I'm curious about something folks. I have read the muscle has 3 points of overload (or something, please excuse me for a minute; I probably should have done more research before posting this). Positive, Negative, Static.

One would conclude that properly overloading all 3 "points" would stimulate more growth, I guess.

Under that argument, or discussion, I have also read that you are strongest during your negative, then your static, and finally your positive. So you can lift 300lbs, you may be able to hold 320, and you could do a slow negative with 340 (for example).

Let's assume for a minute that all of the above is true. If so, why do slow negatives with the same weight? Wouldn't by those arguments a slow negative with your 300lbs weight be sort of pointless, as you could easily lower much more weight? Wouldn't a better approach (although a very stupid idea but one I've heard of people trying) be to bench press 300lbs, then have your buddy add on another 40lbs for your negative decent (slowly doing the negative)?

This is the argument that fueled some of Arthur Jones' equipment, as well as the newly developed MAX OUT machines of the Strength Studio (Orlando, supposidly soon to be at Michigan's football gym too). Said machines are free weight on the positive and the cables allow for a heavier negative. I have personally used some of these machines and the workouts were the most intense I have ever experienced. My bench max jumped enormously after only 5 sessions (5 weeks) there.

Anyway I'm not looking really for discussions on those types of machines but more on someone doing simply a slow negative with standard barbells and dumbbells. Just wondering what some other thoughts were, trying to learn as always!

Just an excerp on Negative Only sessions, from Sean Sullivans post on Hormone Manipulation Training...I'll appologise for not getting into more details on emphasising the eccentric portion of your movements right now.

Negative only training has been shown to force the muscle to secrete insulin like growth factor 1 and fibroblast growth factor, two powerful autocrine/paracrine anabolic hormones. This type of training causes extreme soreness and muscle trauma and again needs to be done infrequently. Sets need to be limited to 2-5 Negative only sets of 6-10 reps. That is a 10-15 second Negative with a 3-5 second pause between the reps. Between all sets stretch, and if you’re not familiar with Dante’s stretch protocols then I would research it. All other movements this training session should be heavy with a maximum stretch at the bottom and peak contraction at the top. Hold the top and bottom positions for 2-4 seconds. Again this training needs to be infrequent with 24-30 days between Negative only workouts for the same body parts.

Interesting Kino, thanks man!

Still that training protocol is different than what I was describing, which would be a regular set only doing slow and controlled negatives. :)

This protocol is NEGATIVE ONLY, so under such a movement you would actually be able to add more weight I guess than you would do for a "regular set."

Interesting though, thanks again.

I'd be interested in reading more about this if you have any good sources. I'm always open to something new and I'd drive across town every now and again to use the machines and try out a workout of this kind. Keeps the bod' on its toes to change things up... especially if I can get alot from it...

-R

You are quoting a method known as forced negatives, which I know many bodybuilders and power-lifters use. You are right, don't do the negatives with a weight you can handle, overload it. There are two factors at play - first, your strength is greater so you can load more weight. Second, you have a muscle sensory organ called the golgi that monitors tension and can keep a muscle from contracting if it finds too much tension (to prevent injury). This type of negative can desensitize the golgi, allowing for a heavier weight on the positive. This is a method most should NOT use because it is advanced and requires a good knowledge of your body and a good spot partner, but let's say you plateau at 300 pounds on the squat. You would load 400 pounds and hold it statically to desensitize the golgi, then load 310 on the squat and bang it out.

Note that traditionally, with forced negatives, your training partner applies the added pressure. However, you can easily do this even yourself - I do it all the time on my Parabody because it is self-spotting with "snake hooks" that catch the weight should I fail. So I take the Smith bar and load it at arms length (this is an example for the bench press) and load more weight then I can handle. I unrack it and slowly lower it, then set it on the hooks. I get up, unrack the weights, reset the bar, and start over. Takes longer but serves the same purpose.

