Fast & Slow, Heavy & Light, Eccentric & Concentric: Do All These Fancy Training Variables Really Matter? Probably For Power. Not So Much for Size, Though.
Image 1: According to Sakamoto, 2011, EMG activation during the bench press increases with rep-speed & weight (pic from mylot.com ) "Go heavy or go home!" You probably have heard this advice time and again and, after all, two recent studies appear to suggest that, when all is se t and done, ah... I mean all sets are done, the thing your muscles seem to care most about is workload . While the study by More et al. ( Moore. 2011 ) does not tell us anything about the effectiveness of training with different rep speeds, it goes to show that concentric and eccentric training are similarly effective, when it comes to building sleeve bursting biceps . Sakamoto et al. ( Sakamato. 2011 ), on the other hand, found that EMG activity of the pectoralis major increases with rep speed and (readers of the SuppVersity EMG Series know that already) weight . Now, before we jump to any preliminary conclusions, let's tackle the studies in some more detail... The nine healthy...