Study: Eccentric exercises can build muscle in as little as 9 seconds

[BackInTheGame78]

It appears that the act of lengthening the muscle rather than shortening it(think lower portion of a bicep curl going down and overhead triceps extension) can build muscle in as little as 9 seconds a day 3 days a week.

In the study, participants gained 11.5% muscle strength, 2.5% concentric strength and 4% concentric strength.

It appears that instead of doing bicep curls the traditional way, a much better and more effective way would be to only go about 1/3 of the way up and then back down to lengthen the bicep again...

New Study Reveals Eccentric Exercise Can Build Muscle in Just Nine Seconds

A new study has revealed a technique for building muscle strength that requires only three seconds of exercise three times a week. Researchers working with Australia’s Edith Cowan University (ECU) found that eccentric training is more effective is more effective than typical exercises like bicep ...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Money & Muscle]

I can't read the full text of the article, but this article/study is absolute bullsh*t. So is their sample pool of 26 people, half in the control group.

Look at the variance ranges in the results...

In the 2 days per week group:
no significant changes were noted.

In the 3 days per week group:
2.5% stronger Concentric, plus or minus 10.4%
3.9% stronger Eccentric, plus or minus 4.9%

In the 5 days per week group:
12.8% stronger Concentric, plus or minus 9.6%
12.2% stronger Eccentric, plus or minus 7.8%

Yes, the eccentric portion of your reps is more effective at building muscle than the concentric. That's why you see bodybuilders explode up and control the negative (eccentric). This has been known for some time. At least since Darden's days, which are 50 years past.

Results
The 2DW group showed no significant changes in MVC torque. Significant (P < 0.05) increases in MVC-concentric (2.5 ± 10.4%) and MVC-eccentric (3.9 ± 4.9%) torque were observed for the 3DW group, but the magnitude of the increase was smaller (P < 0.05) than that presented by the 5DW group (12.8 ± 9.6%, 12.2 ± 7.8%). No significant changes in MT were evident for any of the groups.

^MT = Muscle Thickness.
So this method does not work for size.

Moral of the story:
1) Don't trust individual studies for anything related to hypertrophy, unless it has a HUGE sample pool or is conducted by Brad Schoenfeld.
2) Slow down your negative/eccentric/muscle-lengthening portion of your rep. You can count to 2-3 seconds if you insist, but as long as it's controlled and intentionally slowed a bit - you're doing it right.

Read below for more nuanced information:
https://www.t-nation.com/?s=accentuated+eccentrics

Specifically here:
https://www.t-nation.com/training/accentuated-eccentric-training/

 

[BackInTheGame78]

I can't read the full text of the article, but this article/study is absolute bullsh*t. So is their sample pool of 26 people, half in the control group.

Look at the variance ranges in the results...

In the 2 days per week group:
no significant changes were noted.

In the 3 days per week group:
2.5% stronger Concentric, plus or minus 10.4%
3.9% stronger Eccentric, plus or minus 4.9%

In the 5 days per week group:
12.8% stronger Concentric, plus or minus 9.6%
12.2% stronger Eccentric, plus or minus 7.8%

Yes, the eccentric portion of your reps is more effective at building muscle than the concentric. That's why you see bodybuilders explode up and control the negative (eccentric). This has been known for some time. At least since Darden's days, which are 50 years past.


^MT = Muscle Thickness.
So this method does not work for size.

Moral of the story:
1) Don't trust individual studies for anything related to hypertrophy, unless it has a HUGE sample pool or is conducted by Brad Schoenfeld.
2) Slow down your negative/eccentric/muscle-lengthening portion of your rep. You can count to 2-3 seconds if you insist, but as long as it's controlled and intentionally slowed a bit - you're doing it right.

Read below for more nuanced information:
https://www.t-nation.com/?s=accentuated+eccentrics

Specifically here:
https://www.t-nation.com/training/accentuated-eccentric-training/

Haha, I guess that shows me I need to never trust articles from Yahoo...

However I have seen multiple studies that have shown doing bicep curls in the lower third of the rep only are more effective than doing full curls, so for some exercises eccentric only seems to be better than the full rep

 

[CAPSLOCK BANDIT]

I discovered this on my own with leg press, I could load up 400 and do 50 reps, but if I simply did body weight squats but never came fully back up, just kind of bounce up and down my legs would be dead after 30 reps of time under tension, my legs are especially resilient to work out strain it's ridiculous, I could be in the gym all day doing reps so time under tension has been a really great substitute.

 

[Money & Muscle]

I have seen multiple studies that have shown doing bicep curls in the lower third of the rep only are more effective than doing full curls, so for some exercises eccentric only seems to be better than the full rep

I think you're looking at this too literally. Seriously, you cannot trust most hypertrophy related studies. 50 years ago, Bro Science said that failure training was most effective. A meta regression only just came out in support of that as individual studies waffled back and forth for decades. Meanwhile, dudes like Yates, Mentzer, Dante Trudel, Paul Carter and Jordan Peters were getting huge doing the thing they knew worked. REAL scientific data didn't support that until literally this last year.

How does eccentric only training have any bearing on only doing the bottom third of the rep?

How do you think that resistance curve changes if you do it on an Incline? Do you think the bottom third is still most effective? What about during preacher curls? Is it the same for banded curls?
^ this is why I say not to trust studies with these things. You don't know WHY that's the effective portion and neither do those studies, nor could they predict what happens when you change the resistance plane. It could be the stretch, or the resistance curve, or the mild occlusion the muscle gets - we just don't know, we only have theories

See what works for you, and do that. Try out programs written by people who do this for a living, and find out what you like and what works.