Rule #5 for Maximizing Strength Gains: Lift and Lower the Weight
My experiences at NASA taught me that lowering the weight has a surprisingly powerful effect on strength gains
[Header: this article is part of a 9-part series about maximizing your strength gains]
When I worked at NASA Johnson Space Center as an exercise physiologist, I learned a lot about the challenges of making a strength training device that could preserve muscle and bone strength while astronauts were circling the planet in the International Space Station. Some of the requirements for strength training hardware were expected. For example, the strength training device had to provide a heavy load for the astronauts to lift. While this requirement was expected, it isn’t super-simple to provide a heavy load when considering that the dumbbells, barbells, and metal plates that we commonly use on Earth weigh essentially zero when there isn’t gravity. That’s why strength training devices used in space rely on things like pneumatic pistons (instead of things like dumbbells) to provide a heavy load for the astronauts to lift. Pneumatic pistons don’t involve any weight at all. Instead, the vacuum created inside the piston creates a resistance that must be overcome for the astronaut to successfully perform the exercise.
Like I said, requiring the strength training hardware to provide a heavy load seems pretty intuitive. However, other requirements might be less intuitive for people unfamiliar with spaceflight engineering, like the fact that the vibrations from the strength training hardware had to be dampened using specialized equipment to prevent the International Space Station from shaking to a premature death (see this video for a quick visualization). Minimizing the vibrations was critical during spaceflight but is mostly irrelevant for the rest of us on Earth (we can bounce up-and-down all we want on Earth without worrying about shaking the Earth to death). Other equipment requirements, though, had huge implications for how we get stronger on Earth. One of these requirements – that the muscular forces experienced by astronauts as they lowered the load had to be similar to the muscular forces experienced by astronauts while they raised the load – can have a large impact for those of us on Earth trying to maximize our strength gains.
During traditional strength training on Earth, you’ll normally see people lifting and lowering weights. However, during competitions (like the Olympics), the athletes sometimes only have to lift the weight. This observation begs a question: if it only matters whether we can successfully lift a weight, then why even bother lowering the weight during training? This was the exact question asked by NASA scientists trying to help astronauts maintain their strength during long-duration trips to outer space (note: this particular scientific study occurred well before my time at NASA, but it was a big influence on my time there).
In a groundbreaking study, research volunteers were asked to perform strength training for 19 weeks. The volunteers were randomly divided into three groups, but to make this as simple as possible, I’ll only discuss the findings from two of the groups: first, those who lifted and lowered weights during training (we’ll call this group “lifting + lowering”); and second, those who performed the same number of sets and repetitions as the “lifting + lowering” group, but who only lifted the weights (we’ll call this group “lifting only”). This simple comparison answers the question: is lowering the weight an important stimulus for gaining strength? Not surprisingly, the “lifting only” group improved their strength. However, their improvements paled in comparison to the “lifting + lowering” group, who improved their strength by on average 50-200% more than the lifting-only group.
As an example, if you only performed the lifting portion of a deadlift, and then simply dropped the weight in between repetitions, then this would drastically reduce your strength gains over time compared to lifting and lowering the weight.
The moral of the story: if your goal is to maximize your strength gains, then in general you should lift and lower the weight during training.