I'm So Negative!

Before I get into the point of this blog post - I wanted to share a little with what is going on with me physically. My idea was to work on adding some muscle until Memorial Day weekend and then begin a "cutting" or leaning out process. That hasn't gone so well. Basically, as always, social activities and too many opportunities to splurge has prevented me from keeping my caloric intake and macronutrients where they need to be. So instead of bumming out and "getting fat", I have decided to use this time to work on gaining a little more muscle. Since I know I have been eating a lot of calories - I have tailored my training to use those calories to build muscle. And as you know if you are a reader of my posts - building muscle should be of utmost importance for everyone as I firmly believe that it keep you strong, firm, solid, functional and healthy. But enough of all that ...

Lately I have had a lot of conversations with people about how they are lifting weights. Something that I often think should be or is common knowledge (but I was reminded recently that it is not) is what a repetition consists of. Basically you have a positive (force moving the weight) part of each rep and then a negative (force controlling the weight to opposite position). So like on a chest press - the positive is pushing the weight out away from you and the negative is controlling the weight as it returns towards your body.

Often times in the gym, you will see people that focus very little attention on the negative. Instead of controlling the weight as it returns to position - they let gravity take hold and it drops. They control it just enough not to let it land - but actually that does more harm than good because stopping a weight from falling with little or no control is hard on the joints and connective tissue (tendons, ligaments).

In each rep or movement with a weight you have the opportunity to take advantage of both the positive and the negative. Failing to "work" the negative means failing to benefit from half the rep. That means you are only accomplishing HALF of the work you think you are doing. In fact from what I understand, the negative or working against gravity portion of the rep is actually responsible for greater muscle fiber recruitment and thus can lead to more "gains".

So what does this mean to you? Next time you are working with weights be it machines or free weights ... think about the movement you are doing. Where are you exerting a force to move the weight and then where is gravity taking over and the weight is falling. On that second part - control the weight - don't just let it fall. In fact - go a little slower like take 2 to 3 seconds to lower the weight versus the one second it usually takes (or less) to move the weight initially. Doing so will not only help you get way more out of the movement but will most likely leave you feeling as if your muscles accomplished so much more (usually from a little extra soreness).

Thanks for reading ...

Andy