I’m going to start off the discussion of this technique by making sure that you’re familiar with the negative and positive portion of a repetition. The positive (sometimes called the concentric) part of a rep is typically thought of as the “working” part, the portion where you are exerting more force and contracting the muscle. The negative portion is the part of the rep where you return to the original position for the exercise…in most cases, this is the easier part of the repetition. For example, when doing the bench press, pressing the bar upward is the positive portion and lowering the bar back toward your chest is the negative porton. When performing barbell curls, curling the weight upward is positive, lowering it back down is negative. And so on.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the Negative Reps technique. Like Forced Reps, Negative Reps will require you to have a training partner or spotter to help you out. Let’s take the bench press for example. To perform negative reps, you’ll load the bar up with a heavier weight than you’d normally use. Then, you’ll have your partner help you perform the postive (pressing up) portion of the exercise while you (and only you) will perform the negative (lowering back down) portion. Repeat this process for reps. What this allows you to do is handle more weight in the negative part of the rep than you normally would if you were performing conventional reps. Negative reps are great for building up ligaments and tendons quicker than normal reps and this will then enable you to lift heavier weights in the future and stimulate new growth. Give these a try and see what ya think!
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