Eccentric Exercises: The forgotten plateau busting moves to increase your strength

By Garnet Patel

I am often approached by clients who have been working-out for quite some time and say they are struggling to grow more muscle because they cannot lift past a certain amount of weight. What my clients are describing is a Plateau. You may typically see this occur with arm and back exercises. To be certain of this I have the client go through their entire workout for me so that I can see it for myself and sure enough when their routine is finished I notice they have not included any eccentric movements. A look of puzzlement overcomes their face when I point this out. The eccentric exercises are the movements that work your white muscle fibers. That is the muscle fiber that is responsible for power. Think about it this way. Imagine lifting a piano with a buddy, you would not carry the piano with bent arms. Instead your arms would be straight and every muscle in the arm would be stretched and engaged, thereby providing blood flow to those muscles. This is essential to building more muscle and strength. Unlike performing a bicep curl, when you squeeze and flex at the end of the motion to push blood into the muscle. The eccentric movements are actually pulling blood into the stretched out muscle thus providing more room for blood to flow into. One of the best exercises for this is to simply hang from a pull-up bar. Attempt to hang from the bar for a full minute and do this ten times. To increase the difficulty, hold a dumbbell between your ankles. You will feel the results in your arms, shoulders, as well as upper and middle back muscles. Over time you will notice how you blast through those weight plateaus you have been stuck on and get the stress levels necessary to grow more muscle.