I’ve mentioned before that you should slow the eccentric when lifting, regardless of whether you are lifting heavy or lighter. Now we have this
New Study Finds This Type of Strength May Matter More for Longevity Than How Much You Can Lift
If your gym sessions are all about lifting heavier, you may be overlooking another fitness skill that’s just as important for healthy aging.
A new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggests that how fast you can move a weight, known as muscle power, may be a better predictor of how long you’ll live than strength alone. After analyzing nearly 3,900 adults between the ages of 46 and 75, researchers found that muscle power was more closely linked to longevity than how much force participants could produce.
Most people think strength and power are the same thing, but they’re different.
Strength is how much force you can produce. Power is how quickly you can produce it.
That difference matters in everyday life. Getting out of a chair, climbing stairs, catching yourself when you trip, or lifting a heavy box all depend on muscle power—not just brute force.
In the study, people with higher muscle power were less likely to die during the follow-up period than those with lower muscle power, even after researchers accounted for age, sex, and other health factors.
What this is recommending is to continue to do slow eccentrics, but do the lifting, called the concentric phase, faster, rather than slow. You don’t have to blast it, but, try and push it harder. So, say, push up hard and fast during a bench press (concentric), then down slowly (eccentric), take 3-5 seconds to do it. Fight the gravity with fast and slow.
