My whole life people have told me I think too negatively, and to accentuate the positive. You know the spiel: ‘the glass is half full, not half empty’, ‘the door is half open, not half shut’, etc.
So it’s ironic how ‘thinking negatively’ is now actually going to have a huge benefit on my bodybuilding efforts. And now I intend to think as negatively as I possibly can…
I’m talking negative repetitions, here… you know, the part where the weight is lowered, the reverse-contraction, if you like. Today I discovered it’s true importance…
Apparently, more muscle fibres are stimulated during the negative portion of a rep than the positive portion. Which gives me 2 more windows of opportunity to spare growth on…
1: Draw the negative reps out for as long as possible. Ok, not taking it into the realms of ridiculousness, but maybe to the count of 3.
2: Forced negatives. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but you seem to have so much more left in you when you’re performing a negative, yet the very next positive might well be failure. So on exercises which I can do it, I intend to perform several forced negatives. The outcome being, rather than stop when I can no longer perform a positive rep, I’ll ‘ignore’ my bodies premature claim of fatigue, and continue to do negatives, until I truly fail.
I knew negatives were important, but I didn’t know their importance outweighed the positive. Now in future, during exercises it’s safe to do so, I’ll be sure to make sure I fail doing forced negatives, and that way I know for sure I’ve completely worked my muscle fibres.