Maximize Your Minutes in the Gym With “Super Slow” Training
Last December, I wrote about the importance of prioritizing intensity over volume in the weight room when it comes to efficiently stimulating hypertrophy & strength gains.
One of the methods I mentioned to make an exercise more effective is to slow down the eccentric (lowering) portion of the lift. This sparked several questions about my thoughts on the “Super Slow” protocol of resistance training.
What exactly is “Super Slow” and how does it work?
The name “Super Slow” itself is trademarked by Ken Hutchins. A book was published in May of 1992, titled “Super Slow: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol”, explaining that the idea behind the protocol is to utilize a 10 second lowering/10 second lifting phase on every repetition of a given exercise.
Each muscle fiber (or cell) contains several hundred to several thousand myofibrils, which are composed of myosin (thick fibers) and actin (thin fibers) protein filaments. Inside those muscle fibers, the slower the rate at which the actin and myosin filaments slide past each other, the larger the number of links or cross-bridges that form between them. The more cross-bridges there are at a given time, the more tension is created in the muscle. — Brock Armstrong
