Questions with 10 Sec Pos and 10 Sec Neg

Bigger Stronger Leaner Ellington Darden HIT Coaching
1

Dr. Darden,

Looking to experiment with 10 second positive and 10 second negatives…is this considered superslow

  1. How do i choose the weight selection?
  2. How many reps should I strive for?
  3. Maximum number of exercises in one session?
  4. How much variety of exercises or is it ok to perform the same exercises two or three times a week?
  5. How long should i hold the contraction portion of the exercise?

thx, dan

2

Well…i tried it this morning with the same 10 exercises I use for the 30-10-30 routine

here are my observations

Cons

The intensity was almost non-existent, did not even break a sweat.
I don’t feel like I got any cardio benefit, not breathing hard at all.
The negatives were way to easy, it maybe because of the weight selection.
Workout was 35 minutes, 15 minutes longer than normal for me.
Positive felt too slow.

Pros

More focus on the contraction hold.
Positives was a little harder, no momentum.
More focus on the stretch.

3

Unfortunately, I’ve done very little training with 10-second positive and 10-second negative repetitions. Your assessments are of interest to me.

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4

It’s an interesting idea, but the negatives will have a tough time ever being tough enough for real growth stimulus with 10 second positives. I’m sure it’s very safe and May be able to maintain your muscle mass in a pinch, although your raw strength will probably decrease as you aren’t getting fast twitch fiber activation from challenging slow negatives or max effort concentric contractions. That’s my 2 cents. I like slow negatives, not so much on the slow positives.

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5

In line with 30-30-30 you probably need to increase the weights by 20% compared to 30-10-30. I’ve tried 10-10 on two workouts, and found out I didn’t like it, though not without merit (it’s still a workout). But - as @davemccright was into - you will never get the most out of the negatives on this repvariation. Having also tried 2-10 (2 sec pos-10 sec neg) which is a completely different animal - which you may try instead for comparison (better delivery).

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6

Yeah, in my mind i thought the negatives would be harder after the positive…not even close, :laughing:

7

Something like 1-2/12-15 will get you more bang.
Start from a dead stop and accelerate to the top of he rep.
Hold for 2 secs and lower slowly (shoot for 15 secs)
At the bottom hold for 2 secs too and again accelerate up.

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8

I would up the weight. If it is too easy to get into position for the 1st negative the weight is too light.

The last positive rep at normal speed should be a challenge. Close to failure or maybe even failure. Then the last 10 second negative will be
more meaningful. After that if you try you should not be able to do another positive rep.

That’s my take on it anyway. I spent years doing 10/10 or 10/5 superslow type reps. I found if that last positive is like I described
the final negative will be a fight.

I don’t think it would be much different than doing the 10/10/10 the way
Dr.Darden describes it.

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