Unlocking the power to grow your muscles and get stronger involves every type of muscle contraction, rather than using just one singular type. Unleashing 5 incredible benefits of eccentric training not only can help to support your muscle sculpting journey, it can also help to work your muscles differently for a change in pace for improved results.
While we think about going to the gym and performing bicep curls, bench presses, and barbell squats, these all primarily use a concentric muscle action. However, in the return phase, eccentric muscle movements occur, and focusing on this type of muscle contraction can help you to work your body in an entirely different way so you can hit your long-term goals.
Let’s look closer into muscle physiology and specifically how eccentric muscle training can benefit your long-term goals.
How do Muscles Contract?
Without going too deep into the physiology, let’s investigate how muscles contract at a basic level. To contract and produce force, a muscle fiber needs a stimulus. The stimulus to the naked eye is weight, but chemically speaking it is a tiny hormone that circulates in the blood called acetylcholine.
Once a chemical stimulus reaches a muscle receptor an action potential is created. This action potential is created through a shift of sodium and potassium ions, and creates and electrical impulse.
The electric impulse then is aided by calcium, and causes a powerful jerking motion of muscle fibers that stimulates them to contract. These contractions are created based off the type of muscle action being performed and there are a few types of muscle movements that occur based off these interactions. 
Types of Muscle Contractions
There are three types of muscle contractions that can occur. To unleash the 5 incredible benefits of eccentric training, it is important to understand how each type can affect your training.
- Concentric Contractions. Think of this type of contraction as your bread and butter, your go-to. Concentric contractions occur when the muscle gets shorter when it contracts. This happens during a biceps curl when you lift the weight up or in a bench press when the weight is pushed upwards. These types of contractions tend to create power and are known to be ideal for creating large muscles.
- Eccentric Contractions. These types of contractions are common as well; they just aren’t as overtly known as the concentric ones. This type of movement occurs when the muscle lengthens during contractions. For example, when you are lowing down in a push-up, the eccentric phase is the part where you are lowering down.
- Isometric Contractions. The not-so well-known contraction is the isometric contraction. This type of movement involves a muscle contraction that does not have any lengthening or shortening of muscle fibers. While it is not well known, this type of movement is hard to perform and is utilized often in Pilates training.
Top 5 Incredible Benefits of Eccentric Training
Boosting your workout sometimes means changing up how you perform a lift. Working your muscles in an eccentric way can help to lead to long-term strength and muscular gains. Here are some of the 5 incredible benefits of eccentric training that you should consider to help boost your gains in the gym.
- Muscle Recruitment. When the body is adjusted to a certain type of motion, it becomes adapted to it. Switching to eccentric training can help to recruit more muscle fibers, which may lead to more strength, flexibility, and better physique. Look for this adaptation to occur rather quickly, especially after the first couple workouts.
- Encourages Better Range of Motion. To say this type of exercise improves flexibility is tough, but it can work muscles in a way that it doesn’t impact flexibility. Eccentric contractions add a load to the muscle fibers that improve the elasticity. Improved elasticity can have a lasting impact on injury prevention and can support joint health.
- Improved Hypertrophy. If you want bigger muscles and are focused on hypertrophy training, then listen up. Eccentric training can help to recruit muscle fibers throughout a different range of motion, which can lead to impressive gains in your lifts.
- Improved Control. Eccentric training works muscles in a way that can encourage control through each lift. Since this type of training requires slower movements, it can help to train the body to be more controlled when using barbells, dumbbells, or kettlebells. Better control is vital in any workout, but is especially valuable in HIIT exercise to help avoid injuries.
- Quicker Gains. Athletes and body builders often utilize this type of training for overall strength improvements. Eccentric training allows for a progressive load on the muscle fibers for a longer duration than concentric training, which means the muscle has more volume (in theory). Adding this to your workout can help you to increase your lifts all over and reach towards personal bests.
How to Perform Eccentric Exercises
Performing eccentric training is a bit more tricky than other types of exercises, but nailing down a method can help to streamline your progress. Here are a few ways to jumpstart eccentric training.
- Slow Movements. Perhaps the easiest method is to perform slow, controlled movements following a concentric contraction phase. This would be the return down phase during a biceps curl or a lower down phase in a bench press.
- Slow Tempo Phase. To build upon slower movement phases this slow tempo technique should include a targeted 6-8 second phase. For a bench press this would involve lowering the weight back to the chest over 6-8 seconds.
- Assisted Phase. If you have a partner to help with workouts or a assisted machine, consider letting the help perform the concentric portion and only work the eccentric portion. For that same bench press, you would only perform the part lowering the weight to the chest and your gym partners would lift the weight back up.
Concluding Thoughts
If muscular health, hypertrophy, and flexibility is something you value, don’t hesitate to give eccentric training a try. Listed above are 5 incredible benefits of eccentric training that should help to guide you into these workouts. With a little practice and time, adding these exercises to your repertoire should be seamless.
Resources
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23657934
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4620252
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6510035
image sources
- Chest pumped: Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels
