Deadlifts, i pretty well let my bar free fall after lockout.
I was actually thinking about this very concept yesterday.
In theory, one would get all the strength benefits from the concentric portion of the lift and minimize the nervous impact by eliminating the eccentric.
Doing a deadlift in this fashion is pretty much identical to the way olympic weightlifters lift (i.e. dropping the weight from the top of the movement).
I’ll have to start experimenting with this but in the meantime I would like to hear what some others have to say about it.
[quote]Adam Schussler wrote:
I’ll have to start experimenting with this but in the meantime I would like to hear what some others have to say about it.[/quote]
Me too!
I guess you’d need bumper plates to do this?
Along a similar line, if anyone can think of a way of doing eccentricless weighted chin ups I would be eternally grateful!
[quote]Jab1 wrote:
I guess you’d need bumper plates to do this?
Along a similar line, if anyone can think of a way of doing eccentricless weighted chin ups I would be eternally grateful![/quote]
Stick a bench or box underneath the bar. Pull up. Then stand on the bench and step down.
So I guess I could crouch on the box and hold the bar? Not a bad idea at all. I’ll see if I can make it work because the bars at my gym already require a step up just for me to reach.
Thanks man.
I do these at home with my squat rack. I just set the bar at about eye level so I can pull up then just stand up and squat back to the bottom position. You could do the same with a smith machine at your gym.
I’m not so sure my gym would appreciate me dropping my deadlift from waist height. But I do chins with a drop from the top often. But I could see the smith chins being a better alternative.
[quote]mch60360 wrote:
I’m not so sure my gym would appreciate me dropping my deadlift from waist height.[/quote] You could do widegrip BB upright rows, and drop the bar when it reaches your upper chest region.
You can do them rows in a rack, and just place a couple of towels on the left and right of the rack (where the BB lands).
Bodyweight movements in general lend themselves to this kind of work. Pull ups and dips are the two easiest to set up but you can also do this with push ups if you are creative. Very slow reps work the best if you are trying to maximize overall strength gains but power work is great too as long as you don’t overdo it.
[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:
Stick a bench or box underneath the bar. Pull up. Then stand on the bench and step down.[/quote]
I got the idea of doing eccentricless pull ups at home too. What I do is, I have a bar low enough that my hands can just reach it with straight arms when I am kneeling on the floor. So I do that, and then at the top of the pull, I extend my knee and ankle joints and drop down onto them.
There’s still a bit of eccentric tension (I don’t want to freefall or just let go) because I use my arms to control my landing, but it does diminish the work.
Eccentric-diminished work probably has some of the benefits of totally eccentric-less work right?
Not a pull-up exactly, but my favorite eccentric-less back training at home is a strongman rope pull. I bought 50ft of 1/2in nylon rope at the home improvement store, tied one end to the base of an old milk crate. I fill the crate with dumbells, small plates, whatever. I then stand or sit at one end of my basement and pull the rope, hand over hand.
After I got my form worked out, it feels like a high-rep DB row, but with only the concentric. Not fancy, but effective. I have indoor-outdoor carpet to pull this across. If bare concrete, I’d glue a piece of flashing or acrylic to the bottom, and then replace it when it wore down too much.