How bad is eccentric training?
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I've been following Mike Mentzer style high intensity training. It's the older heavy duty based on a 3 day split with 1 set to failure for each exercise and a 50-70% warm up set. The tempo is 5s concentric 1s pause and 5s eccentric. I find this style of training works perfectly for my joints I have no pain in my knees or elbows which I used to get regularly once I started BJJ alongside the gym.
Since reading some of RPs work and digging about on the forums I've found various quotes and discussions about how concentric training is very beneficial for health, muscle growth and wellbeing and how eccentric is damaging for the body and raises stress levels.
My question is how detrimental is it and do people consider it damaging enough to drop it? I'm currently struggling as I tried changing back to a 3s-1s-1s tempo to focus on more explosive concentric and less eccentric movement but within a couple of weeks joint pain started coming back. I am willing to continue exploring training with a concentric focus just wanted to know if people think the benefits (and avoiding damage from eccentric training) is enough to make this worth while or if I should just stick with this split as if it is working for me and keeping my joints pain free.
Thanks.
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If you’re just doing one set I doubt the muscle damage from a slower eccentric will add up to much. And the benefit on the joints from not bouncing reps is great too.
I think people become slaves to the gym doing too many sets per muscle and end up doing more muscle damage than needed compared to stimulating reps and sets. U can literally do 1-3 sets for a muscle to or close to failure and get plenty stimulus to grow. Sure doing 8 hard sets for quads u may end up with a bigger pump but a lot of that is probably edema and more muscle damage to heal from than necessary
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Regardless of the focus on con-/excentric movements, super long reps of the HIT type will be taxing on both the muscle and the joint.
Bodybuilders like negatives because they work. I don't like negatives because of the side effects which are very real but somewhat overblown by Peaters and underappreciated by bodybuilders.
If you like your routine but want to reduce the amount of damage from excentric reps, then consider the "Doggcrapp" style. It's similar in structure but relies on going to failure instead of working the negative.
Mike never ran his program until after he had gotten huge and his coaching was often by phone. I'm sure he was a cool guy who is similar to me in many ways, I just doubt what I've been told about his training methods.
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Oh also purposely doing 5 sec concentric doesn’t seem necessary. Taking a set to failure there’s about 5 stimulating reps at the end. When the concentric increasingly slows down towards the end is when mechanical tension increases the most causing the most stimulus for muscle growth.
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Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look into the DC programme I've heard of it before but never tried it.
It's a good point about the concentric, I'm going to try speeding it up to 2-3s and just keep the eccentric phase slower.
I've read people say it should be harder on the joints but I get no joint pain at all when I do this very slow and controlled method and it always comes back it I start going faster and more explosive, even with good form.
Reckon I'll stick with the slower tempo to keep my joints feeling good and just focus on everything else nutrition and lifestyle wise to make sure I'm minimizing any negative impact from it.