zakruti.com » Sport, fitness, workout » Gravity Transformation - Fat Loss Experts

Slow vs Fast Reps for Muscle Growth (Science-Based)

video description

Rating: 4.5; Vote: 2

Are Fast Reps or Slow Reps Better for Muscle Growth? You're told to go slow on the way down, but is that really true? Find out what the scientific evidence reveals about the best lifting tempo to build muscle. Time under tension may not be as important as some people think. Find out whether lifting fast or slow is better for hypertrophy. Are faster reps or slower reps better for muscle growth? When you perform faster reps you can typically lift more weight on the other hand with slower reps you have much longer eccentric contractions which leads to more muscle breakdown. So today we're going to review what science has to say about which of these strategies is best to build muscle faster and improve your body composition First, we have to start with something known as repetition tempo. As the name implies, this is the actual term used by researchers to describe how fast you perform reps for a certain exercise. As I already mentioned most exercises include an eccentric phase and concentric phase. The eccentric phase refers to the portion of the movement where the target muscle lengthens. For example, your bicep is in the eccentric phase when you lower the weight during a curl. The muscle lengthens while maintaining tension to prevent the weight from going into free fall. The concentric phase refers to the phase where the target muscle shortens. For example, your bicep is in the concentric phase when you lift the weight during a curl. The muscle needs to shorten with enough force to overcome gravity. So usually you hear trainers giving the advice that you should go extra slow on the way down, and explode on the way up to optimize muscle growth. But is that actually true? Well in a study published in the journal of strength and conditioning research. (1) Researchers had participants perform 3 sets of 6-10 reps to failure, either with a traditional rep tempo of 1 to 2 seconds for each the concentric and eccentric contraction or they did a slow 10-second concentric followed by a slow 4-second eccentric contraction. Both groups aimed to progress as fast as they could in the amount of weight they could lift and the amount of muscle they could grow, which was measured through muscular biopsies which are considered one of the highest quality measurement methods for this type of test. At the end of the study, researchers realized that the traditional training group increased the cross-sectional area of the leg muscle fibers by 26 percent in type 1 slow-twitch fibers and 34 percent in type 2 fibers. Meanwhile, the slow tempo group only increased by 6 percent in type 1 and 15. 5% in type 2. Based on those results, we can say that faster reps were better for muscle growth when compared to very slow reps. In other studies, we look at something known as tut, which stands for time under tension, and essentially it refers to how many seconds it takes from the start to the end of your sets so it includes time for both concentric and eccentric phases. Most people believe that the longer overall time you have under tension the more muscle you will build and this is simply not true. For example, taking six seconds to do a dumbbell curl was proven to be no better for muscle growth than taking two seconds. (10) Another study found that performing reps at a fixed speed of four seconds per rep instead a naturally self-selected speed led to a decrease in both muscle activation and training volume (11) So does all the available research support faster reps only? Well, we have a meta-analysis (2) that evaluated eight different studies and found no statistically significant difference between repetition speed and muscle growth. With that said, when you look at the effect sizes for those studies, they do indicate that there was a trend for greater muscle growth for those training with a faster rep tempo. (3) There's a chance that the duration of the study was simply not long enough to detect a statistically significant difference between the groups. That s why I believe this meta-analysis still indicates that faster tempos are actually better for building muscle, just as the other studies indicated. On top of that the eight studies that were reviewed in the meta analysis had many other limitations. One of those is that the studies were all performed on untrained individuals. You could question whether untrained individuals have the required exercise technique, coordination, and motivation to produce maximum muscle activation when performing an exercise faster; which by the way that's the main way that a faster tempo could increase muscle growth. So why might faster reps be more efficient for muscle growth. Well, the first reason is that studies show slowing down your reps reduces how much weight you can lift. Meanwhile speeding up your reps can increase the number of reps that you can lift a certain weight. (4
Date: 2022-07-03

← 8 Gym Machines You Need to Stop Using

What Happens to Your Body When You Sleep? (Science-Based) →

Related videos

25 Years of Muscle Building Experience in 10 Minutes!

• Ryan Humiston

Why 90% Of People Never Get Lean (It's Not Genetics)

• Jeremy Ethier

How I Blew Up My Shoulders (Do These 7 Things)

