In a recent video Drew expressed the opinion that micro trauma is not the primary stimulus for growth and hypertrophy. To watch the full video, in which I assume gave his reasons, you have to be a member of his paid list. I don’t fault him for trying to make a living doing what he knows but I’d think that if he’s going to make a claim that goes against 50 years of HIT research and knowledge in a public forum he’d provide the reasoning behind that claim. Has some new research come out? Are there others in the field taking this stance?
He states that there is never a time to do negative accentuated, emphasized, negative only, hyper reps, etc. I can understand that there are safety issues with trying to upload the negative and that alone may be why he’s taking that stance.
I’d be curious as to Dr. Darden’s take on Drew’s video given that his recent books all emphasize the importance of eccentric reps.
I’m not trying to bash Drew. He’s been doing this a long time and his ideas have merit. I’m just curious as to the reasoning behind his stance in the video.
He’s not the only one. This idea is one that’s gaining traction. Paul Carter and Joel Twinem (aka ‘TNF’) are notable proponents. Theory in a nutshell:
When the muscle is forced to generate a lot of mechanical tension, it adapts and grows bigger via myofibril protein synthesis. Muscle growth is not a “scarring process” but an adaptive one achieved solely via myofibril protein synthesis.
If the muscle damage is high, the recuperating resources of the body go towards the repair of the existing muscular tissue, and protein synthesis of new tissue is limited. And the repair will primarily get the muscle tissue back to its original state. There is no ‘Build back + More Added’ in the process.
A small part of this philsophy is that eccentrics are no more important — and possibly even less important — than the concentric.
dsears: I can’t find the vid you’re talking about. He seems to be sticking with slow eccentrics from what I can see. I do have one question, though: When did Drew start doing this extended Jeff Bridges impression?
Right – and that was what my last post was about. My point, after reviewing his YouTube page, is there really a video where Drew detracts eccentrics, or did the OP misunderstand?
He didn’t say that the eccentric part of the rep wasn’t important. He said that micro trauma isn’t the primary stimulus and it’s not necessary to do protocols that create more damage such as negative accentuated, negative emphasized, negative only, or hyper reps. He didn’t say anything about avoiding the eccentric part of a normal (Superslow or otherwise) rep.
His focus was on avoiding protocols that created more muscle damage.
Thanks for clarifying and getting the discussion back to the primary subject. Repairing muscle damage wastes resources that could be better spent on myofibril growth.
Sorry for my part in any left field nonsense.
Let’s say that his assertion that micro trauma is not the key stimulus is correct. Let’s also assume that the reporting on the Deland high school weightlifting team’s success under Bill Bradford using negative only training was accurately reported. That brings up the question, “if it wasn’t microtrauma that accounted for their tremendous strength increases, what was it?”. (You could also ask the same question regarding X-Force).
Another question that comes up in my mind, if negative only training such as the Deland team did creates that much muscle damage did they ever hit a wall and quit progressing and show obvious signs of overtraining? Dr. Darden would know the answer to that one since he was around Deland at that time.
The dangers of negative only are pretty easy to see given that you have to have good training partners doing the handoffs of the weight. However, the strength increases are pretty well documented. I’ve always thought that it’s easier to maintain good form doing negatives, maybe that is the sole explanation for their strength gains?
Thanks for your response. I understand your referral from a professional perspective.
I personally find SuperSlow an interesting concept, as well as a great variation to my multimodal strength training ambitions.
Can you please point me in the direction of a book recommendation on where to start reading more and learn about SuperSlow? I understand Ken Hutchins first book on the subject is out of print, but someone mentioned you have been forwarded the torch?
yes, actually research has shown muscle damage to not be needed and even coutnerproductive. That info. has been out for many years.
Eccentrics only cause damage when they are unaccustomed. If you regularly perform pure eccentrics or a slower eccentric with a regular rep, you won’t have micro trauma once you adapt (due to the repeated bout effect).
Outside of the HIT community, there are number of people (researchers and trainers) who have come to the same conclusion. The current scientific consensus is that muscle hypertrophy is the result of biochemical signaling from a process known as mechano-transduction. When you exercise under conditions that produce high mechanical tension on individual muscle fibers, biochemical signaling occurs that triggers adaptive responses to the muscle fibers. High tension on muscle fibers happens when you lift heavy weights or train to failure with lighter weights. Eccentrics are particularly good for producing high muscle tension, with the downside being that eccentrics produce higher muscle tension because fewer muscle fibers are engaged (i.e., compared to a concentric contraction, you use fewer muscle fibers but at higher tension).
Muscle damage is now seen as an inevitable but undesirable side effect of training that isn’t directly involved in the hypertrophy process. You will find lots of discussion among these folks about how to get the most hypertrophy signaling with the least amount of muscle damage as a means of optimizing a training program.
They would probably say that a program which emphasizes eccentrics, especially overload eccentrics, is not optimal because it excessively damages muscle fibers for the amount of hypertrophy signaling that is create. Muscle protein synthesis that could otherwise go toward hypertrophy ends up being diverted toward simply repairing the damage to existing muscle tissue.
My guess is that Drew has been reading this material and has accepted their conclusions. But that conclusion does somewhat undercut the rationale for using extremely long eccentrics. You need to control the speed of the descent for safety reasons but going to 10 second or longer eccentrics probably does nothing and may hurt your recovery.
There is a science populizer by the name of Chris Beardsley who has a pretty large following on social media, and he has published many well written and researched articles on muscle damage and hypertrophy. Just google the name and those topics.
Another question that comes up in my mind, if negative only training such as the Deland team did creates that much muscle damage did they ever hit a wall and quit progressing and show obvious signs of overtraining? Dr. Darden would know the answer to that one since he was around Deland at that time.
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January 1973
Ironman Magazine
“Accentuate the Negative “
May 1973
Ironman Magazine
“The Best Kind of Exercise “
Almost all of Ellington Darden’s books.
Glowing reports of eccentric training.
Was it all made up propaganda?
Why should we believe anything from HiT if so?
The HiT parrots are now saying cardio is unnecessary much as in 1975 “”Total Conditioning “. Statements such as VO2 testing is outdated and claims that all you need is weights to get cardio fitness will lead the masses far from HiT. And H-iT ends.
A bigger question is that muscle is mostly water. Glycogen draws water. Glycogen storage can be increased. Resistance training is anaerobic and burns glycogen. BioTest makes a product with cyclic dextrin. Glycogen replenishment helps recovery along with decreasing damage done by eccentrics. Wondering about the pump, as if glycogen depletion and bloood flow doesn’t inflate the muscle up.
Sorry, but I’m not following you here. Was it all made up propaganda? Bill Bradford’s success at Deland in Weightlifting is well documented. He had 8 state titles with 4 in a row in the early 70’s (75-78). The part about negative training isn’t as well documented but it seems that it would have been easy enough to disprove if Jones was making it up. I’m not sure what AJ’s motive would have been, he was in the business of selling machines and the selling points they emphasized in their marketing were concerned with things like range of motion, the Nautilus cam, etc. He mentioned that having resistance in the negative part of the exercise was important but that was to counter the claims from the people pushing isokinetic devices.
