When you’re striving for maximum gains, it’s essential to explore every opportunity you have. This might involve trying new workouts, switching up your techniques, or even adding exercises you haven’t tried before.
Many training programs emphasize the concentric phase—the part where you’re actively lifting the barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell you’re working with.
However, the lowering phase of a movement, known as eccentric repetition, offers unique training benefits that are often overlooked. Whether it’s because they feel awkward or there’s a lack of awareness, focusing on this “negative” part of the exercise can significantly enhance your results.
In this article, you’ll discover what negative repetitions (negative reps) are and learn how to incorporate them into your strength training routine. We’ll explore examples of workouts using negative repetitions, discuss their benefits and disadvantages, and evaluate their effectiveness for muscle hypertrophy. We will also compare negatives to other popular advanced training techniques.
What are negative repetitions?
Negative repetitions focus on the eccentric portion of a movement, which commonly involves lowering or returning a weight to its starting position.
In strength training, each repetition has three main components.
- First, the concentric component is where the muscle shortens as it exerts force, like when you lift a weight.
- Next comes the eccentric component, where the muscle lengthens while under tension, such as when lowering the weight back down.
- Finally, there’s the isometric component, where the muscle exerts force without changing length, as when you hold a position steady.
In negative reps, the spotlight is on that eccentric component, taking advantage of your muscles’ greater ability to handle more weight during the lowering phase compared to the lifting phase.
Types of negative repetition training
Negative repetitions can be a fantastic way to push your strength training to the next level. Among the types of negative rep training you’ll often encounter are eccentric control, frequently referred to as tempo training, and eccentric overload. Let’s break these down into simple terms.
Eccentric Control (Tempo) is all about controlling the pace of the movement as you lower the weight. Here, you focus on a slow, controlled descent. This doesn’t mean you’re changing the weight you’re lifting, but instead, you pay attention to the time it takes to return to the starting position.
For example:
- In a bench press, you might take 4-6 seconds to lower the bar down to your chest rather than the usual 1-2 seconds.
Eccentric Overload, on the other hand, challenges your muscles by using more weight than you can lift concentrically (or on the way up). This often requires assistance from a partner or other equipment to lift the weight back up in the concentric phase, allowing you to focus energy on the lowering part.
- If you can normally lift 100 pounds in a bicep curl, you might use 120 pounds for the eccentric phase.
- A partner or a tool would help you lift it back after you’ve lowered it under control.
What is the logic (rationale) behind negative reps?
Negative repetitions tap into the concept that your muscles are stronger when lengthening (eccentric phase) than when contracting (concentric phase). By focusing on this phase, you can handle more weight, leading to greater muscle strength and growth. This exploits your muscles’ potential, allowing higher force production and enhanced muscle resilience.
The physiological mechanisms behind negative repetitions are rooted in the unique way muscles handle eccentric loads. During eccentric contractions, fewer motor units are recruited compared to concentric contractions, yet the force produced is often greater. This is because the muscle fibers are able to handle more load when lengthening than when shortening, allowing for greater resistance to be used during negative reps.
Examples of using negative reps
- Bench Press Negatives: A slow lowering of the weight from an arms extended position to your chest. A spotter(s) will help you lift the weight back up, and several more negatives may be performed.
- Pull-Ups: Use a step or jump to get to the top position and slowly lower yourself over 3-5 seconds to engage your muscles effectively.
- Bicep Curls: With the barbell near your chest and your biceps in a contracted position, you slowly lower the weight until your arms are fully extended.
- Leg Extensions: Raise the weight with both legs, then slowly lower the weight with one leg over a period of 4-6 seconds.
- Squats: Utilize a Smith machine or partner assistance to control the lowering phase of a squat over 5 seconds after reaching muscle fatigue.
- Lat Pulldowns: Pull the bar down with both hands, then perform an eccentric movement with one hand, taking 3-5 seconds.
- Chest Flyes: Perform the concentric phase with both arms, followed by a gradual eccentric lowering phase, focusing on muscle control.
- Tricep Dips: With a partner’s support, extend your arms, then lower yourself slowly over 4 seconds to optimize muscle tension.
What are the benefits of negative repetitions?
Below, discover how implementing negative reps can elevate your workout.
- Enhanced Muscle Hypertrophy: Negative reps can stimulate greater muscle growth than traditional repetitions by emphasizing the muscle’s ability to handle more weight during the eccentric phase.
- Increased Strength: Training with negative reps can improve your overall strength because the muscle handles the increased tension and resistance, especially when it comes to overcoming sticking points in lifts.
- Improved Muscular Endurance: Extended time under tension during negative reps can build endurance, helping muscles sustain effort for longer periods.
- Injury Resilience: The controlled lowering phase emphasizes proper form and strengthens tendons and connective tissues, aiding in injury prevention.
- Breaking Plateaus: When stuck in a strength or growth plateau, incorporating negative reps can provide the necessary stimulus to break through and continue progress.
What are the drawbacks of negative reps?
While negative repetitions can be a powerful tool in your strength training arsenal, they are not without their potential downsides. Here are some of the drawbacks associated with negative reps:
- Increased Risk of Injury: Due to the heavy loads typically involved, there is a higher chance of injury if negative reps are not performed with proper form and control. Support is often needed from a spotter to ensure safety.
