Mixing up your strength training with eccentric training can be the missing ingredient you need. Are you using the benefits of eccentric training to maximize your workout results? If not, you should be!

Types of Muscle Tissue

To better understand how your muscles contract, it’s important to know a little bit more about the two main types of muscle tissue: smooth and striated. Smooth muscles are associated with your internal organs and digestive tract and are known as “involuntary muscles.” They produce slow, rhythmic, involuntary contractions that are regulated by the body’s nervous system.

Striated muscles are attached to bones and help you to move voluntarily (and sometimes involuntarily). Striated muscles are used to execute particular movements, support your skeletal system, protect your posture, and more. When doing resistance training, striated muscles are your workhorses.

What Is Eccentric Training?

To best explain eccentric training, it’s important to understand the other facets of the training spectrum as well. Muscle contractions revolve around two main aspects: length and tension. There are four types of muscle contractions that striated muscles can do when using resistance training. These are:

• Isometric: These movements force a contraction of the muscle without changing the length of the muscle or moving the joints. An example of this would be holding a pose (like doing a wall squat or a plank) or pushing against an immovable object.
• Isotonic: This type of contraction occurs when the force initiated by the muscle is constant throughout the movement and the muscle length changes, but not the tension (for example, walking or swimming). This can be further broken into:

1. 1. Concentric: These contractions shorten the muscle. For example, when you lift a dumbbell for a biceps curl, the muscle is shortened (part 1 of the movement).
   2. Eccentric: These contractions lengthen the muscle. For example, when you lower the dumbbell, the muscle is lengthened (part 2 of a biceps curl movement). Eccentric training will put the focus on the elongation phase of the movement when lifting/lowering weights, and it is often called “the negative.” Instead of letting gravity pull the weight down, you actively resist.

Common Eccentric Movements

Even if you’re often unaware of it, you constantly perform eccentric movements. Whereas concentric contractions pull the joint toward the contraction as they shorten, eccentric contractions are designed to slow down the movement as the weight moves away from the joint and the muscle lengthens.

Some recognizable examples of eccentric movement include:

Squats—when you slowly lower your body to move into the squat position, this is the eccentric portion of the movement.

Push-ups—as you lower your body toward the ground in the initial phase of a push-up, you are performing an eccentric movement.

Pull-ups—as with push-ups, holding the negative portion of the movement and slowly lowering your body from a successful pull-up helps build strength and control.

How You Can Benefit from Eccentric Training

When used as part of an overall muscle-building program, eccentric training can offer some surprising benefits.

Mind-muscle connection—it’s an interesting fact that you can make better progress in fitness when your mind and body are in sync with each other. Instead of just going through the movements in an unfocused manner, you will enjoy better results (and more productive workouts) when you concentrate on what you’re doing and feel each repetition. This is where eccentric training comes into play. When you slow down and focus on the “negatives,” you enhance the mind-muscle connection by engaging the targeted muscles more effectively. This allows you to improve control throughout the movement.

Reduced risk of injury—eccentric training will help you learn to control the weight as you lower it. Better control means less chance of injury and improved movement patterns when lifting and lowering the weight. Studies show this type of training can help strengthen your tendons and shield you from future injury due to overuse.

Better flexibility and range of motion—slowly working your way through the eccentric portion of movements when weightlifting will help you become more flexible and mobile. When you resist gravity and slow down the descent of the weight, you’ll help elongate your muscles while gradually becoming better at moving through a full range of motion.

Pain relief—studies also show that eccentric training can help reduce the pain from tendonitis. As you get stronger and strengthen your tendons, you also limit the release of chemical agents that are responsible for tendonitis pain.

Great for seniors—because eccentric training revolves around controlling the weight and doing slower movements, this can help you build both stronger muscle and confidence in the weight room. Research shows that people rehabbing with a focus on eccentric training were later able to progressively lift more weight when engaging in concentric movements, without additional injury.

Neuromuscular benefits—eccentric training has even been shown to help reduce the risk of falls. Because this type of training benefits peripheral and central neural activity and produces changes in muscle morphology, it enables you to maintain better muscle control.

Easy and safe—because the energy needed for eccentric contractions is less than what you’d normally expend on a concentric movement, even those with medical conditions like arthritis, inflammatory diseases, and pulmonary issues should be able to safely participate in eccentric training. It’s a great way to flush the muscles with nutrient-rich blood while gently lengthening the muscles in a controlled and relaxed manner.

In terms of resistance training, while focusing on eccentric training is great, it’s also important not to neglect the other forms of muscle contractions. A well-rounded exercise routine is necessary to build metabolically active muscle tissue. That said, with all the benefits you can get from concentrating on eccentric training, it just makes sense to include it as part of your normal workout program.