you calculate the force required to bring a one hundred kilogram or two hundred and twenty pound barbell to rest over a distance of about four inches at the cadences listed below, you get the following percentage of the load used (gravitational constant rounded up to 10 and results rounded off to the nearest whole number):

1/1 cadence (.5 m/sec): 113%

2/2 cadence (.25 m/sec): 103%

4/4 cadence (.125 m/sec): 101%

10/10 cadence (.05 m/sec): 100%

In other words, as long as the acceleration occurs over a distance of at least a few inches the difference in peak force between a 2/2 repetition and a 10/10 repetition is only a few pounds.

If you double the distance over which acceleration occurs during the 1/1 cadence to eight inches, which is more realistic if you are attempting to reverse direction smoothly at that cadence, the percentage of load required to bring it to rest comes down to only 106%, which would neither be a dangerous level of peak force or significant variation in tension. The faster you go, the more difficult it is to reverse direction this smoothly, however.

It becomes easier to turnaround smoothly as you go more slowly, but moving any more slowly than necessary to do so does not significantly reduce your risk of injury or improve the efficiency of muscular loading. With proper training and practice a three to four second cadence results in a slow enough speed on most exercises for most people to perform reasonably good turnarounds.

Maintain correct body position

Your body positioning affects the levers your muscles work against and the forces encountered. Correct positioning results in the muscles working against levers which provide resistance which is reasonably well balanced to the strength of the muscles over the range of motion and which do not expose the joints to potentially harmful compression or stretching. Incorrect positioning can result in poorly balanced resistance and underload the muscles over significant portions of the range of motion, as well as potentially harmful compression or stretching of joint tissues.

A lot of this depends on the exercise and the equipment being used. It is much easier to maintain correct positioning during certain types of movements and with certain types of equipment than others. However, as a general rule the faster you move the harder it is to maintain correct body position. Up to a point, moving more slowly will make it easier to maintain correct body position, as well as to detect and correct incorrect positioning or movements.

Focus on the target muscles

The goal of an exercise is not to use your muscles to lift the weight, but to use the weight to efficiently load the muscles. It is easier to focus on and feel the tension in the target muscles and to be able to adjust your form based on this feedback when you are moving more slowly. Like turnarounds and positioning, this is easier with slower movement, however it doesn’t require moving extremely slowly.

Downsides of moving too slowly

While I’ve written a lot over the years about the problems with moving too quickly during exercise, I have made little mention of the problems with moving too slowly, mainly because there are only a few and they are minor compared with the problems with moving too quickly.

Two important factors in stimulating muscular strength and size increases are metabolic stress and muscle damage, both of which appear to be reduced as speed decreases.

Reduced metabolic stress

Although metabolic stress and fatigue are more strongly associated with tension than mechanical work, as isometric exercise proves, mechanical work does play a role, and it has been demonstrated that a higher rate of mechanical work produces a faster rate of fatigue, most likely due to affects on several related factors. All else being roughly equal, more repetitions will result in greater muscle damage or microtrauma, which is a contributing factor. Additionally, since the muscles are significantly stronger and use less energy during eccentric contractions, it appears a longer negative may reduce the rate of fatigue, similarly although not to the same degree as rest-pause.

When I began to suspect this in the mid 2000’s I performed an experiment with several clients and invited other trainers to do the same and report the results: Perform as many repetitions of an exercise as possible at a 2/2 cadence, recording the time to concentric failure. Wait thirty minutes and repeat the exercise with the only change being to use a 10/10 cadence, recording the time to concentric failure. I had clients perform this with both upper and lower body exercises (usually leg extension and arm curl, but some times leg press and pulldown) and almost all were capable of continuing the exercise for up to fifty percent longer with the slower speed only thirty minutes after the first set. I repeated this later comparing a 2/2 and 2/10 cadence with similar results.  The longer negative appeared to reduce the rate of fatigue with the selected resistance, allowing for a longer time to concentric failure or time under load (TUL).

