I’ve been discussing the negatives of too many “garbage negatives.” What does that mean?
When you do a set close to failure, the eccentric, or negative, stroke is still not demanding. But that’s not the problem…
The main detriment is that the negative stroke is what causes the majority of the damage. The actin-myosin pairings within the fibers drag across one other as you lower the weight on every rep, causing traumatic “friction.”
It’s why you get the most soreness (damage) from going down stairs rather than up, even though going down is much easier.
This is not to suggest that the negative stroke is not important for building mass. It is—to a degree. Or at this point appears to be. However, there’s no doubt that an excess of those light negatives causes an abundance of damage…
And that’s damage that must be repaired before supercompensation (growth) can happen.
This may be why doing half of your sets for each muscle with a faster rep speed can increase hypertrophy—less damage accumulation at each workout.
I believe it’s why I made such exceptional progress on the Old Man, Young Muscle workout…
I was only doing four to five sets per muscle, but half were lifting in one second and lowering in two to three, while the others were Speed Sets, each rep lasting a total of only 1.5 seconds or 1/1 for stretch moves…
Obviously 1.5-second reps will have fast, less-damaging negative strokes, requiring less repair. That means more of your recovery ability is left for hypertrophy.
Keep in mind that I’ve said doing Speed Sets on full-stretch exercises, like flyes, can be dangerous, so there may be a better solution…
Tomorrow I’ll discuss new views on stretch range of motion and muscle damage.
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Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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