• Jeff Nippard

Copy This 2-Workout-2-Set Method - It'll Get You Jacked After 40

• Muscle Monsters

How to Perform Reps for Most Muscle Growth

• Jeff Cavalier

Most Men Over 40 Can't Pass These Basic Fitness Tests (can you)

• Muscle Monsters

Comments and reviews: 10

Thash
Im very skeptical of the findings. The thing about faster reps is theres a period where the momentum is lifting the weights up moreso the the muscles themselve. Yes your lifting more weights and increasing the weight faster than slower technique BUT youre not lifting all the weight.
For instance take to clones and make them work from the same starting point one will do fast reps the other slow reps and we will stary them out curling 10lbs. Well the faster guy will increase the weight he can lift faster than the slower guy say after 2 weeks the guy is now up to 20lb by the time the slower guy reaches 20lb he will be bigger than the faster guy. He will also likely be stronger. If you ask the faster guy to start doing slower reps he will need to drop down his weights to a lower weight. If you ask the slower guy to do faster reps hr will be able to increase his weights dramatically.
reply

Red
From Experience.
What seems to work for me is TABATA style (faster reps) 20 seconds on a 10-second break for 4 min = 8 repetitions.
Most experts claim that Tabata Style shouldn't be used for muscle building but what I noticed is that if I do exercises that I usually do (all the time) Tabata style, the next day I'm sore, even though I'm doing the exact same exercises that I usually do just faster speed, 8 repetitions instead of 3 or 4 and with a lot lighter weights.
So what I do is combine them. Do the exercises with the normal speed and once a week I hit it with TABATA - faster speed.
reply

Brennan
Sure, when you go faster you can use more weight. But that s also the same logic ego lifters use when they train and this massively increased risk of injury. I don t think you should lift the weight super fast nor do I think you should lift super slow. I think being able to control the weight on the negative, pausing, and then exploding on the concentric is likely the best of both worlds in terms of muscle building and safety. I m sure acutely lifting heavier and faster is better, but when you end up injured, you re not lifting a damn a thing and making no gains.
reply

Kevin
This is interestin man, I have been hitting the gym as best I can recently, and was always under the impression that lowering the weights slowly while maintaining pressure on my muscle was more beneficial, because it kinda makes sense right? If my muscle is working just as hard on the way down as it was on the up, and often harder tbh, then I should gain more strength faster right? Now I wonder if I'm wrong about that and if I've been wasting valuable energy during workouts, I'll look into this more.
reply

DJ
I m generally confused. In track sprinting is explosive but with weightlifting with the machines we go slow. I m also only 150lbs and generally train slow on my own and I can out lift most guys doing a 3x10 heavy training compared to my 3x15-4x12 medium weight. I found it much easier for me to switch to other training methods like calisthenics than heavy lifters.
I ll love a response here.
reply

findmeOnMaps
I do slow reps because it makes me aware of full range of motion and compensation. You see people doing curls with heavyweights and compensating with the entire body just to complete a rep.
I think to gain muscle, overloading a muscle with proper form is the answer. Regardless of the speed of of each repetition.
Great content with sources like always. You are the man.
reply

sport
Often times when working out a muscle group the concentric phase will fatigue before the eccentric phase. Six time Mr. Olympia winner, Dorian Yates, knew this and utilized a technique that exhausted both phases by doing extra eccentric phase reps once the concentric phase was fatigued. Essentially utilizing everything in the gas tank.
reply

Calam
I think it s better to only add fast reps when you have a good amount of muscle all ready. to optimise the best pump but the aim is high reps, and high intensity & tension with perfect form witch to do you need decent experience and diet but then you have to have already conditioned your muscles in the last two weeks to avoid injury
reply

alijawad87able
Wow, he discussed multiple different research, discussed the weaknesses of each one, and then provided a neat conclusion with all the information synthesized. Beats a random tiktoker telling us what s best with absolutely no evidence whatsoever lol
reply

Havoc
In reality, slow reps are better because when you're doing the reps at a slow pace, you're more aware of an injury that might be upcoming. Whereas, when you're doing fast reps, you're not as aware of an injury as you are while doing slow reps.
reply

Add a review, comment