- A lesser-known type of exercise can build strength and improve fitness while remaining accessible to less active individuals.
- Eccentric exercises like lowering weights or walking downhill can generate more force with less energy while supporting muscle, heart, and even brain health.
- Whether you’re an advanced athlete or just beginning, eccentric exercise can offer unique benefits to your training regimen.
When people think about exercise or weight training, they tend to focus on concentric exercises: those powerful movements that shorten muscles, like curling a dumbbell or powering upward in a squat.
Concentric exercise is a well-established way to build muscle and improve fitness, but eccentric exercise, the portion of a movement that lengthens the muscle, may offer additional benefits.
Eccentric training, an often-overlooked form of exercise, can help build strength with less perceived effort.
Eccentric exercise may help build muscle strength with less strain on the body, according to an article recently published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science. It may also offer specific advantages over concentric exercise for muscle rehabilitation and even brain health.
These benefits may be particularly meaningful for certain groups. For older adults and those who are less physically active, eccentric exercise may provide an accessible, low impact form of training that can improve fitness.
Study author Kazunori (Ken) Nosaka, PhD, director of Exercise and Sports Science at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, said he aims to help normalize eccentric exercise.
“Every eccentric contraction counts. People may be discouraged by thinking they have to do lots of exercise to get fitter and healthier. But people can do a small amount of these exercises and still benefit,” Nosaka told Healthline.
- Concentric — muscle shortening, such as lifting a dumbbell.
- Eccentric — muscle lengthening, such as lowering a dumbbell.
- Isometric — a static muscle contraction without a change in length, such as holding a plank.
In physiology and exercise science, eccentric contractions were not well understood until the mid-20th century.
“The word eccentric literally means something that’s odd or peculiar. This type of contraction was given that term because for a long time, scientists weren’t able to explain it. How muscle produces force while it is being lengthened was a big question mark,” said Lindsey Lepley, PhD, associate professor of athletic training, director of the Comparative Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Laboratory (CORL), and co-director of the Orthopedic Rehabilitation & Biomechanics Laboratory (ORB) at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. Lepley wasn’t involved in the study.
In simpler terms, what puzzled scientists was how a muscle could generate force while being stretched.
The concept of a concentric contraction feels intuitive because the muscle is visibly doing the work. However, research into muscle biomechanics has shown that muscles can also produce substantial force during eccentric movements.
Even more unintuitive, muscles may be capable of generating significantly more force — more than 20%, according to Nosaka — than during concentric or isometric contractions, while requiring less metabolic energy.
The biomechanics of eccentric exercise mean it offers unique benefits, but also some drawbacks, compared with more common concentric exercise.
For athletes and weightlifters, eccentrics allow for greater mechanical loading: you can literally handle heavier weight during an eccentric than during a concentric, which can aid both strength development and muscle growth.
At the same time, eccentric movements tend to be less fatiguing, allowing people to achieve greater training volume through additional repetitions.
Research suggests that eccentric exercise may also benefit the brain through neural adaptations related to motor control and coordination.
Even for people who are not athletes, eccentric exercise can be a low-friction way to improve fitness. Eccentric exercise is more than just weightlifting: walking downhill and going down stairs are both forms of eccentric exercise — and they both have demonstrated health benefits.
A 2017 study found significant multisystemic benefits in older women with obesity after a 12-week program emphasizing eccentric contractions during downhill walking and stair descent.
“You don’t have to be super fit to walk down a flight of steps. This is helpful to get people who are potentially less fit to be able to see that they can be doing eccentric-based exercises, which provide a greater mechanical load than just flat-level walking,” said Laura Richardson, PhD, clinical associate professor of Applied Exercise Science and Movement Science at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. Richardson wasn’t involved in the studies.
However, Nosaka emphasizes that these risks can be mitigated through proper training and technique, like warming up properly with a lower weight. Training volume also matters, as muscle damage induced by eccentric exercise tends to decrease in individuals who exercise regularly—a protective adaptation known as the “repeated bout effect.”
“We don’t recommend maximal eccentric contraction for certain populations, especially those who are not fit,” Nosaka said.
When thinking about an eccentric movement, it’s typically the opposite phase of the exercise that you would typically emphasize: a deliberate lowering and lengthening.
For beginners interested in starting eccentric training, Nosaka recommends just a handful of body weight exercises:
- Chair squats — a partial squat that emphasizes the lowering phase rather than the upward push. Nosaka recommends slowly counting to five during the descent.
- Wall push-ups — a less strenuous version of the traditional push-up that emphasizes slowly lowering the body toward the wall.
- or reverse sit-ups — abdominal exercises that emphasizeChair reclines or reverse sit-ups — an abdominal exercise that emphasizes the lowering portion of the movement.
- Heel drops — the reverse of a standing calf raise, in which the heels are slowly lowered below the level of a step or platform.
As mentioned earlier, walking, hiking, and stairs can also be eccentric-focused when you go downhill rather than up.
“If you know you need to walk, walking downhill can build muscle better than walking in a more metabolically taxing way,” Lepley said.
“There are plenty of little daily activities you can get into, I like to call them exercise “snacks” where you can get some benefit just by changing simple parts of your daily routine,” she added.
And Nosaka reminds readers that the old adage “no pain no gain,” just doesn’t hold water anymore, especially when it comes to eccentric exercise. Understanding your body and its limits is a key part of starting and maintaining a fitness plan.
“You don’t need any pain to get stronger and get fitter,” he said.
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