Click Here to Sign Up for Your Free Muscle Building Magazine

Super Slow Reps

Super Slow Reps Weight Training

Super slow training started over 20 years ago when Ken Hutchins developed this method of training older women suffering from osteoporosis. He saw a radical increase in the amount of muscle fiber recruited when doing extremely slow reps, which was then studied farther by sports science.

This resulted in the study of why the muscle is able to generate a larger force when done slowly. Knowing the amount of force generated by a muscle directly relates to the amount of muscle fibers activated to perform the movement. They then discovered that the amount of force/tension any muscle is able to develop when in action is affected substantially by the rate at which the muscle shortens.

The shortening of a muscle is the concentric phase of a movement and the lengthening is the eccentric phase. Farther study showed conclusively that the muscle microfilaments called actin and myosin can generate and collect more muscle fibers when the movement is done slowly. As these microfilaments actin and myosin slide over each other during movement, a larger number of cross-bridges, links or cross-bridges will be formed directly between the filaments.

This is good news for anyone wanting to enlarge the muscle by recruiting more muscle fibers to do the job. Although there are different variations that can be done when doing super slow reps the 10 second on the concentric and the 5 second eccentric movement show the best results.

This requires some serious control and concentration if you are going to do this correctly. The concentric movement like pushing up a barbell when doing a bench-press needs to take ten seconds to go from your chest to your elbows fully locked out.

This will probably require you to reduce the weight that you normally press but the results will be seen as you quickly adapt to this new kind of training. Doing this type of training will enhance your ability to feel the movement and improve your form that you use.

Click Here to Sign Up for Your Free Muscle Building Magazine