Finishing a set of squats, push-ups or biceps curls with your heart pounding can feel satisfying. But if you rushed through every repetition, you may have missed an opportunity to get stronger, and the fix could be as simple as counting to three.
Raising your heart rate is an important marker of cardiovascular exercise, but it does not tell you how well you are performing strength training. When the goal is to build muscle, how you manage resistance throughout a movement matters most. Slowing down, by as little as three seconds per rep, can increase the challenge and the strength-building capacity of an exercise while giving you time to notice and improve your form and control.
Most familiar strength movements involve two types of muscle action. In the concentric phase, a working muscle shortens as it produces force. In the eccentric phase, a muscle produces force while lengthening. It is the eccentric phase that is often overlooked. Think about a biceps curl. As you bend your elbow to lift a dumbbell, your biceps muscle shortens. As you straighten your elbow to lower it, your biceps lengthens while contracting to resist the weight’s downward pull.
Yet most people treat the eccentric phase as little more than a quick one-second reset before the next rep. By slowing down and counting out three seconds as you lower a weight or your body, you can actively train eccentric muscle action in almost any resistance exercise. Adding those two extra seconds may make your usual weight feel harder and make you feel less able to complete as many repetitions. As a recent review of eccentric exercise tempo explains, extending the lowering-phase time can increase the effort and fatigue involved, and that added challenge results in increased strengthening, making a slower-lowering tempo a useful way to increase difficulty without heavier weights.
The evidence backs the idea. A systematic review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Sports Sciences found that longer lowering phases could even produce greater strength gains among experienced lifters. Eccentric muscle strength also helps you control resistance and decelerate, whether you are lowering a dumbbell or lowering yourself into a chair.
Slowing your lowering tempo also gives you the opportunity to pay attention to how you move and manage loading through your joints. In a squat, a controlled descent lets you focus on coordinating the alignment of your hips, knees and ankles instead of dropping into a position you cannot control. When you take your time, you can self-assess using practical checkpoints. When you squat, can you keep your feet firmly planted and your knees tracking over your toes as you descend? During a push-up, can you lower your chest and pelvis together without letting your lower back sag? As you do a biceps curl, can you move the weight without swinging your torso?
There is still a place for moving quickly during strength exercises when training to enhance power. Increasing the body’s ability to produce force rapidly requires practising faster efforts, and the American College of Sports Medicine’s updated resistance-training guidance recommends a fast-lifting phase with appropriate loads when training for power. Performing exercises designed around speed, such as jumps and throws, is not the same as rushing through repetitions to finish a set.
Three exercises are a good place to start practising the three-second lowering cue: the squat, the push-up and the biceps curl. With each one, lower smoothly over three seconds, then return at a comfortable, controlled pace, keeping breathing as you move. Start with two sets of four to eight repetitions, two or three times per week, and introduce the slower tempo gradually, since unfamiliar eccentric exercise can cause soreness.
Once you are feeling stronger and can maintain the pace and technique, gradually add repetitions, more sets or increase resistance. Remember that slower movement does not automatically mean less joint stress, and tempo alone is not a proven injury-prevention strategy. Choosing the right weight, exercise and range of motion for your capacity is important. Before beginning this or any new exercise program, consult your doctor or physical therapist, and stop if you experience pain.
