Hey everyone, I want to share something that has been bugging me for a while in regards
to how we tell people to train when they want to build muscle.
Now look, I'm not Arnie the "terminator". I'm not saying, if you go to the gym, train
hard, pump yourself, eat a lot of protein, it will work. I'm not saying it won't.
I'm just saying, there's a big elephant in the weights room. Hopefully, I can get you
to see it, get it dealt with, and get better results.
I'm Jacob Nadav from BellyProof.com and this is the "Eccentric Problem".
Even though research into this matter is on going at all times, we all know that there
are better and worse ways to build muscle mass.
If you are training for muscle growth and strength, this video will introduce you to
one of the most fascinating subjects in sport science. We call it the “Eccentric Problem”.
The exercises most people do, consist mainly of two phases. The concentric phase, which
we like to call the way up, and the eccentric phase which we like to call the way down.
Now this is true to whether you use body weight calisthenics style exercises like pull-up, as well
as weight lifting like a deadlift, biceps curl and virtually any other fitness exercise
you see in the gym. As they say: What goes up must come down.
Both the way up and down or the conenric and eccentric are done with the exact same weight.
So if you weigh 150 pounds, when you do a pull up, 150 pounds goes up, and then 150
pounds goes down. If you’re deadlifting 100 kilos, that’s a 100 kilos bar going
up, and a 100 kilos bar going down.
And how strong are you? Can you lift 60, 90, 200? Whichever is the right answer
we can all agree that the maximal amount of weight you can lift up is your 100%.
And that is exactly the problem. See, while you can lift a maximum 100% on the way up,
you can actually control up to 175% on the way down. Yup, you are up to 1.75 times stronger
on the eccentric phase. You might already know that, and if you don't, you should probably
google that.
The next questions is... should you care? When training for both strength and for muscle
gain the eccentric phase matters far more than the concentric phase. This is where we
get high threshold muscle fiber recuirtment, micro-trauma to the muscle fibers, this is
where we do “time under tension” and where we go “slow and controlled on the way down”.
In fact, it is the eccentrics that provides the mechanical stimulus, via the mTOR pathway
to synethises new protein and essentialy build more muscle. It’s the eccentrics that strenghen
your ligaments and add collegen into fibers. It’s the eccentrics that allows motor control
aquisition and the expansion of your mobility. So.. yeah – the eccentrics matter a lot!
There are of course other factors like protein rich nutrition or stressing the muscle metabolically
with lactic acid and pumping, it's all relevant. However, most experts agree that the quality
of eccentrics we achieve in training factors for most of the results, so if you want to
get big results, you need to get big on eccentrics.
The way most of us workout, is by choosing loads around 60% and do 3 sets of 8, 5 sets
of 5 or something along those lines. Essentialy, trying to balance the volume of work with
how much fiber recruitment and muscle damage we can get. We almost never use 100% because
that will burn us out too quickly and we won’t be able to do many sets and reps.
However, if you run the numbers, you'll see that 60% concentric means 34% of your eccentric capacity.
This doesn’t mean you’re lazy or you don't train hard, it just points to the simple fact
that 34% is inefficient for what you are trying to do.
Arguably, it would be much better if you could figure how train at 60% on the way up and
something along 140% on the way down. That way you'll get much better at stimulating
protein synthesis which will help you build muscle faster.
One way around this problem is to have a strong training partner, who is crazy enough to spot
you by taking away a lot of the weight on the way up, and giving you a lot more weight
for the way down. But they will have to make sure you don't smash anything and they will
have to give and take the weights from you at each and every rep. It's possible but probably
not a great solution for most people.
Luckily, there are clever ways to solve the eccenric problem without a training partner
but it requires a different approach.
If you want to learn more about the Eccentric problem, and find out how we solved it, head
over to BellyProof.com/Muscle/ Click on the “science” button and start
reading.
So I hope it was helpful and that you learned something. Before you head on to the website
to read how to actually solve it, I do like to ask that if you did like this video and
you want to see more videos like that, please hit the "subscribe" button and let us know
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all, share it to them. And until next time, have a really nice day.