This is not something you can do effectively all of the time because while the loading is greatest, the microtrauma is greatest and the impact to the CNS is also the greatest, which means this can result in burnout. This is why, for example, the Hypertrophy-Specific Training program (http://www.naturalphysiques.com/cms/index.php?itemid=94&catid=12) has the last 2 weeks being negatives only - because (a) you wait until the end and then load a weight greater than you could handle (if you notice, you are doing 6 reps for 2 weeks, then you do 6 reps again, but this time its all negatives at heavier weight, just as you described) (b) the negatives are only 2 weeks out of an 8 week cycle to prevent burnout/frying the CNS.

Jeremy

I'm curious about something folks. I have read the muscle has 3 points of overload (or something, please excuse me for a minute; I probably should have done more research before posting this). Positive, Negative, Static.

One would conclude that properly overloading all 3 "points" would stimulate more growth, I guess.

Under that argument, or discussion, I have also read that you are strongest during your negative, then your static, and finally your positive. So you can lift 300lbs, you may be able to hold 320, and you could do a slow negative with 340 (for example).

Let's assume for a minute that all of the above is true. If so, why do slow negatives with the same weight? Wouldn't by those arguments a slow negative with your 300lbs weight be sort of pointless, as you could easily lower much more weight? Wouldn't a better approach (although a very stupid idea but one I've heard of people trying) be to bench press 300lbs, then have your buddy add on another 40lbs for your negative decent (slowly doing the negative)?

This is the argument that fueled some of Arthur Jones' equipment, as well as the newly developed MAX OUT machines of the Strength Studio (Orlando, supposidly soon to be at Michigan's football gym too). Said machines are free weight on the positive and the cables allow for a heavier negative. I have personally used some of these machines and the workouts were the most intense I have ever experienced. My bench max jumped enormously after only 5 sessions (5 weeks) there.

Anyway I'm not looking really for discussions on those types of machines but more on someone doing simply a slow negative with standard barbells and dumbbells. Just wondering what some other thoughts were, trying to learn as always!

JEREMY: you once again grace us with a great post, thanks. VERY interesting to say the least.

BLUESTREAK: as you live near me if you'd like I'll get you into the Strength Studio for a free workout or two. My friend is a trainer there. Prices are rediculous but once you see the results it's worth it (though I admit I can't afford it, so I don't go!). My friend is legal benching over 400 after working there a year, and he's not looking like a powerlifter either (6 foot, 215lbs, probably around 7-8% bodyfat).

I believe I described it before, but here's an example of how their machines work. Dr. Macmillan spent the last 17 years trying to get these machines built, and finally he has. He used to work with Arthur Jones and had a friendship with Mentzer and some of those guys. He is also right now a well known surgeon in Orlando.

Let's take their bench press machine. Your negative is a regular free weight bench movement. It's a bench, a bar, and you load the weight on it normally. The difference is there's a cable attached to the middle of the bar, and it runs up and behind the machine to a weight stack (looks like a lat pulldown type stack/setup). Let's say my max positive on a bench press is 400lbs (I wish!). I would load up, say 450 on the bar. THIS IS MY NEGATIVE PORTION OF THE SET. I then set the pin in the stack of weights behind me on the machine to what I want the difference to be for my positive. So say I want that positive to be 380. I would set the pin at 70lbs. (450-70=380).

Once the machine is turned on (yes it's electric/mechanical, if that makes sense, sorry I'm typing fast lol), you unrack the barbell and lower that 450. Once it hits the "catch" (there's a rack right above your chest), the mechanism kicks in and the weight lightens down to that 380 for your positive portion of the rep.

Make sense? Check this out. This was a comp layout for a website for them (so it's non-functional), but there's a short flash video on here of one of their trainers using the machine. Quality kinda sucks (again, it's a comp layout), but you may be able to see how it's working kinda: http://www.egen.net/strengthstudio/comp1.asp

If you wanna talk about it more feel free to PM or email me anytime. I just hung up the phone with my friend who works there and he said he'd be happy to give you a couple sessions for free if you'd like. By the way they're across the street from the Winter Park Regal movie theatre, off 17-92 near Fairbanks. It's just a little hole in the wall place but they have these machines in there along with a rack of dumbbells. Oh yeah, they have a machine like this for bench press, squats (which you can do curls on too which are unreal), incline, military, lat pulldown, cable row, tricep pushdown, preacher curl, leg press, hamstring curl, ab crunch, and some others but I don't recall all of them (I've only been a few times actually).