- Strength training involves different types of muscle contractions with unique benefits, according to a personal trainer.
- Eccentric exercise involves lengthening, which helps increase muscle size by causing more stress.
- Concentric exercise involves shortening the muscles, which increases strength and can be easier to recover from.
Using multiple strength training techniques can help you get the most out of workouts, according to a personal trainer.
Different types of strength exercises have unique benefits, whether you want to build muscle and strength, improve your running speedor just being more active in everyday life, according to Chris Travis, owner and trainer of Seattle Strength and Yield.
“Our core value is that strength training is for everyone. We try to make it accessible to everyone because we think it’s so beneficial to your life,” he told Insider. “Within the first few weeks, people feel so much stronger and better because their body is adjusting to something it’s never done before.”
Using the right type of exercise can help you balance your workouts for your specific goals, like increasing muscle size, maximizing strength, or even helping you recover from muscle soreness.
“They’re all tools in the toolbox, it depends on what you’re trying to train for,” Travis said.
Eccentric movements like negatives are great for building muscle and perfecting your form.
Resistance or strength training involves putting stress on your muscles to encourage them to adapt by getting stronger (and often bigger in the process). When your muscles contract while lengthening, it’s known as eccentric exercise.
Eccentric movements usually involve the lowering portion of an exercise, such as slowly lowering the weight after a bicep curl.
A great advantage of eccentric exercise is that it creates a lot of tension, which makes the muscles bigger and stronger and helps maximize gains.
“We do a lot of eccentric work because it builds muscle so well and we do it in a way that people who are just starting out in strength training don’t move too fast and understand range of motion,” Travis said.
An example of using eccentric work to build muscle is adding a rhythm to an exercise like a TRX row, going down to a count of three instead of going down all at once.
Eccentric exercises can also help all athletes, but especially beginners, develop their ability to exercise more with good form, rather than using momentum or compromising position.
“A lot of times people just repeat and their body position can go crazy. Forcing them to slow down on the eccentric helps maintain body awareness and stability,” Travis said.
Practicing only the eccentric part of a movement is known as negative: an example is jumping or climbing into a pull-up and lowering slowly with control to develop the right muscle groups for improve your pull-up strength. You can use a similar technique to improve push-ups starting on a plank, going down to the bottom of the position, and then resetting.
Beginners can also benefit from isometric exerciseIt involves strengthening in a static position, as it’s low-impact on the joints and also helps build stability and form, Travis said.
Concentric exercises, like sled pushes, improve strength and are less likely to cause you pain.
Exercises that make muscles contract while shortening are known as concentric. They’re great for building muscular strength and endurance, Travis said, particularly with compound exercises that engage multiple muscle groups, like deadlifting.
Concentric exercises are less likely to cause delayed-onset muscle soreness, the phenomenon that can leave you too sore to hit the gym the next day. research suggests. As a result, trainers recommend trying low-impact concentric work like pushing sleds or riding a bike to active recoveryto improve blood flow to muscles and promote muscle repair.
