Thread: speed of lifting

this im sure is debatable, but i always here going slow say 4 seconds on negative part of lift and 1-2 seconds on way up is best for producing mass gains. yet every video i see pros lifting fast... wtf???

What are your thoughts, fast or slow and tell us why if you want.

I usually take 2 to 3 on my squats and bench. I think people really miss a ton of work by letting gravity do most of the work on the negative. In many cases with clients or observing I see a need to slow down on the eccentric phases. As far as building muscle that's an accumulation of a few things. Enough decent work and calories will work. The people you see in vids are either stupid, on so much gear it will hardly matter, or could care less. Just do good work. If your eccentric is decent it won't make much of a difference. Only you know if you're just giving up on the eccentric or getting controlled work out of it. A magic set of time parameters is useless. Be controlled and don't let gravity do your work and you're probably looking at at least 2 seconds. Granted, many times I'm doing work on tempo to a beat in my headphones so sometimes that dictates it for me.