- Delayed Recovery: Negative reps can lead to significant muscle soreness and longer recovery times owing to the high level of stress placed on the muscles.
- Potential for Overtraining: Given their intensity, incorporating negative reps too frequently can lead to overtraining. This can result in fatigue, decreased performance, and even muscle loss if rest periods are not properly managed.
- Requires Assistance: Often, negative repetitions demand the presence of a partner or coach to assist, making them less feasible for solo workouts.
- Limited Use: Because they’re so demanding, negative reps shouldn’t be a staple in every workout. Overuse can lead to diminishing returns as the body needs varying stimuli for continuous growth and adaptation.
Pros
Cons
How effective are negative reps for muscle hypertrophy?
Negative reps can indeed play a critical role in enhancing muscle hypertrophy, although they are often viewed differently than full range of motion exercises. Science has repeatedly shown that muscle growth is largely dependent on mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage. By incorporating negative reps into your workout, you can maintain high tension on the muscle, particularly in its strongest range. This often means more time under tension, which has been associated with increased muscle growth.
Studies reveal that negative reps can be particularly effective at targeting the last few reps of a set, where full motion becomes too challenging. Here, negative reps enable you to push past points of failure, maximizing hypertrophy. It’s important, however, to couple them strategically with full-range reps to ensure overall muscle development is balanced.
The science is clear: when used judiciously, negative reps can boost hypertrophy by keeping muscles under tension for longer periods and inducing targeted micro-trauma that stimulates growth, making them a valuable component in the quest for muscle hypertrophy.
How to successfully add negative repetitions to your program
The key to success with negative reps training is moderation. Incorporating it into every workout or exercise can lead to overtraining.
Research indicates that negative reps are especially beneficial when performing those last few challenging reps in a set. When completing the full range of motion gets tough, negative reps let you continue beyond your limits, optimizing muscle growth. A spotter, however, must help you with the concentric phase. This support allows you to focus entirely on the eccentric phase.
For instance, in a 12-repetition set, aim to reach muscle exhaustion by the 10th rep. With a spotter’s assistance, proceed to execute two additional negative repetitions, focusing solely on the eccentric phase to push beyond your conventional limits.
Negatives can be use as a stand alone technique, apart from a set, or at the end of a set after a trainee has already taxed themselves near failure.
Negative repetitions can be powerful in your training arsenal, but, much like other techniques, they can experience diminishing returns. Overusing them in your routine might cause their benefits to wane over time.
What exercises are best for negative repetition training?
To a certain extent, you can use almost any exercise for negative training. But the best exercises for negatives are:
- Bench press
- Wide grip pull up (jump up on the bar and lower yourself down)
- Bicep curl
- Bicep preacher curl
- Close grip bench press
- Smith machine shoulder press
How do negative reps compare to other advanced training techniques?
In comparison to techniques such as supersets or drop sets, negative reps offer a different kind of overload that targets the muscle’s ability to handle loaded eccentric phases. This distinct method often results in a higher potential for strength development due to the increased force produced during the eccentric phase, which can be 20-60% greater than during concentric movement.
On the other hand, techniques like pyramid training and rest-pause focus on alternating weights and resting strategies to increase the total volume of work performed, potentially enhancing muscular endurance and size. With isometric holds, the emphasis is on static contraction, which does not include either eccentric or concentric movement but builds tension through holding a position. Negative reps, however, hone in on the muscle lengthening phase, provoking muscle breakdown and adaptation specifically through controlled lowering phases.
Therefore, while techniques like forced reps or time under tension concentrate on extending work duration or intensity within a set, negative reps capitalize on your muscle’s innate capacity to withstand eccentric loading. This provides a unique stimulus that can complement other training methods, contributing to a well-rounded program. For the experienced lifter, integrating negative reps might lead to a balanced approach, effectively enhancing not just muscle size but also resilience and strength.
Negative reps versus partial reps: what’s the difference?
When compared to partial reps, negative reps and partial reps both aim to challenge your muscles beyond the standard repetition. However, they achieve this in distinctly different ways. Negative reps focus on the eccentric phase of the exercise, emphasizing muscle control as you slowly lower the weight. This phase strengthens the muscle by working against gravity and typically allows for more weight than the concentric phase can handle.
Partial reps, on the other hand, involve completing only a portion of the movement, such as the bottom half of a squat or bench press. This technique targets a specific range of motion where the muscle may be weaker or to intensify fatigue in a particular muscle section.
Despite their differences, both techniques share a common goal of increasing muscle strength and endurance by intensifying workouts in unconventional ways. They both offer diversity to your training routine, helping break plateaus and enhance muscle adaptation by targeting different muscle activation patterns and energy systems.
Summary and conclusion
Negative reps, or negative training, is the use of a slow, controlled eccentric aspect of a lift to stimulate muscle growth, or to train/prepare the central nervous system (CNS) to handle heavier strength loads. The eccentric aspect of a lift is the returning of the weight to it’s starting position, normally in preparation for another rep. But in the case of negative training, this returning of the weight, or eccentric focus, does not involve positive reps (it could involve forced reps).
Negatives work by overloading your muscles, shocking your muscles, and tricking your body into thinking you are moving a heavier weight on the positive phase.
This type of training is particularly effective if you’re plateauing and having trouble increasing weights in your workouts.
You should not replace your workout with negatives, but integrate them into your current routine to add intensity and mix things up a bit.
