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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

There's a famous trainer, Ryan Flaherty. He gets guys ready for the NFL combine.

He utilizes the hex-bar deadlift.

He has his football athletes complete the concentric phase (picking up from the ground) as fast as possible.

They just drop the weight when they reach full extension at the top.

He claims that the eccentric phase (lowering) is when all of the micro-muscle tears occur. These tears cause muscle growth.

By dropping the hex-bar deadlift weight at the top, instead of lowering, you get most of the strength gain, without the muscle size growth.

This is an effort to increase leg strength (for speed) without adding additional body weight.

Getting faster by getting stronger but staying lighter.

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I've recently come to believe the differences in hypertrophy are negligible between eccentric and concentric focused movements, but can't find any recent, compelling research that says so. There was a 2017 meta analysis by Brad Schoenfeld (basically THE hypertrophy researcher) that showed a pretty significant different in hypertrophy: an average of 10% vs 6.8%.

I know Greg Nuckols from StrongerByScience believes this is mostly caused by lifters, especially untrained lifters which most of the research is on, having spent less time in eccentric phases so there is more opportunity for growth there, but it will eventually plateau.

working at gym after 4 Hour Body came out was pretty loud...

I’m genuinely sorry for this, but what the fuck.

* Can the misconception that micro-muscle tears cause growth just die? We already know since 90s that it’s the myonuclei addition driven by muscle tension.

* There is no strength gain without muscle gain. There is not a single mechanism recorded that would drive this behavior.

* This post made me angry on so many fucking levels. Hex-bar deadlift is at least a good choice for legs due to its lower load on lumbar.

* Finally, it’s the concentric that drives most of the hypertrophy. Not eccentric. It’s why you see gym bros and most IFBB pros (gear aside) disregard eccentric control and hammer the concentric. Because that’s the movement that drives the growth.

* Eccentric cause most fatigue (many types) and lowering slower on purpose would hinder recovery times (and growth as well since the relationship between the two exists)

> There is no strength gain without muscle gain. There is not a single mechanism recorded that would drive this behavior.

This doesn't add up to me, it seems like it doesn't account for the impact of a "trained" nervous system vs. an "untrained" nervous system, skeletal biomechanics, and a whole host of other factors.

Maybe given an ideal muscle in a perfect vacuum, size == strength, but that is not the world we live in.

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