If, like thousands of kids around the world, you want to build bigger arms before the summer you may want to give professional trainer and YouTuber Jeff Cavaliere‘s recent video a watch. In typical Cavaliere fashion, he guides his viewers through a small daily change that can, over time, lead to big results in a specific muscle group.
“When I was a kid, I used to tag along with my older brother on his workouts. He was four years older than me and I really didn’t want him to hurt me training,” Cavaliere writes in the caption. “Not to mention, he was too young to lift weights anyway. So he gave me a 5-pound Marcy dumbbell and told me to stay safe.”
Since Cavaliere wouldn’t be able to perform many exercises with such a light weight, “he ended up doing a lot of curls,” he writes. “What I learned doing rollers with that little weight however, it would change the way my biceps would develop not just then but for all the years after.”
Cavaliere goes on to explain that the light dumbbell he used was formative in learning how to tighten the muscle and slow down both the eccentric (descending or negative) phase of the rep, in which the muscle is lengthened for a specific amount of time. “When you translate that into every rep you do, you get better,” says Cavaliere. “I carried that into the exercises I did the most growing up: barbell curls with a strong focus on the eccentric part and the pull-up.”
Essentially, controlling the tempo of an exercise during the eccentric phase of the movement will help you maintain control and turn what would otherwise be an easier movement into a serious challenge. Don’t you believe us? Check the science: a 2016 study demonstrated that the eccentric phase of an exercise can have positive effects on muscle growth, as study participants who increased the descent phase of a bench press increased muscle activation and thus stimulated greater physiological demands.
So if you’re rushing to get bigger arms for your next summer vacation, you might want to slow down. You will be surprised how quickly you will see results.
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