Eccentric Exercise Is the Easiest Way to Build More Muscle During Your Workouts

For the most part, we look askance at anything that dubs itself a “hack” that can help you reach your fitness goals. When it comes to training, consistency is really the name of the game, and so-called shortcuts are a losing game. But if there’s one exception to that rule, it’s eccentric movement, which is about as close to a legit fitness “hack” as you can get.

Eccentric movement (also called eccentric exercise) refers to the lengthening movement of an exercise — when you’re lowering your arms down in a bicep curl, or lowering your body down in a squat. Tapping into eccentric movement can help you get closer to your strength goals and challenge your muscles in a new way, even without weights. Understanding eccentric movement can also help you realize why some workouts leave you debilitatingly sore while others leave you unfazed.

Ready to learn more? Here, all the details on eccentric exercise, including how to use it to your advantage.

Experts Featured in This Article

Heather Milton, MS, CSCS, an exercise physiologist and clinical specialist at NYU Langone’s Sports Performance Center.

What Is an Eccentric Movement?

During an exercise, when your muscles are activated, they can either contract while shortening (a concentric contraction), lengthening (an eccentric contraction), or without changing in length (an isometric contraction), per the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). Most physical activities and exercises contain multiple types of contractions, if not all three. To help you visualize this, think of a bicep curl:

So, an eccentric movement or exercise is when the muscle is contracting while lengthening, Milton explains. Your muscles are made up of overlapping patterns of muscle fibers. Interlace your fingers with your palms open; this is how your muscle fibers sit, she explains.

“When you’re lengthening a muscle, those fibers are actually stretching away from each other,” she says. As this happens, tiny proteins in your muscles try and hold them together, Milton explains. (For a visual, if you still have your hands interlaced, try pulling them apart without allowing your fingers to unlink.) “When you’re doing eccentric exercise, you’re actually, in a sense, elongating the muscle in a controlled fashion, meaning that the proteins within the muscle are actually trying to control the rate that you’re elongating it,” she says.

Sounds hard on your muscle fibers? It is. Research in the journal Frontiers in Physiology shows that eccentric movements break apart more of your muscle fibers (and thus make you more sore) than other types of contractions — but they also make you stronger. And on that note . . .

Why Eccentric Exercises Are Important For Building Muscle

To understand why eccentric exercises are so great, you need to know how, exactly, workouts make you stronger. When you exercise and you challenge your muscles beyond their current ability, you actually shear tiny tears into your muscles and connective tissues, per NASM. Your body sets off an internal response to help heal that muscle tissue and build it back stronger. In the meantime, that damage and healing process is what causes you to feel muscle soreness.

Eccentric movement does more damage to muscle fibers than concentric or isometric contractions, resulting in a bigger effort to rebuild those muscles as stronger and more capable. So, simply put, they elicit bigger strength gains. That Frontiers in Physiology study confirms that consistent eccentric training promotes greater increases in muscle strength and size, as well as neurological adaptations (i.e. the connection between your brain and muscles). A study in the journal Sports Medicine also indicates that eccentric exercises also increase the stiffness and strength of tendons, which helps them better transmit force between your muscles and bones.

Focusing on eccentric exercise also allows you to increase the time your muscles are under tension. (For example, if a trainer tells you to slowly lower down in a squat for three seconds, they’re increasing time under tension. As you lower your body down, your quadriceps muscles in your thighs will lengthen and eccentrically contract.) By spending more time under tension, your muscles have to work harder to hold the muscle and control the contraction, Milton explains. This is one great way to challenge your muscles when you don’t have the ability to increase the amount of weight you’re lifting.

How to Add Eccentric Exercises to Your Routine

Most exercises or physical activities include both concentric and eccentric movements, and that’s a good thing, as they’re both beneficial to have in your routine. However, tapping into eccentric exercises can help you build more muscle, especially if you’re limited on equipment.

The easiest way you can incorporate intentional eccentric exercise into your routine is to slow down the “lowering” portion of an exercise to increase time under tension. Try following a three- or four-count tempo, Milton says. For example, if you’re doing squats, you can lower your body for three or four counts, and then take one count to perform the concentric movement and stand up.

You can also perform something called “negatives,” which is when you try to perform only the eccentric movement section of an exercise. For example, if you start in a plank position and slowly lower yourself to the floor, then find your way back into the top of a plank without doing the “up” part of the push-up. (Instead, you could sit back onto your heels in a Child’s Pose and then come back into plank, for example.) You can also do negative pull-ups or, as Rita Ora demonstrated in a recent Instagram workout video, Nordic hamstring curl negatives.

When incorporating eccentric exercises into your routine, there are a few things you should keep in mind. For starters, you might be really sore for the next few days. You’ll also need to factor in the load (how much weight you’re lifting), how often you’re training, and the types of exercises you’re doing to make sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard. All of these factors will depend on where you are in your fitness journey and what your personal goals are. When in doubt, start with bodyweight moves or go lighter with the amount of weight you’re lifting to be safe.

Tamara Pridgett was an associate editor with PS Fitness. She’s a NASM-certified personal trainer and Precision Nutrition level 1 coach, and was a Division 1 All-American sprinter.

Lauren Mazzo was the senior fitness editor at PS. She is a certified personal trainer and fitness nutrition specialist through the American Council on Exercise. Prior to joining PS, she worked for six years as a writer and editor for Shape Magazine covering health, fitness, nutrition, mental health, sex and relationships, beauty, and astrology.

Mirel Zaman is the health and fitness director at PS. She has nearly 15 years of experience working in the health and wellness space, writing and editing articles about fitness, general health, mental health, relationships and sex, food and nutrition, astrology, spirituality, family and parenting, culture, and news.