Concentric v Eccentric revisited

[Dave Neve]

Hello

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think one particular aspect of concentric and eccentric movements were mentioned previously.

Let's take the bench press as an example.

When I lower the bar down to my chest, the eccentric phase, it's not just the fact that I'm still pushing against the bar to stop it from coming down too hard on my chest that is beneficial.

The eccentric phase also allows you to tense the muscles that are about to push the bar back up again (the concentric phase). It's like you are tightening elastic bands (your muscles), in order for them to spring into action at the required moment.

Imagine for the sake of argument if a 150 kg bar/weights weighed nothing on the way down for a moment but once on your chest, it suddenly weights 150 kg again. You'd have a job pushing it back up as your body would not have been able to produce the necessary tension on the way down.

What I'm saying is that I think you can produce a lot more concentric force on a bench press movement with weights/machines that produce eccentric load, which is not the case with the StrengthErg.

Hope this is clear. What do you think?

[Sakly]

Your scenarios are not comparable, as the strength erg does not apply 150kg at the start of the movement.
These are two completely different force curves in the concentric and both have their specific stimulus to the muscles.