Just how important are paused and or eccentric reps for a raw power lifter and how often would anyone reccomend cycling them into training? I’ve always thought of eccentric reps being for hypertrophy (time under tension) but I read an article saying they are great for raw lifters as well. If anyone has any input or experience using them it would be greatly appreciated!
Both are a good variation that will probably help your squat. Just don’t make them the focus of your training.
Use pause squats to help with explosiveness and stability out of the hole.
Use eccentrics for muscle growth or if you are finding you get yourself into a poor position in the hole or have timing issues.
Again, dont make these the star of the show.
1 Like
If you compete in PL then you should definitely be doing some paused benching. Pause squats are good too, but not essential. Some people get a lot out of paused deadlifts, some don’t, I find they make me slower off the floor if I do them for too long and in recent times I haven’t gotten anything out of them.
Doing deadlifts with a slow eccentric makes sense for hypertrophy since letting the weight free-fall back to the floor avoids half the movement, but it’s not totally necessary either. I see Mike Tuchscherer’s guys doing squats and benches with a slow eccentric, going fairly heavy too, there must be something to it but I have never tried it. Stuff like that has the potential to mess up your technique, you want to descend as fast as your technique allows to get the maximum carryover from the stretch reflex (obviously for DL there is no such concern). If you are going to do them, I would think that the best time is far from a meet.
Intentionally slow lifts suck, as far as I’m concerned. A few years ago I did the RTS “Generalized Intermediate Program”, it had 303 tempo squats - 3 sec. down, 3 sec. up. Basically, it makes you activate antagonist muscles and when I squatted again I was slow as fuck and weaker too. I can’t remember if it was Sheiko or Zatiorsky (definitely some Russian guy) who said it, but basically not applying maximum force to lifts is bad because antagonist muscles get activated, you want to move the weight as fast as possible (isolation exercises excepted) and train your body not to inhibit the movement. Slow lifts are an extreme example of that, and I haven’t heard of Mike T programming that for anyone in years. If there is a good reason to do them I have no idea what it is.
1 Like
Hopefully without repeating anything here’s some more stuff to add to the discussion
1 Like
Maybe give a brief summary of what Izzy said because I can’t stand his boring, long winded videos.