5 ms·

"...emphasize the lowering of the weights... This helps strengthen the inverse muscle, your triceps for arm curls, and improves your overall control." Not true

• darshan 17y ago
  Indeed -- it's called eccentric contraction, and the reason you do it is that it works the same muscles in a different way. Exercise routines that combine eccentric and concentric contractions (where the muscle shortens as it contracts) are probably more effective at increasing strength than ones that focus only on concentric contractions. This is a really big error, and I don't see how it could be a typo. Agonist ("doer") and antagonist (opposing) muscles contract simultaneously when stabilizing a joint, but when lifting weights, the antagonists of the primary action (triceps and to some extent anconeus for curls) are relaxed both during concentric and eccentric contraction of the agonists (biceps, brachialis, and to some extent brachioradialis and a few other muscles of the forearm for curls). That is to say, the author's claim is absolutely wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_contraction#Eccentric_contraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_contraction#Eccentric_co...
• yread 17y ago
  That's true but it has been proven that it is more efficient than lifting the weight and for best performance you should combine both: http://us.commercial.lifefitness.com/content.cfm/benefitsofconcentricandeccentricstrengthtraining http://us.commercial.lifefitness.com/content.cfm/benefitsofc.... Besides it feels so good to just put some crazy amount on Scott's bench ask somebody to help you lift it and then just try to put it down as slowly as possible :)