Resisting gravity to enhance growth: you're bored, your muscles are bored, and your workouts need an infusion of get-up-and-go. We have the remedy: eccentric training - Smart Training

Rookie mistakes are as prevalent in the gym as they are on the playing field. The worst is bonking on your last rep and finding yourself pinned between a barbell and a bench. The kicker comes when you draw the entire room's attention to your shame by crying out for help. Another classic is when, in the course of talking shop with a gym acquaintance, you drop a reference to eccentric training--but, having only read about eccentric training, you pronounce it "ECK-centric" instead of "EE-centric," and the guy you're trying to impress returns a polite, condescending smile. And afterward you're known as that "eccentric geek."

Don't confuse your terms. Eccentric training does not mean you grow your nails long and go live in a tree. Rather, it's a type of weightlifting that focuses on the lowering portion of a movement--fighting gravity--rather than the lifting portion, and it's one of the best techniques you can use--for limited periods of time--to recharge your muscle growth. In the majority of traditional bodybuilding exercises, your muscles can lower more poundage than they can raise. Hence, while your muscle reaches momentary failure on the concentric portion, it still has the capacity to do more work in the eccentric phase. Focusing on this phase will enlist ever-deeper muscle fibers to generate enhanced growth.

"Eccentric training has traditionally been used by athletes looking to increase their strength," says Bryan Haycock, C.S.C.S., editor in chief of ThinkMuscle.com and president of Hypertrophy-Specific Nutrition. "By doing negatives using a heavier weight than they can lift concentrically, their muscles adapt and soon become strong enough to lift it." Haycock advises his clients to perform a one- to two-week phase of eccentric training whenever they reach strength plateaus in their normal routines. Going any longer than that can lead to overtraining.

Until you incorporate eccentric training into your program (not to mention learn how to pronounce it), you will always be something of a neophyte in the gym.

GETTING ECCENTRIC

Eccentric training is not all that different from a typical gym workout. You use the same equipment, the same exercises and the same workout structure. The only major distinction is that you use more weight and focus on the lowering rather than the lifting. Here are some guidelines for effective eccentric training.

* Warm up thoroughly, with five to 10 minutes of light cardio followed by stretching the muscles you plan to focus on during your workout. A proper warm-up literally warms and lubricates the muscles, thereby greatly reducing the risk of pulls and strains.

* Use a spotter for all exercises, except perhaps certain one-arm movements that allow you to self-spot with your free arm. There's simply no safe way to perform eccentric exercises such as a negative bench press without a spotter, because you're using more weight than you can actually press up. Also, to avoid cheating as your muscles fatigue on the concentric stage of a routine exercise, such as the barbell curl, you'll need to have a spotter help you lift the barbell back to the contracted position.

* Lower the weight on a four-count. Why a four-count? "If an eccentric rep is too fast," Haycock explains, "not enough muscle fibers will be recruited to result in good growth. If the movement is too slow, you begin to do quasi-isometric movements that fail to induce sufficient microtrauma for growth to occur."

* Choose your weight based on the four-count rule. The appropriate weight for a set of negatives is one you cannot resist lowering for more than five seconds, but one you can hold for at least four seconds. In most cases, the appropriate weight will be about 20 percent greater than your one-repetition maximum for the isometric version of the same exercise. So if your one-rep maximum bench press is 175 pounds, you'll probably wind up starting with about 210 pounds when performing bench-press negatives.

* Go to failure, not beyond. A negative set is complete when you can no longer resist the lowering of the weight for at least a three-count. If you go beyond this point, your muscles aren't really working anymore, they're just getting hurt.

* Push for progress. Once you've determined the appropriate weight for each eccentric exercise, prepare to change it. Whenever you find that you're able to resist a weight load for more than five seconds on the first repetition, Haycock says it's time to throw a little more iron on the bar.

* Recover adequately. Because eccentric training causes more muscle and nerve-tissue trauma than isometric lifting, it often requires more recovery time. So when you begin doing eccentric workouts, you may need to adjust your weekly schedule accordingly. For example, instead of working your chest twice a week, try to work it only once every four days.

* Muscle soreness is a good indicator of the need for recovery. Avoid working a muscle group again when it still has residual soreness from the last session.