Its time for another effort to cut through the hype and try to understand what slow-rep lifting will do and, perhaps more importantly, what it wont do. Lets start with two recent studies, one suggesting the promise of slow reps, and the other raising some doubts about the scope of the benefits.The first study was done in 1993 and repeated in 1999 by Wayne Westcott, fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts. In both studies, Westcott assigned untrained volunteers (men and women, mean age 54) to one of two regimens. Super Slow advocates would say the impressive difference was because going slow takes the momentum out of lifting and exhausts more muscle fibers. Most accounts of the Westcott study stop at this point. The authors of the report acknowledge that the absence of a common testing protocol was a possible flaw; it may cast doubt on the validity of their findings. Our second study, performed by D.K Liow and W.G Hopkins and reported in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, shows why using an apples-to-apples measure of performances is so important. At the very start of the sprint, when rowing movements are of necessity slow, the slow-training group improved most (6.9%), the fast group next (3.2%), and the control group last (1.4%). Over the last 3.75 meters, when rowing is fast, the fast training group improved most (3.0%), the slow group next (2.1%), and the control least (minus 0.8%).In my opinion I think, Slow weight training exercises train one to respond best when moving slow. Fast weight training exercises train athletes to respond best when moving fast. However, both forms of training improved performance better than no weight training. That says it all doesnt it? Practicing doing things slowly will improve what you want to do when you are moving slowly, and practicing doing things fast will improve what you want to do when you are moving faster....
