Posted on by Max Schmarzo

Supramaximal Eccentric Training For Posterior Upper Body Strength

By: Drake Berberet, CSCS

 

By now we should all know what eccentric strength is. If you don’t, you should probably purchase Triphasic Training right here (I’ll even provide the link, no affiliation).

 

Eccentric movement in its most simplest form is the reverse muscle action to concentric movement. Concentric movement is what we all think of when we think of lifting weights. For example, during a bicep curl the concentric movement is the actual “curl” part. The eccentric movement is the lowering down of the weight down…pretty simple right?

The picture above is from the work of Cal Dietz. The red is the eccentric movement and the blue is the concentric movement. The bottom of the “V” or transition point is the amortization phase, or also known as the isometric phase.

 

Eccentric movement is a lot more complex than just “slow down”. It’s main premise is time-under-tension, or TUT. TUT guidelines vary depending on who you talk to, however the idea behind TUT is that the longer you provide a stimulus (length and tension) on the muscle-tendon unit (MTU) the stronger and more robust it will become (adaptation). This is important not only for sport performance and muscle size, but also for injury prevention.

 

Research shows that when compared to concentric movement, eccentric movement can handle much higher loads. For example, you might be able to back squat 400 lbs concentrically. However, eccentrically you can handle loads much greater than that…possibly 120% of your 1RM (480 lbs).

 

The main point of this article is not to dive into the mechanisms of eccentric training, however this article will provide some exercises you can implement right now in your training. If you are looking for resources to better understand eccentric training, check out the work down by Cal Dietz and Charles Poliquin. They can explain it much better than I can.

 

This article was developed to help you come up with eccentric exercises that will help strengthen the posterior upper body eccentrically, specifically in throwers. Throwers in this post can also be interchanged with the word overhead athletes. The target population for this type of training is baseball pitchers, hitters, swimmers, tennis athlete, javelin athletes, or any other sport involving an overhead action. However, this type of training may benefit athletes of all sports.

 

The idea behind developing eccentric strength in the posterior upper body stems from the idea that if you can accept more force eccentrically, you can transmit more force concentrically (similar to Cal’s picture above). Another theory is once you break the protective mechanism in place by your brain (injury protection), you can theoretically begin to push the boundaries in concentric overhead movement, or speed (i.e. throw faster). These exercises can be accomplished using submaximal (<100%1RM), maximal (100% 1RM), or supramaximal loads (>100% 1RM). For the sake of this article supramaximal eccentrics will be discussed.

 

This idea was sparked by a conversation I recently had with Bill Miller, Chicago-area baseball strength coach (want to give credit where credit is due). Side note: all great ideas are usually sparked by conversation with other people that share the same interest as you, but have different experiences. Seek out those people.

 

Below are links to videos of each exercise I think will provide the most bang-for-your-buck in overloading the eccentric component in the posterior upper body.

 

 

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I hope you found this article worth the read! I am very passionate about sport-science and strength training. Please give this article a share on social media if you liked it. I would love to help other people like yourself develop the necessary tools to become the best coach, athlete, or practitioner they can be!

 

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