Why Faster Negatives are Superior Muscle Builders
The most recent studies now show that all of those people over the last 40 years who told us to emphasize the negative were absolutely, 100% FULL OF SHIT!
No, I am not saying the negative portion of the rep is worthless. In fact, it is vitally important--the most important part of the rep by far. Rather, the error has to do with the manner in which we have been told to perfrom our negatives.
Traditionally, we have been told to slow down the negative--to really "take advantage" of this portion of the rep, but all the recent studies are showing that the slower a negative is performed, the LESS beneficial it is for muscle growth. Slower negatives decrease muscle stress by reducing mucle fiber damage. In reality, the faster the negative contraction, the more potent it is for muscle growth. Here's how it works...
A concentric contraction occurs when myosin attaches to and then pulls on actin, shortening the muscle fiber. After the contraction is complete, myosin then disconnects from actin. This type of contraction is powered by ATP.
However, when we do an eccentric contraction the muscle lengthens. When this happens myosin attaches to and detaches from actin in the same way, decelerating the weight. Here's the big difference. While the concentric contraction cycle is powered by ATP, the eccentric contraction cycle is not. Instead, when myosin detaches from actin, it is caused by the forced lengthening of the muscle fiber. Basically, they are ripped apart.
These forced attachments cause the myosin to pull on the actin much harder, causing much greater amounts of muscle fiber damage.
So, why are faster negatives superior for growth? Eccentric contractions at greater velocity increases the power of these forced dettachments. In other words, the muscle fiber must work harder to slow down a faster moving weight compared to a slower moving weight The greater velocity increases muscular stress--makes the muscle fiber work harder to stop the weight. This greater stress translates into a superior growth response.
Now, stop and think about what has transpired in the real-world in your own training or the training of others. If slower negatives resulted in greater stress and a superior growth response, all of us would be gaining more muscle by doing 5, 7, or even 10 second negatives on each rep, but anyone who has used this tyle of training will tell you it is far inferior. It may provide a slight improvement initially, simply as a result of providing the body with a different stressor, but in the long-run the individual experiences reduced muscle growth and strength gains.
Look around and tell me how many huge BB'rs you see doing their reps like this? I have yet to see one that compares to the monsters who do faster, more explosive reps. The biggest, strongest guys are almost always those who either do their reps very quickly and explosively...or don't overemphasize the negative. They might control the negatuve (not drop it), yet they don't do it slowly, as has been advocated by those who claim that 5+ second negatives stimulate superior growth.
Look at guys like Johnnie Jackson and Branch Warren--two of the most massivley developed BB'rs in the pro league. They have frequently been criticized for their "dropping" of the weight, but are any of the guys doing their negatyuve slowly bigger than them? In fact, how many pros in the entire IFBB pack more muscle onto their frames? I can name numerous past & current pros, as well as many pro strongmen who do not emphasize the negative, but do their reps fairly to extremely explosively...and they can all claim to be among the biggest, strongest men who have ever lived. If you can show me even a fraction as many men who have achieved similar size or strength gains by doing slow negatives, I will recant my statement, but that will never happen.
Surely, someone will mention Dorian Yates, but understand that although Dorian was known for controlling the negative, he did not do his negatives "slowly". On most exercises he took only a couple seconds to perform a negative...not to mention he simpy trained harder and was more dedicated to every aspect of his program than any BB'r alive at the time. Reagrdless, the science is abunantly clear. The faster we do our negatives, the more stress we place on our muscles. In addition, faster negatives also increase the amount of work the muscle performs over a given period of time--another factor involved in muscle growth.
The studies have been done, the real-world evidence has been witnessed, and the verdict is out. The faster we perform our reps, the greater the muscular stress we experience, resulting in an improved growth rate. Ask Sergio, Arnold, Franco, Haney, Ronnie and Cutler--the biggest men of their day and they all trained explosively.
The idea of the slow negative sounded plausible in theory, but it never panned out in the real world. Not only have we seen the results, but we now know why. Of course, we must take safety into consideration when training explosively...and the risk of injury is increased, but in terms of results, there is no doubt that it is the superior method.
Going back to the OP, Phil's idea is a good one. By placing additional resistance on the muscle during the negative portion of the rep, we increase the number of forced myosin-actin dettachments, resulting in greater stress and improved growth. In fact, this is one of the very best ways to use negatives, as it allows us to overload both the eccentric and concentric phases of the lift during a single set. Obviously, this can be difficult or even impossible to do on certain movements, and will require a capable training partner, but it is a great technique.
In order to extract maximum results from this method, the training partner should push down on the weight hard enough so that we are forced to complete the negative portion of the lift fairly quickly, despite our greatest attempt to stop the weight. By doing so, we will not only cause a greater number of forced myosin-actin dettachments, but we will increase the force with which these dettachments take place, resulting in a massive amount of muscle damage. I suspect that that this technique could only be used occasionally, or else overtraining seems a likely reality.
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