Organic Body Building

It Pays To Be Negative About Your Workouts

September 20, 2007 – 6:21 pm

By Larry Mindell I see it all the time in the gym; people straining like crazy when they curl or press a weight up and then, as if they’re so relieved to have gotten the weight up, let gravity do most of the work letting the weight go in the opposite direction.

Every exercise consists of two parts; the positive, or concentric, contraction and the negative, or eccentric, contraction. The positive contraction occurs, for example, when you curl a weight up close to your shoulders (biceps curl), press a weight away from your body (chest press) or curl a weight toward your butt (leg curls). The negative contraction occurs when the weight travels in the opposite direction, as in the examples above, when you lower the weight. Another way to look at these two movements is muscle shortening (positive) and muscle lengthening (negative).

Did you know that muscles can handle about 25-30% more resistance performing negative contractions than they can performing positive contractions? That’s why it’s so important to emphasize the negative contraction! When you emphasize only the positive contraction, like many people do, and neglect the negative contraction, you deny your body at least 50% of the benefit of doing an exercise.

One way to emphasize the negative contraction is to perform “Negatives”. When you do Negatives a spotter or spotters do most of the positive lifting and you do most, if not all, of the negative movement. Another way to emphasize the negative contraction is to slowwww down when you’re performing this part of the movement. Typically we spend 1-2 seconds lifting a weight; try spending 5 seconds lowering it, especially on that last rep when you’ve reached failure.

In addition to getting better results, being negative about your workouts is a great way to spice them up, and who doesn’t like a little spice in their life!
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Larry Mindell is an AFAA Certified personal Fitness Trainer at the Sports & Fitness Edge of Essex, in Essex Junction, Vermont. He can be reached at (802)879-7734 ext. 287 and at larry@mindell.us.