# The slower your reps, the more your muscles grow



## musio (Jan 25, 2008)

http://www.ergo-log.com/thesloweryourreps.html


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

Time under tension.... Nothing new there bro


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## Geonix (Apr 4, 2011)

Good read, might have a look at other stuff on there  !


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

musio said:


> http://www.ergo-log.com/thesloweryourreps.html


There's some good info on that site 

There are quite a few studies actually which show that it's not necessarily the speed of the whole rep which is important, but that its having a slower controlled negative phase of the lift that is most important for growth and especially strength- there's at least one study that compares slow negatives only with slow concentrics only using the same number of reps with the same load, and the slow negatives deliver over twice the level of muscle damage and stimulation to adapt comapred to the slow concentrics.

I'll try and find it later when back on my home PC -think I've got the link saved.


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## Geonix (Apr 4, 2011)

Aye it's not like WOW...


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## Ginger Ben (Oct 5, 2010)

NickDuffy said:


> Aye it's not like WOW...


Unlike your third arm......WOW!


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## defdaz (Nov 11, 2007)

This is awesome because at the pub I have my right biceps under tension for literally hours, no wonder it's so huge! Thank god, now all I have to do is to remember to hold my beer in my left hand and I'll be symmetrical again! 

It's all a bit silly really. While I am an advocat of high rep training this can be taken too far - too much of anything is bad.

Arthur Jones and the Casey Viator 'Colorado Experiment' is a classic case of negative-only training.

For me I need to enjoy my training. Sure, negative only or super-slow reps might give me marginally better results but the workouts would be rubbish! I'll stick with my high rep traditional workouts and enjoy the pump, thanks


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## defdaz (Nov 11, 2007)

musio said:


> http://www.ergo-log.com/thesloweryourreps.html/QUOTE]
> 
> Hold on.. 'With the other leg the men had to perform the same number of sets, with the same weight. But they performed these movements 'normally' and therefore didn't train at failure. '
> 
> So they're comparing results from one lot who went to failure and another lot who didn't. Busted!


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

defdaz said:


> This is awesome because at the pub I have my right biceps under tension for literally hours, no wonder it's so huge! Thank god, now all I have to do is to remember to hold my beer in my left hand and I'll be symmetrical again!
> 
> It's all a bit silly really. While I am an advocat of high rep training this can be taken too far - too much of anything is bad.
> 
> ...


Well yes, extending the argument to say that negative only training is better would be flawed because in a normal rep you get both a negative and a positive, and BOTH contribute to the adaptive process - to remove a significant portion of the rep would be silly... is interesting I think looking at the differences between the phases of a rep, but an error to get too focused about one part in isolation.

Same with rep speed, interesting but a controlled rep has decent TUT anyway.


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## defdaz (Nov 11, 2007)

Amen Dtlv74!


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## LIL-SCOOB-23 (Jun 16, 2012)

Spot on thread cheers answered my question i was going to ask


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## arthuroarti (Nov 26, 2011)

time under tension is a myth. What matters is Total Time Under Load. Performing reps slowly=less muscle fibres recruited. Besides that study is flawed and was done with beginners


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## infernal0988 (Jun 16, 2011)

Well cant you get similar effects with for example every rep and every set being negatives giving you similar time under tension on the way down and faster more explosive movements on the way up ?


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## simonthepieman (Jun 11, 2012)

One wonder if anyone actually read the full study? It's so ridiculous flawed and irrelevant to practical application it's laughable

I'm not saying there is a time and place for TUT, but if this was used as evidence in a court case, the most mickey mouse laywer would get this thrown out of court in a nanosecond


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

Henneman's size principle.


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## musio (Jan 25, 2008)

arthuroarti said:


> time under tension is a myth. What matters is Total Time Under Load. Performing reps slowly=less muscle fibres recruited. Besides that study is flawed and was done with beginners


You've separated the terms. What's the difference between 'time under tension' and 'time under load'. My understanding is they mean the same thing.


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## musio (Jan 25, 2008)

Some interesting reads on this topic. Some quite a shock to how most training logs read here.. @dtlv you might like 

http://www.simplyshredded.com/time-under-tension-the-scientifically-engineered-set-timing-technique-2.html



Resistance exercise load does not determine training-mediated hypertrophic gains in young men

http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2012/04/12/japplphysiol.00307.2012.abstract

The Misinterpretation of the Henneman Size Principle

http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/size-matters-bro-misinterpretation-henneman-size-principle

The Most Effective Way To Build Muscle

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_most_effective_way_to_build_muscle

Time Under Load, a New Standard of Measurement

http://www.ultimate-exercise.com/tul.html

hypertrophy with only 30% 1pm

http://www.danogborn.com/training/30/

Is light the new heavy?

http://www.danogborn.com/training/is-light-the-new-heavy/

(last site in particular has lots of hypertrophy articles


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

Some of the studies mentioned there are linked in the Hypertrophy Studies sticky, and they are interesting. The Henneman Principal (which is not a hypothesis, it's an established principal of neurological muscle control and fiber activation) is possibly the most misused piece of science in bodybuilding where people confuse it's meaning to assume that muscles grow only in response to progressions in loading - is certainly true that comparing a single rep set of 90% 1RM to a single rep set of say 60% 1RM, the higher RM set will induce greater stimulus and work more fibers - but if you extend each set to the number of reps required to reach the point where the muscle starts to ache, form starts to collapse, the speed of muscle contraction slows, the weight 'feels' heavier and eventually the muscle fails, at that point it doesn't matter what the RM used actually was, because even in the lower RM set the larger fibers have been exhausted and stimulated via the Henneman Principal.

In simple terms TUT, whether through slow reps or through cumulative fatigue from multiple reps (I am unaware of the effective differences, but there may be some), doesn't matter so much for high RM percentage sets taken to fatigue because the sheer degree of mechanical stress from the heavy load is enough to get straight to recruiting and fatiguing a lot of fibers - but in lower loads, TUT is a very important factor form maximal fiber recruitment, and most importantly such sets performed properly are at least as effective for hypertrophy in both long and short term observations.

In most studies in fact, although the results are not considered to have a difference of statistical significance, the difference in raw data (simply the amount of muscle gained unadjusted for statistical representation of the degree of change) suggests that the lower load to failure/higher metabolic stress or time under tension training condition is consistently slightly more effective for hypertrophy alone. Strength gains are of course lower however, and also such training is less time efficient and perhaps requires greater physical and psychological endurance, as certainly I find training this way to failure more physically and psychologically difficult (compare how performing a 25 rep set of squats to failure makes you feel to a 5 rep set to failure).

Anyway another good link here concerning this topic - http://g-se.com/uploads/biblioteca/full2013.pdf


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## musio (Jan 25, 2008)

Some great thoughts there! I think this is good stuff for designing a training program. If your week allows you to train each body part twice, a good way to split it would be a workout 1 low rep explosive movement and workout 2 high rep long tut sets.

Going to come back and re-read your post again!


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

musio said:


> Some great thoughts there! I think this is good stuff for designing a training program. If your week allows you to train each body part twice, a good way to split it would be a workout 1 low rep explosive movement and workout 2 high rep long tut sets.
> 
> Going to come back and re-read your post again!


I agree that possibly the most productive long term program for a bodybuilder involves both elements - the question, as I just pondered in another thread funnily enough, is how to balance them, and how to periodize them. Periodization is well followed in powerlifting, but I feel it has a valuable place in bb'ing too and is something that as yet the bodybuilding population at large hasn't yet found the best use of or understanding of.


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