I repeated these tests only a few years ago with equipment specifically designed for very slow repetitions with the same results; the rate of fatigue is lower with slower repetition speeds. While it could be claimed the additional time is beneficial, what it really means is it takes longer to recruit and fatigue all the motor units in the targeted muscles. It could also be claimed this allows for the use of greater loads than with faster reps for a given TUL (and the force/velocity curve supports this), but then it would make more sense to only perform the negatives for a longer duration rather than both phases (and in a study by Westcott discussed in his book Building Strength & Stamina a 4/10 protocol appeared to be more effective than 10/4). Also, while tension would increase, it might be at the expense of microtrauma. A more moderate repetition speed would probably be a good compromise between high tension and high muscle damage while allowing for more efficient inroad than very slow protocols.

Reduced muscle damage

Most of the muscle damage or microtrauma occurs during eccentric contractions and appears to be related to the volume of mechanical work. The slower the repetition cadence, the fewer repetitions performed within a set amount of time, the less muscle damage is likely to occur, potentially reducing the stimulus for muscular strength and size increases.

Not too fast, not too slow

While any repetition speed can be effective as long as you train hard and progressively, if  you want to maximize benefit while minimizing risk, as I wrote above you should move at least slowly enough during exercise to be able to reverse direction smoothly, maintain correct body positioning, and to be able to focus on contracting the target muscles. If you’re not sure about the proper speed you’re better off moving too slowly than too quickly, but moving extremely slowly is not necessary and does not provide any benefits over more moderate speeds in terms of effectiveness or safety.

For the majority of people, a three to four second cadence (three to four second positive phase and three to four second negative phase) results in a good average speed of movement for the majority of exercises, not being too fast on exercises with a longer range of motion or too slow on exercises with a shorter range of motion.

Can you make gains with SuperSlow?

While discussing rep speed on my high intensity training facebook page someone asked me whether it was possible to make long-term gains using SuperSlow protocol, which uses a very slow 10/10 cadence.

Long term gains are possible using any repetition cadence or method if you are doing it hard, progressively, and consistently (assuming you still have further potential for growth and are doing everything else reasonably correctly). Slow reps, fast reps, negative-only, rest-pause, static holds, timed static contractions, etc. Anything done with a high level effort will eventually get you there, some will just get you there faster, more efficiently, and with less risk of injury and less wear and tear on your body.

I know some people who have gotten very strong and muscular using SuperSlow and there are a lot of personal training studios out there using it exclusively with good results. I am not disputing the fact slow reps are effective, but rather the claim they are safer and more effective than more moderate repetition cadences.

HIT trainer Vee Ferguson has built an impressive physique with SuperSlow repetitions

Without getting too far off topic, I think the primary reason some people have reported poorer results with SuperSlow than when using conventional repetition methods is not the slower speed but the very long set durations and significant reduction in load they require.

While research shows relative effort to be more important than load, consider most research is not done with cadences and rep ranges resulting in sets lasting three minutes (the current recommendations for SuperSlow are a TUL of 100 to 180 seconds). Load may not be the most important factor, but it does matter, and when load is too low strength and size gains will suffer regardless of the relative effort.

As an extreme example, imagine if you were to cut your loads to only ten percent of what you normally use. You’d end up doing very long sets, and even if you performed every exercise to momentary muscular failure you’d probably end up with much slower strength and size gains. When using typical rep ranges and loads – from around five to twenty at typical cadences and TULs – effort appears to be key, but if you keep dropping the weight and increasing the time you’re going to hit a point where it starts becoming less effective for strength and size gains.

Anecdotally, I had noticeably better results with SuperSlow when using a much shorter rep range of three to four (under 90 seconds) than when using a rep range of four to eight, and most clients responded better to the shorter rep range as well.

The reason I recommend a more moderate speed and TUL (around six to ten reps at 3/3 to 4/4 as a starting point, adjusting based on individual response) is it seems to be the best compromise of what I consider the most important factors: tension, microtrauma, metabolic stress, safety, ability to maintain focus, learnability, ability to observe, identify and correct discrepancies, etc.